 |
|
|
|
|
...My Life as 'Drive away' driver
|
2023 08 18 MN-IL 1 trash truck to Batavia IL (Sunday) ... spending the night at home Nothing on the load board for us in the AM so shortly after 8 AM I called the local dispatchers again and said I was looking for work. They wanted to know where I wanted to go ...' CGO, MLW, Davenport ... Where EXACTLY do you want to go? Madison. They didn't have anything yet then, but a few hours later they called back with one going to Chicago. It is a front end loader so it will need to be weighed and it is a trash truck. But it's going the right way. Me, being me, I don't want to commit to my second leg until I am in the first truck. As of the end of day Friday, the Janesville to St Cloud is still there. I'll be calling on in Monday AM if we get out of town. Plan is to pick it up Sunday AM and be close to the drop Sunday night. If things go wrong, we just spend the day and night near Rochester and try again Monday. Both BB and I each have plans for tomorrow so we wouldn't be leaving on Saturday even if it was a longer trip. BB has plans to be in Nashville on Oct and we will try to get a trip that way if we can. If not, we now have a rental car lined up and I may or may not go with her. She does not like anything about flying but will if she has to. At this point it was much cheaper to rent a car for a week and two more hotels than to fly. And this way there will be a car in Nashville if they need one. IA did put out a few RV's today. We could have gotten as close as Neenah. About the same paid miles. But more miles to the RV pickup and more miles from the drop to leg two. It's been a few weeks since I've done an trash truck, I'll be OK. I had an appointment today but didn't hear back about follow up. I told them either within the next two weeks or not until mid October (when we are back from Nashville) Load board US - 106 IA -0- MN -0- WI - 4 2023 08 20 MN-IL 1 trash truck to Batavia IL ... spending the night at Naperville IL Was out and about yesterday so I stopped and picked up my paperwork last night. Paperwork for another 9 drivers, most had two legs this time. That is unusual. No alarm but both up shortly after 6 AM. Usual home breakfast and then ready to roll but 7:45. Non-stop so we are at the shipper by 9:15. IF anyone else was here this AM, they are gone. Gate is closed so I had to call security to come and open the gate and then to close it again. I could see the paperwork we have to leave at the office and someone from my long haul carrier had picked up since Friday. In our lock box there were another dozen set of keys. Not many of my brand of truck today so we didn't think it would take long. It was the 5th truck in the first row we looked at. No issues. CNG, left hand drive, front loader. Knew all that from the paperwork. First stop is at the Kwik Trip in Kasson to scale, they don't have CNG so it won't be quite full when I weigh it. Not sure if CNG adds weight or lessens it ... The truck is under by 2,000# + so I'm good to roll, at 60 mph. Second stop is at the Kwik Trip in Rochester for fuel. This pump is slow, it finally stops pumping but the pump keeps running. I have to go inside to get a receipt so I comment on it. As I am walking away from the register I notice the price is wrong. So I'm thinking I got a discount like I get on gas/diesel. Then I see that the receipt is for gas, car gas. So I have to get back in line again and get the correct receipt. At Rochester it was not 11 AM yet so we decide to stop in West Salem for lunch. It is also a optional fuel stop but we just get food. Kwik Trip. Shelf food, rib sandwich for me. We eat in the car because their only table was dirty. Our car is dirty too but it is our dirt. 65 mph is OK for BB but 60 mph in a 70 mph with a car is too slow for her. Some most of the time she leaves later than I do and stops when she catches up to me. So she did a few extra stops today. DeForest is my next fuel stop. Tap reader wouldn't work, chip reader wouldn't work. Large hose wouldn't fit. Ended up using the other side of the same pump. Only one pump here. In Rochester, I could count faster ... One thousand 1, one thousand 2 ... faster than the pump was pumping a thousandth of a gallon. (.001) Here in DeForest the tenths are going faster than I can count. So is that 1,000x faster? Lots of bumper to bumper traffic today. Sunday evening heading into the cities. Madison, Milwaukee, Chicago ... My next stop is the CNG in Naperville. Tolls on both I-39 and I-88. Not the computer route from the carrier but simple. This is the first time I have been to this brand since Loves bought the out. I get rewards points. All helps, not making any extra money on the fuel when they are CNG with either company. Once we are done fueling, we decide to stop at a Sleep Inn about two miles away. There is a hotel a mile from the drop but it is about $50 more. And a Best Western that is 10 miles out of route for about $25 more than here. Sleep Inn, Naperville. Cracker Barrel next door but BB is done. Doesn't want to stop anywhere to pick up food for the both of us so after we check in, we head back out for food. There are two deli's close by but they are both M-F so we end up at a Jimmy John's, because they are usually fast. And they were today too. 'My' trip out of Janesville is still on the load board as of tonight and nothing better is. IA did put trips out yesterday after noon but nothing we want or can do. There are two to Seattle but we don't have time for that. We may end up re-arranging our plans. We had wanted to go to the State Fair on Thursday but I think the heat index will still be over 100 so that isn't very inviting. And I still need to hear back and set up an appointment before we can commit to taking anything more than an overnight trip. 2023 08 21 MN-IL 1 trash truck to Batavia IL (delivered) ... spending the night at Mason City IA Up on time but not in a rush to get rolling. Down for breakfast, real bacon but 'water' eggs. ... Opps. It was after 8 AM when I looked at the clock again. I was going to call dispatch at 8 AM and had even messaged them about calling before 8 AM ... My truck is GONE ! ! ! That was why we took a trip to CGO, there had been a truck down here on the load board for a week, and now that we are here to get it, someone else beats us to it. Oh, well. On to something else. We get to the drop and the person in the office is on a conference call but signs all the paperwork. Then I get to go find someone to inspect it. I do. He has lots to say about how the people buying the trucks are looking at all the ways to save money on the purchase ... but how much more any repairs cost because of those savings. It actually took this guy longer to make copies than to inspect the truck. The copier had a computer screen but no manual. Once done, we send in my paperwork then look for more work. Local dispatch that sent me down here does not have any. Then I call on two more. One only pays about half what we would move it for. The other one I called the actual shipper on because it paid better. It was a day cab. Too rough of ride for me. Two rear axles but still to rough to ride for 500+ miles. No work, so we decide to keep moving. Head to IA, it is the end of their money year so they should be dumping daily. 1st stop is the Loves in Rochelle for cheap fuel. I end up using the last of three different gift cards we had. This place took them without issue. Some places have been erroring out when we try to use them. Too early for food when we pass a little deli in Rock Falls. But a half hour later BB is so hungry that she has to get her snacks out. Then we finally decide to eat our first meal at a buffet. 1st time in three plus years. I-80 Truck Stop. We just found out that the three casino's closest to us no longer have buffet's. They seem to be a thing of the past since Covid. The buffet was not huge but enough and good food. I had a couple of helpings of their pot roast, very good. Still no work. A few hours later I am getting tired tired and want to stop for something. BB starts looking and we see a Freddie's. BB is still stuffed but I get a cherry malt. I am very thirsty so it does not last long. Just north of Janesville we see a semi stopped and cars going past the shoulder. As we got closer we see a car impaled under the rear of the semi. To get that far under, there had to be a <> 50 mph difference in how fast the two were going. 4 PM ... NOW there are two trucks I want in Janesville WI ... again. Now. IA has been putting RV's out off and on all day but nothing that works for us. The closest was two RV's going to OH. We could make it. IF we pushed hard for three days and canceled going to the State Fair. Which we will likely do. Thursday is our first pick for the State Fair and it is supposed to be hot and humid. That doesn't work well for us any more so we will likely work that day. By 5 PM dispatch still has not put out any trips that work so we get a hotel in Mason City, less than an hour from the shipper. Neither of us was hungry, but we knew we better eat again before we went to sleep or we would wake up hungry in the middle of the night. There is a Culvers right across the street so we walked there. Both got chili, way too much food. Now I'll be waking up in the middle of the night for a different reason. Plan for tomorrow is to watch the load board. Dodge Center did have 10 trucks, all going to FL. Nothing local or we would have taken the sure thing. Left the house in too big of hurry yesterday AM, forgot my clip board. Not a legal issue, no paperwork I needed just hard to write sometimes without something hard to write on. Load board US - 97 IA - 11 MN - 1 WI 2 2023 08 22 MN-IL 1 trash truck to Batavia IL (delivered) ... spending the night at home Long night, slept but not well. Too much food after too much food. I would have been better with just a cookie for an evening meal. Today's breakfast was just yogurt for me and that was just fine. At some point in the AM I get a call from my clinic. Not the people I need to talk to but a side person that needs to know what is going on. Right now they know more than me so I will be talking to them when I do know more. By 11 AM we check out of the hotel, nothing new on the load board in any of the places we are watching. Just a couple of miles down the road and one dispatcher adds a trash truck that will work for us. We had said last night that we would take the first 'sure thing' that was put on the load board but BB mentions that yesterday RV's were put out before noon. At this point we are heading somewhere to eat. 10 minutes later they do start putting out RV's. We watch, we even pull into a Denny's to sit and watch the load board. By now it is 11:30 and there are a total of four cars in their lot. Nothing that works for us is put out so we head down the street to The Other Place that has closer to 20 cars in the lot and more people are pulling in behind us. Their food is good. BB and I split a reuben. But I think that is the last one for now. Something about them doesn't agree with me right now. BB and I are still trying to decide what to do when we pull out of the lot. I thought that we were going to call on the trash truck at 1 PM. We didn't. Instead we headed out to Forest City to turn in some paperwork and see what is going on. At some point they add more RV's to the load board but still not anything good. At some point, WI did add two more trucks that would work for us. And some time this AM we decided that the forecast is going to be cool enough that we MAY go to the State Fair on Thursday after all. That cuts a work day off of what time we have. We get to the lot and there are closer to 100 RV's already in our lot. And maybe 20-30 new ones on the load board in the last two days. So everything sitting here is not OK'ed to go yet. As we pull in, we see the shipper bring in another dozen sets of paperwork. No idea how long it takes them to put them on the load board. Before we leave the RV shipper, I call the trash truck dispatcher. The truck I want has to be tied to a truck going to Baltimore. It doesn't say that anywhere I can see. I just say no thanks and hang up. Guess it wouldn't have made any difference when I called. Then I call the local dispatcher than gave me my last Chicago trip, nope, they don't have anything either. So after a few minutes we decide to head home. Empty handed. What started out as a good Sunday has ended with that being the only work we are doing this week. One stop in the Owatonna rest area and I see someone who looks like they are signing to someone and then that person walks away. A couple of minutes later there are two cop cars there and then the person being signed to apologies to me. I really hadn't seen anything and told them so. Whoever they had been talking to, walks away so I walk over to the guy and say a couple of words. Turns out the person who I thought was signing was only using the basic hand sign. And at some point they had been beating on this person so they had to call the cops. A little issue that I am way to familiar with. (not the beating part) BB is looking at the weather and it is 40 degrees cooler up by the big lake ... but she doesn't have those clothes with ?? We talk about going up, including checking hotels and the time involved but in the end do not go. At 4 PM the RV dispatchers finally put something out that would work for us ... Duluth MN. BB can't decide if we still want to do it, so I get off at the next exit. Before we get parked I get a call from trash truck dispatcher ... now I can have the CGO truck. No thanks. We decide not to go back for the DUL RV. If we picked it up, we would have to run until 8 PM to get to a hotel. Then likely a 10 hour day tomorrow if we still plan on going to the State Fair on Thursday. Instead we will just do some paperwork tomorrow and maybe some planning. Right now we have the fair on Thursday, an appointment on Friday, family reunion on Saturday, trip planning day on Sunday, another fair day on Monday ... then we can work again unless I need to make an appointment ASAP. Still no call from them. I was expecting to know something yet last Friday or this past Monday. On the last part of our trip home the temp on the car gauge said 100 degrees +/-. So no real work plans right now. Load board US - 131 IA - 22 MN - 6 WI - 5 |
