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...My Life as 'Drive away' driver
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.. the trip continues from HERE 2023 12 12 SC-NV 1 tank truck to Sparks NV (delivered) 1 bus to Frisco CO (Wednesday) ... spending the night at Rocklin CA BB is up by 4 AM local, that is 5 AM our time. Breakfast is not until 6:30 local, such as it is. I have yogurt. We spent last night at the Quality Inn in Wendover UT. Last night after we shut down, I get a text message that the drop will likely want me to drop somewhere else. So this AM I call dispatch to see what their policy is on drop changes. We can't, only the customer can and often the customer is not the same as the drop. In this case I found out there was someone on site all day. So no change needed. This AM we are pulling out at 7 AM local, just a few minutes before first light. This morning I am confused. I/we walk around every truck almost every time we stop. This AM when I walked around I see that my license plate is bent way out, which I could have caught on something knee high (?) but the tops of the plate are also bent out and that part is/was tight against the frame. Shortly after we get going this AM, we catch up to two highway trucks dumping sand. One in each lane and traveling close enough together that only a couple of cars tried to get between them. I think I was first in line behind them for most of a half hour before the one truck backed off leaving enough room for trucks to get between them ... so I did. They were running about 35 mph so that did slow us down a little on the first leg. And it got the truck good and dirty. Most of the day I was using my wiper and washer every so often because of the road spray. 1st stop was Elko at the Sinclair. It wasn't time to eat yet, but we ordered our Port o Subs and put them in the side box on the truck to keep them cool. So far it was still in the 40's. While here I get a call from one of the people I left a message with yesterday. He wants me to drop somewhere else, he has it all planned out. Then I tell him there is someone on site ... 'oh ... oh yeah. I forgot we hired him.' 2nd stop was at the Loves in Winnemucca. Their Carl's Jr has a larger place to eat our Port o Subs sandwiches. :) 3rd stop was in Fernley for the rest room. That way we don't need to be looking for one as soon as we drop. Flying J has the easiest off and on of the truckstop's here. 4th stop is the rental car place. I drop BB off at the side of the road and then continue down the street until I find a place big enough to park street side. Luckily it only took a couple of minutes for BB at the rental place. When I texted her where I had stopped, she texted back that she was on her way. 5th stop was the drop. I had to call the drop contact as this place has lots of people using the lot. Left a message and then he called back a few times and I didn't here it. And it came through as 'spam.' We did make connection and I had to move to the other side of the building to where they wanted the truck parked. A signature, a couple of words and we are on our way. As soon as we are off their property, I call the bus dispatcher. Things are better, but he has his main drivers that have been sitting he has to get going first. Call him back tomorrow. ... two blocks down the road ... dispatcher calls back. We are going to Frisco CO tomorrow AM as soon as we can get there. Things change. BB and I had talked about all kind of things to do for both work and fun if there wasn't any buses. Now all that was just conversation. BB makes a hotel reservation for a hotel a 100+ miles down the road almost right away. THEN we start talking and realize I am going to be really, really close to running out of hours. We could have used the two hours I will have to log traveling tomorrow AM ... used it to get the bus delivered. When we pull into the hotel parking lot, we notice the parking spot marked for their rewards customers ... has a pile of glass laying in it. It was about 4 years ago last week that we were broken into out here and lost my backpack with all my work stuff plus computer etc. So tonight we brought all those things in including extra meds. Most of what we left in our car was dirty laundry. And we parked in a less likely place for someone to bother. Comfort Inn in Rocklin is the hotel. Then we drive to Sourdough & Co for food to go. Second good sandwich today. Loadboard US - 105 IA - 3/1 MN - 1 WI - 6 Tomorrow we have about two hours to the bus, then hopefully only a half hour until we are rolling with the bus but that means it will be dark before we drive 500 miles with the bus. Barstow is our likely stop for the night. After that it is another two hours to Las Vegas. We should deliver the bus on Friday about noon. Not likely there will be anything close enough to pick up yet Friday and we can be home before Monday so that is likely what we will do. Head home. It's been three weeks. 2023 12 13 CA-CO 1 bus to Frisco CO (cancled) 1 bus to Loveland CO ... spending the night at Santa Nella CA ... ring, ring, ring. Last night I had shut off the lights but not gotten into bed yet. Last time we were out west and someone called us late, it was the bus dispatcher who WOULD have told me I had a bus in the AM if I had picked up the phone. So last night I pick up the phone when I see it is him. This time I do NOT have a bus, it has been canceled. So we can sleep in. And not have to worry about tire chains or my driving hours. He should have a different bus for me in the afternoon. We spent last night at the Comfort Inn in Rocklin. We hang around the hotel until close to checkout. We do not go down for breakfast. Instead we walk next door and spend $$ for a really good breakfast at Morning Toast. We stop on one cemetery on the way to the shipper. Not the one I was expecting but one that there were graves still to take pictures at. We do drive past the shipper, it is just off the road we take to our walk. We try to guess where we might get sent this time. We do see the buses with part of the name taped over but we can't read it from the street. Lots of buses in both parking lots. Then we headed to our walk place in Livermore. WE feel more safe there, leaving our car sitting as it is in a pay lot. We walk our usual <> hour. And then we call dispatch. He has one ... going to CO. Not the same one as yesterday. We talk about the route as it is CNG, and the short route would require chains. So they will pay us to go the longer route. Good for us. As we will have 4+ days to go a little over a two days drive on the short route. Paperwork won't be ready for a couple of hours ... We sit at the park for a while and then decide to go and eat. Mr Pickle's. And then go to the lot. When it is close to paperwork time, I start my inspection. I have to move a bus to get to mine. A Disney bus. There are a few of them but I didn't get one. Once the paperwork is there, BB heads out to drop the car. They drop off a lot of paperwork, but no other drivers are there waiting to head out. One bus already has paperwork in it so someone who got their bus last night still hasn't headed out. I follow BB a few minutes later. Swing in and pick up BB and then hit the road ... at 55 mph. That is an hour - hour and a half extra driving each day to get the same number of miles. A few miles down the road, BB realizes that there is no heat in the rear of the bus. Not wanting to get too far away from the shipper, we pull off at a hotel with enough parking to park a bus. I never did find the light switch for the drivers area and the flashlight on my phone no longer works and it is long past dark. While looking for the light switch, I find something else :) :) The heater switch. Kind of like the thermostat on your wall doesn't work if the main switch on the furnace is turned off. Glad I didn't call that one in and / or return to the shipper. And we did not want to stay here in town today as these hotels are 3x as much as where we do stay. Final stop is the Quality Inn in Santa Nella. Load board US - 100 IA - 2/1 MN -0- WI - 5 2023 12 14 CA-CO 1 bus to Loveland CO ... spending the night at Needles CA Spent last night at Santa Nella CA. No alarm, because no one set one. We had just crashed. We planned on leaving by the time they are supposed to start breakfast, so I had two of the oranges we had been carrying around for a while. BB had something else from our collection. We did look at breakfast after we turned in our keys. BB grabbed an egg patty and a sausage patty ... almost with her fingers before she caught herself. She ate it as we walked back to the bus. RV dispatch calls me before we get on the road, they think I am delivering in Loveland today ... no, Monday I will deliver. They have an RV in Loveland going to SLC that has to be delivered by/on Tuesday or it will sit until after Jan 1. I didn't say NO, and now I see that the trip is still out there. BB and I talk about it later. We would break even on the trip. Two hotels, an extra rental car day. And we would not get home until Friday ... of Christmas weekend after being gone for four weeks straight. The transporter that was parked right ahead of me is still there when we pull out. 1st stop is an hour and a half down the road at the Avenal rest area. Driving at 55 mph so we are sometimes splitting legs that we have done in just one leg. 2nd stop is in Buttonwillow for CNG fuel. No one there when I pull in, ten minutes later when I leave there are two other trucks fueling and two in line. Because of the 'drain' on the pressure from fueling three units at one time, I am only able to get 3,000# today. It's not like pumping gas, when the CNG shuts off, it is done. To squeeze anymore in, you need to re-start the pump and will likely only get in another 1/10th or two of a gallon. Last time we were here, I had problems getting their connection to work. Last time someone else at the station even tried to help me. This time I had issues again, but this bus has two different places to connect. The 2nd location worked fine. No receipt so I had to take pictures of the price, gallons and total. There was a homeless gal around the station. Homeless as in walking, with a dog, carrying bags and pillow. But better kept than some of the staff we see behind the counters. ??? About 20 something. Not acting strange, just roaming free. 3rd stop was the Pilot in Tehachapi for food. PJ's, but they did not have veggies so BB decided on Wendy's instead. Bus does OK on the hills, I'm able to pass the trucks that had been passing me if I don't loose power by someone slowing me down. 4th stop, Barstow, for fuel. A bus is already there. Of course we had to talk to them. The told me what kind of bus it was, I said I had never head of them. They only other bus I had heard of was El Dorado. Same thing, they just used different names sometimes. He was also CNG and was heading to Dallas. He only runs 400 miles a day, we are pushing it to run 500 on these short days. Leaving Barstow we meet a bus ... one of ours, heading west ??? We did see a few other transporters today, but no other buses passing me. One of the highway signs said our rest area was closed so we had one less stop today. It did end up being open, but by then BB wasn't wanting to stop anymore. 5th stop was for food a the Wagon Wheel in Needles. Real food, small cafe. It was either this or Jack in the Box or McD's. Good food. Then to the next exit to the Quality Inn. Not watching as well as I should have. Not sure how close I got to a semi on my blind side as I was turning. Enough to spook me, not sure how close it was though. My backup camera that was working is now just showing red when I back up. After we check in, we see that there is another bus in the lot. I go talk to them ... they are heading to Orlando with this one :( Along with six other drivers. This person hasn't worked in almost four weeks so they were needing a good trip. We may have talked before, she thought so and BB thought so when I mentioned the name. Load board US - 109 IA - 1/0 MN -0- WI - 6 Lots of stops tomorrow. We will likely only get 400 miles again tomorrow. Fuel pumps are not spaced right, governed at 55 mph, about 10 hours of daylight. Three trips heading out of Denver today right back to CA :) Much warmer in CA right now that MN. 2023 12 15 CA-CO 1 bus to Loveland CO ... spending the night at Gallup NM Way, way too much food at the Wagon Wheel last night ... and we did not have desert. Spent last night at the Quality Inn in Needles CA. BB is still getting up around 4 AM local, I try to stay in bed until <> 5 AM. Because we don't want to leave anything of value in the bus overnight, we make two trips every evening and every morning to get our luggage to and from the bus. This AM we take the first load down at 6 AM local and then look at breakfast. We did each take one yogurt to eat on our walk back to the room for the rest of our luggage. The driver I talked to last night was loading up their stuff by the time we pulled out. First light was supposed to be < 6:15 but it was already lighting up at 6 AM. In the parking lot it looked like the same semi that was there last night. Last night I parked on his drivers side. Today he was half crossways in front of me, with me on his passenger side. And his car blocking me in. But the car doors were open so I assumed he was not too far away. By the time we were ready to leave, the car was gone. The AZ scale is closed ... so that saves a few minutes waiting in line. 1st stop is the Petro east of Kingman. We park with the cars and are just there for the restroom. As we are pulling out, the gal with the bus from the hotel is pulling in to fuel. In the parking lot here, there was a pickup with two flat tires ... one dog in the box and three in the cab and a hand written sign on the side of the truck saying 'do not touch the dogs.' Sometime before the next stop, BB comes up to tell me that the RV in Loveland is gone :) :) ... We did not want it, but we were right there ... Now we will just head gone unless there is something right in route ... (Or we get told that family gatherings are canceled because everyone is sick ...) 2nd stop ... Loves in Williams. First I pull through the car area but the CNG pump has cars on both sides. So I go to the back with the trucks. This location only has CNG on one side of each pump, but the guy next to me is getting diesel so I use that pump. I hook it up and WHOOIS. The pump is pumping. But being the honest guy I am, I walk into the station and let them know they have a problem. Today there was someone right there ready to take charge (if not, I might have gotten a whole tank of free fuel) As soon as we get back to the pump, the staff hits the kill switch. But by then I have gotten about 1,000# of free fuel. I had no other way of shutting it off, I had never turned it on and I can't disconnect my hose when it has 3,600# of pressure on it. Me or the hose might have gone right through the trailer at the next fuel island. They had no way of billing me so it is free ... for the bus company who is paying for the fuel on this trip. Once we were done with that, I had to back into the same fuel island so I could fuel from the other side of the island. All this takes time. We hadn't planned on eating yet, but now BB was hungry. Nothing good on the warmers today so Carl's Jr it is. I get their chicken nuggets. We end up being there an hour instead of 30 minutes. There goes the time we had gained by leaving instead of eating breakfast this AM. West of Flagstaff a ways there is a carcass, I had noticed it last week and realized it was not a deer, or a cow ... Today I couldn't see the head, but the hair looked more like a bear. 3rd stop is Winslow at the Pilot. My credit cards won't work here so I have to use my company card and pay a user fee. I wouldn't have needed to stop here, I still have over a half a tank of fuel and there are three options to fuel in ABQ. But I'm stopping at most of them this trip with the smaller/fewer tanks. We have to exit for the scale but they are waving most drivers past. I stop and they ask if I have a permit ... by then I am showing them my notepad ... I'm good to go. No inspection today. I had <> thought printing both permits but knowing I didn't have to do it meant I didn't think too hard about it last night. Final stop is the Comfort Inn in east Gallup. Food is next door at Dickey's BBQ. Called dispatch so I know where to final fuel, this time he wants me coming in on a half a tank. Good to know. Still one truck in CO going back to CO. Load board US - 101 IA -0- MN - 8 WI - 7 ... the trip continues HERE |
