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...My Life as 'Drive away' driver
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.. the trip continues from HERE 2024 03 09 IA-UT 1 box truck to St Paul MN (Monday) 1 trash truck to Ortonville MN (??) ... spending the night at home Up early, breakfast early. Scrape the frost off the windows before we head out. BB re-set the mileage setting and she still got <> 25 mpg. We keep thinking something is wrong with how we are driving. No issues with the drop, then a quick stop at Wal-mart so we have something to eat that is not expires. But that evening, everything I eat is past it's prime so I think maybe I will use it as a weight loss program. No issues for me, but someone not in our house got food poising from something. Maybe my resistance has been built up. At home we have time to go through the mail, fill out retirement forms, do work paperwork and laundry. And we are ready to go again. Still have a couple of issues to take care of but we'll be close to home for the next weeks. Load board US - 198 IA - 3/2 MN - 1 WI - 2 2024 03 09 IA-UT 1 box truck to St Paul MN (Monday) 1 trash truck to Ortonville MN (??) ... spending the night at home Up early, breakfast early. Scrape the frost off the windows before we head out. BB re-set the mileage setting and she still got <> 25 mpg. We keep thinking something is wrong with how we are driving. No issues with the drop, then a quick stop at Wal-mart so we have something to eat that is not expires. But that evening, everything I eat is past it's prime so I think maybe I will use it as a weight loss program. No issues for me, but someone not in our house got food poising from something. Maybe my resistance has been built up. At home we have time to go through the mail, fill out retirement forms, do work paperwork and laundry. And we are ready to go again. Still have a couple of issues to take care of but we'll be close to home for the next weeks. Load board US - 198 IA - 3/2 MN - 1 WI - 2 2024 03 11 MN-MN 1 box truck to St Paul MN (delivered/refused) 1 trash truck to Ortonville MN ... spending the night at Owatonna MN Left home <> 7:30. 1st stop is two hours down the road at a rest area near Lewiston. 2nd stop is in La Cross at the dealer where I pick up. It takes them three tries again to find what I am looking for. Then everyone knows, not sure why it doesn't come up in their usual searches. We check the truck out, it has extra parts in the back I tell the office about. Then I get back to the truck to move the parts so they can look at them and realize they are just the lights that were used when it was moved as a chassis. So I kept them with the truck. Eagles. Lots of eagles. South side of freeway, between exits 2 and 3. I was just able to glance over and counted three dozen just in the main trees. Also saw them other places within a mile or so of there. In La Crosse, the former Quality Inn is now the AmericInn and the Quality Inn is across the street. ... on the topic of hotels, we had not been getting our rewards points correctly. So I was in email contact with them and someone was supposed to call. And I posted about it on FB. Finally today, BB re-read the fine print. 5th paragraph, 2nd half ... 'limit four per customer.' No one else had seen that, customer service never said anything about it. ??? At pickup, I had over a half a tank of fuel. I'm guessing the person who broke down thought they had enough to get to the drop. I thought they had way more than enough. BUT, the gauge drops fast. 3rd stop is the Pilot in Inver Grove for fuel. I have no idea what size tank or what mpg I am getting. I put in 10 gallons and the gauge hasn't moved so I put in two more with plans on adding more before I drop. ... but it keeps going up and up. It is still over a half a tank at the drop. I likely put in $25 more than I needed to. Oh well, still made plenty on this trip. This truck is going to an area that I used to hear of daily. It is an industrial area of the city where we used to pick up a lot of freight when I worked at as a dispatcher/manager for a trucking company. Lots of street names I used to hear of but had never seen. So I am looking at all the interesting things and miss my cross street. There were two street signs and I only read the first one. But this street dead ended so it was a very short opps. When I get to the drop a block later, I see I have a call and a text message from the 3rd party of this truck. The fun begans. 4th stop, the drop in St Paul. There are address numbers on some of the doors but none that match my BL and no name that matches my BL. The text I got asked that I send a picture of my truck ... OK. I do and then call. Then they ask me to send more pictures. With this customer, we are NEVER to call the drop. The 3rd party does it all. They even called the drop to tell them I was sitting in the parking lot ... they were un-loading a truck so it would be 10-15 minutes. (when that truck left, it dragged the tire chalks with them until they drove over them and broke them) A little wait, and then a guy comes out to the truck with the license plate ... he's ready for it ... BUT ... "I'll have to call, but I'm likely going to refuse this truck" Seems it has the wrong box, and the wrong name on it. After a 15 minute or so call on his part, he refuses it. I call my 3rd party contact back and let them know. They are not surprised. They want to know if I can take it back to WI to the shipper. Not today. I have another truck lined up this time. I would like to know what happened. I looked at some paperwork in the truck and this truck was picked up four weeks ago from the shipper. So about that long at the shop. How/why did my contact realize an hour before my drop that something was wrong and she wanted pictures? My dispatch doesn't care. I was at the right address, not his problem. I'm to do what ever the 3rd party contact says. They make a call and get the drop to accept the keys, without signing for it. And I can leave the truck where it sits. Someone should be happy, they get to start out with a 1/2 tank of fuel. Maybe me? From there it is about a half hour to the office where I pick up my next paperwork. As I am pulling out of the lot, that dispatcher calls and said the paperwork is ready and they will be gone for the day ... I am now running late. It is after 2 PM and I haven't eaten since breakfast. We stop at an Arby's in St Paul. As we walk in, the cook and a customer are yelling at eat other ??? By the heat of the conversation, I'm guessing the yelling has been going on for a while. Not sure why no one told the cook to stay out of it. (maybe they knew eat other?) Our food was OK. Quick stop at the office and we are heading south on US-52 for the 2nd time today. We did have a conversation about just heading home and starting over tomorrow. Then we did the math and realized the sun now doesn't set until 7 PM ... not 4 PM. We got time ... At the shipper, everyone is gone. Not a problem unless we have issues. Today we do not. The lot is full but only three sets of keys in our lock box. I see my other company has lost their 2nd box now too. For a while my two companies had two lock boxes and we seemed to get all but a few stray trucks. Now we are back to six major carriers. Found the truck, not issues except that every time BB would get near the truck an alarm would go off. This is a front end loader so for this company I need to go to Kasson, in the wrong direction, the scale the truck. Kasson Kwik Trip. Truck scales legal. I'm good. ... BB is not. She is in pain, can hardly walk or stand up strait. Sitting is a little better. From here we decide to stop at the Quality Inn in Owatonna. Closest cheapest hotel. And we know they have parking. 55 mph. Trip is going to take a little longer. Also, before we had picked up the truck we had looked at the GPS route to the drop. Lots of lefts and rights on small roads. I had not looked to see how "I" would do it. This time I will do it like the shipper says. I-35, I-494 and US 12 right to the shipper. I don't need to write any of that down. I've been on all those except the last few miles of 12 and when I see the Welcome to South Dakota sign I make a U-turn and come back a half mile. BB lays down as soon as we are in the hotel. I run to Culver's to get soup. Load board US - 149 IA - 1/0 MN - 1 WI - 1 2024 03 12 MN-MN 1 trash truck to Ortonville MN (delivered) ... spending the night at home BB is better this AM, she has her usual for breakfast. My drop is not a town I want to stay in, it has no way (public transportation) in our out but I do know people there that could help if really needed. And last night it looked like that could be a maybe. BB is going to head out later, because she can drive faster. But she didn't re-do the math after we found out I could only go 55 instead of 65 so she catches up to me early. Traffic isn't bad for a rush hour, everyone is going faster than I. Once on US-12, there are mile posts so I know how far I have to go. Lots of time to look around. I've been through these towns but some of them I do not recognize, they've changed too much. Almost exactly halfway there is a rest area. I stop to check my messages and to stand up. This is not a good ride. I had called on another trip out of Sioux Falls, but that would mean 1,000 miles in a trash truck over two days. I will have to call again to see what exactly what it is. There are a couple that are not quite as bad. I do have a message when I stop. The office needs a signed copy of my last trip. The refused one. So I called and told them it says 'refused,' companies don't like signing for things they refuse. 15 minutes later, they and I have talked to enough people that I will get paid. And them BB calls. She saw a trash truck out of the corner of her eye and wondered if I was stopped at the rest area. I was. So now she is right behind me ... for now. This is farming country. Some of these farm equipment dealers have a dozen tractors or implements of one kind where the ones near me have 1 of each kind. And one dealer looks like he's a 'consignment dealer' for new equipment. Any off brand that wants can park equipment and he'll sell it. He does not have a sign that says all the brands he sells, other than the two types of tractors. I get another call from BB. We do not call each other when we are driving so something is up. My first thought is she has gotten really ill. Nope. "Where are you? Are you still on US-12?" I think so, last sign I saw said 41 miles to the town I am heading to. She is not. I lost her at a stop light in the last town and then she missed the second turn. But she knows how to use GPS. ... and as soon as I am moving again, I do see a US-12 sign. I had thought I would have plenty of fuel at 55 mph but now it is dropping. I think I need to leave 1/8th of a tank but want to make sure. And there is a Casey's a block before my drop so I pull in and look at my paperwork. I need to leave a 1/4 so I will need to add some. I add 10 gallons and it comes up to a 1/2 a tank. Oh well, with this shipper I get paid back for all fuel. Across the street I am at the drop. One guy trying to jump start a company pickup. He knows nothing, someone will be along shortly who knows more than he. So I catch the next guy who comes to the lot. He calls his boss (the first guy didn't offer to do even that) At first he thinks he will be refusing it, it belongs in another town a couple hours away. But he needs to wait for a call back. The call comes in, this guy will look it over and sign. By now the Sioux Falls truck is gone so that is not an option. The two trucks to ND are gone from MN so that's not an option either. Nothing. We are heading home. I had thought we'd have about 3 hours to kill on the way home but little things take time. We grab a Subway from Ortonville a few blocks from the drop. It was that or DQ or Casey's. Nothing looked good at Casey's, we'd stopped to use the restroom. And DQ was closed for the winter. So Subway. Even the Holiday gas station had closed. And it looked like the feed mill was about to be taken down. Not much left. Didn't think about it or we would have driven the last half mile or few blocks to SD. Oh ... BB had gotten to the drop before they were done with my paperwork, so no time lost there. She just got to see a few sights I did not. We will be taking US-12 all the way back to the cities. Half way we stop at the rest area. It is also a county park. Meeker County. The Darwin Dassel County Park. It is almost 70 degrees today and we have time so we take a hike. With or without that stop we were going to hit rush hour. So we take a whole lot of back roads and find food. Sweet Taste of Italy. Good food. Best we have found so far in MN. Still no work, so we may be off tomorrow ... Load board US - 141 IA - 1/0 MN - 1 WI - 2
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