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...My Life as 'Drive away' driver
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2024 04 02 MN 1 trash truck to Pontiac IL ... spending the night at Cedar Rapids IA Up without the alarm, no breakfast for me. Still too stuffed from yesterday noon. We decide to pass on the two TX trips, one is gone shortly after 8 AM so we can not reconsider. We sit and watch the load board from 7 AM until about 8:30. Then I get a call from the local dispatcher. They want to know if I will be available at the end of this week. 'No,' I say, 'I am trying to get out of town now.' Well they also have one for now, Pontiac IL. I tell him we will call him back. Our car needs to get in the shop so we need to get a rental car for this trip. BB can not ride with on this one, so it is a one way from here to ??? We pick Rockford IL but we can change it. It takes a longer to make sure everything will work that just deciding we want the trip. And we are not ready to go. We tell them we will be there in a couple of hours. I do take time to call on some OH orders. They pay really good I find out, but they need 48 hours notice to pick up ... Hmm ... we are not supposed to be able to call on any trips more than 24 hours before we pick them up ??? When we get there, a different dispatcher has another local trip for me. Because of all the rental car and other issues I make sure to clear it with BB before saying yes ... it will slow us down by a half hour but it is right on our way. After I picked up the first paperwork, then we go to pick up the rental car ... then to the shop to drop our car off ... then to home to pick up our luggage ... then back to the local office to pick up the local move. It has a check engine icon on and is going to the shop. I end up talking to all the dispatchers today. I do let the tanker dispatcher know that I will do the trips to Gary IN. And then I see the bus dispatcher and we talk a little. Now they are done with the Canadian trips and are working on Seattle buses. Actually Anchorage buses but we are only taking them to Seattle where they will be put on a ship. Without them telling me directly, I found out why they like to use me and BB on some of these trips. One of the dispatchers had to drive the drivers to the shipper recently. Not enough shuttle drivers. 2nd stop is the drop, Peterbilt in South St Paul. They knew nothing about it so it took a minute or two longer than I had planned. Somewhere between that drop and the next pickup, BB looks at the weather. STORM. We had only looked at the weather going south to TX. This trip was not planned. So BB is looking at all the cities and times and roads and wishes we had not taken this trip without looking at the weather. ... AND about an hour after we agreed to take this trip, our other carrier put out two pickups going to WY ... away from all this weather. And we'd both be driving, for pay. 2nd stop is the shipper in Dodge Center. We look at all the trucks and it is the last one in the last row. It is usually the row I start on, but my paperwork has the drop as a different name than what is on the side of the truck ... so I picked a different row. Truck checks good, but it has to be scaled. 3rd stop is the Kwik Trip in Kasson for fuel and scale. Scale weight is good. BB looks at all the weather sites again and besides the 5-8 inches of snow expected north of Madison, I-90 is closed because of a crash. 18 mile detour around the crash. So I call dispatch, they are on break so I talk to the head dispatcher. The other route will only add 20 extra miles and keep us moving. Forecast is that we will wake up to slushy snow this way also but we should skirt the worst of the storm. 4th stop is the Kwik Trip in New London just to keep in contact and plan. 5th and final stop is the Comfort Inn in Cedar Rapids. It is 6:30 and it doesn't look like we will gain anything by driving later. Lot is already full so I get to park on the street. I do check before leaving it there. For food we head to Pepper Jax. Today we split a sandwich. I realize now that the only thing I have drank all day was the last swallow of juice I hadn't finished with my pills last night. Opps. Not the healthiest. Load board US - 229 IA - 5/2 MN - 4 WI - 1 Nothing on the load board that we 'must do.' There is one in WI going back home. And local dispatch still wants me to do the trip they had called last week on. Shipper of the 2nd truck is running behind so it keeps getting pushed back. 2024 04 03 MN-IL 1 trash truck to Pontiac IL (delivered) 1 box truck to Springfield OH (Thursday) 1 lawn truck to Burnsville MN (Friday) ... spending the night at Janesville WI No snow on the ground here, a little snow on the sides of the cars. Breakfast was the usual, eggs, sausage and yogurt. There is briefly a trip out of TX to CA, it would have worked if we had taken the TX trips. We are rolling at 7:30. The worst traffic all day is here in Cedar Rapids. Weather shows we made the right choice. Still snowing and blowing worse in WI. I thought I was doing good on fuel, but by the time I get to the IA/IL border I am at 1/4 tank of fuel and I still have 150 miles to go. I could have fueled in Davenport but I didn't know it was going to drop that fast on the bottom half of the tank. 1st stop is the Loves in Atkinson. Didn't remember this one was here. Glad it was, I would have been pretty close to 'E' in another 40 miles where the Pilot is. While I am stopped I call the drop, they knew I was coming. This Loves looked more like a parking lot. Drivers pulling into the pumps just to run in and then leave again. Last trip I guessed too close on the fuel at 6 mpg so this time I used 5 mpg. By the time I pull off the freeway to do the last 40 miles on back roads, BB has caught up to me. She had stopped for gas in Davenport. We had looked at different routes before getting the paperwork, this time the paperwork made more sense. And I could remember the turns without writing them down. When I see the 'trash hill,' I know I am getting close. 3rd stop is the drop. I park by the first building ... BB pulls along side and says the rest of the trucks are by the next building so I go to get back in my truck. But someone is standing there. They will sign for the truck here. They sign with only seeing two sides. They do not look at anything in detail but sign off. I'm good. And we are gone. BB drives from here because of how deep the mud is here. But then we have to stop again because she has to look at the map to see where we are going, my telling her isn't good enough. 4th stop is in Pontiac at Jimmy Johns. Local dispatch has called, I call them back. They need a truck moved to KS. It would work, if I was home. And it is not a trash truck. Bus dispatcher called, I call him back. He only calls about once a year. He needs drivers but the only way I can get there is to deadhead 2,000 miles. We look at the load board as we eat. We finally decide we will try do one of the OH to MN trips that require 48 hour notice ... AND right now there is a truck in Janeville going to within 15 miles of the next shipper. And that would delay us the extra day. I call to make sure the Janesville truck is a box truck and not a chassis. It is. Then I call the OH dispatcher and get a truck. They have two but BB does not want one. I had thought the pay was good enough that she would try it but not this time. So now we have a plan for the rest of the week. Before we leave JJ, we have the paperwork. I call the MN drop to see when we can deliver. M-F :( I was hoping for a Saturday option. Now we will have the truck for two extra nights. Maybe the truck will fit in my garage. ?? IF we had gotten our food to-go, we could have picked up in Janesville today but really no reason to. We can pace ourselves to get to the 2nd shipper on Friday morning. Dispatch gave me the wrong number on the Janesville truck. I am to call ahead and they had no idea what I was talking about. But I've been there before and have put that number in my phone. Had to leave a message this time. 5th stop is the Loves in Monroe Center for the restroom. 6th stop is the Quality Inn in Janesville. Nothing special but it works, and it is cheap. After we check in, we drive to the Golden Corral buffet. There was food across the parking lot that would have been cheaper and closer. This buffet was nicer than the one near our house. This one was built 'their way,' the one near us is a converted Old Country Buffet building. Before we got food, I called the RV dispatchers because they were putting trips on the load board and we could not figure out what the were. Usually they are very strict on the no calling unless you can pick it up within 24 hours. Today they were trying to get us to commit to Monday. I had been going to call to see if we could commit on Friday instead of the usual Saturday. Today is only Wednesday. I don't like to commit that far in advance. I had early told this other dispatcher that I don't commit to over 24 hours so their 48 hour is a deal breaker. And now I've already called them back on that one. I also think that this may be the start of a big RV dump and we may get better trips if we wait ... :) There is still a NL trip out of IN. Newfoundland, it has been there a couple of days. Not sure there is any money in it but it would be a good reason to go there. Non-work. Someone messaged me last night. They found a letter I had written to their family 9 years ago about ancestry. Their great plus grandfather had been married to my great grandma's sister. And his family still owns the original farm next door to where both my grandparents grew up. I might be taking another history trip shortly. Load board US - 328 IA - 34/30 MN - 1 WI -0- Plan is to pick up the Janesville truck when they open, then drop the rental car and head to OH. Then stop just short of the drop for the night and then drop and pick first thing on Friday AM. 2024 04 04 WI-OH 1 box truck to Springfield OH 1 lawn truck to Burnsville MN (Friday) ... spending the night at Englewood OH Breakfast. OK, but minimal. We pull out after 7:30. We want to be to the shipper by <> 8 AM and they are just a couple of miles away. My truck is at one of the remote lots again. BB had mentioned changing the rental car drop to Janesville, but we are far enough south that we keep the Rockford drop location. 1st stop was the shipper in Janesville. 2nd stop was their remote lot in south Janesville 3rd stop was for fuel at the Kwik Trip near the remote lot. This time we knew what we were looking for and how to easier ID the trucks. But we were in for a surprise. This one was a flat bed, not a box truck. We are able to get all of our luggage in the cab and one side box. The first thing we do with any truck is do our inspection which includes opening the hood and checking fluids. Todays hood has rubber hooks to hold the hood down, somehow I managed to pinch the side of my hand. Ouch ... it hurt. I showed BB that it had broke the skin and then keep doing my inspection. At some point I noticed I was getting blood on things. Luckily not on the new truck. Eventually because it was still bleeding, I took a few napkins and 'duck taped' it to my hand :) And while doing the inspection, the driver, in this case me, is in the cab and the other person is checking the lights, blinkers, backup lights, etc. When I put the truck in gear ... HONK ... HONK ... HONK. The warning light just said the truck was no longer in park ??? It doesn't tell the that the passenger door is not completely closed. But we figured it out. At the Kwik Trip I put in 42 gallons. My paperwork showed the truck was going to have 1/4 tank of fuel at pickup but it really only had 1/8. I didn't realize it right away because the gauge is not set the usual way. 40 gallons would mean I need to get 10+ mpg. We will see. 4th stop is the Avis at the mall in Rockford. It looks like this mall has all anchor's filled again. I don't see BB, so I pull around to the front and park and make my phone calls. To the drop for this truck. To the shipper for the next truck. Finally BB shows up. She had walked out the front door, not seen me, and had been standing on the side of the building for a while ... It has been raining/snowing ever since we left home on Tuesday. Sometimes light, sometimes heavy but always something. And it still is today. So lots of slow traffic in Chicago. Not much chance of going over the speed limit in construction zones. When there are signs warning of cargo theft at the Oasis, we do not want to be messing with those kind of people. I doubt they are amateurs or fearful of anyone. So ... that was a long leg today between stops. And our next choice of stops would have been the Honey Backed Ham in IN, but one of those ramps was closed and it would be a long detour to get back on the freeway. 5th stop ... so the 5th stop was the Pilot/Wendy's in Hebron for food and our half hour break. After leaving Hebron, most of the next 100 miles to Indy was slow and go, stop and go. No idea what the reason was but it made for another long leg. Also the rest area we were going to stop at was closed. There was a new, much larger rest area before that. Looks like room for 100+ trucks. IN is the best or at least one of the best states for dedicated truck parking. 6th stop is Greenfield, east of INDY for a break. 7th and final stop is the Comfort Inn in Englewood, just before Dayton for the night. We then walk next door to the Waffle House for food. When I picked up the truck, I had guessed it would make 10 mpg. By the end of the day, my mpg was 8+. And I still have some extra fuel with about 40 miles to go. Not sure yet if I will add more fuel. At times it was showing I was getting well over 10 mpg but other times, no. Generally had a tail wind all day but it didn't always seem to make a difference. When we are not home, we see lots of trips that would work if we were there. Also, IA has put out 50+ RV's, ALL going to CO. And no one is taking them. Usually when IA dumps RV's the first 50 are gone within an hour or two. We have not decided when we will call nor do we have long plans on what to do after we might drop in CO. Load board US - 350 IA - 56/52 MN - 5 WI - 3 We have moved all our luggage into the hotel so we do not need to be moving it as we switch from truck to rental car to truck. Our hotel is right on route when we will be leaving town tomorrow. Plan is to leave at our usual 7:30 (even thou we are in the eastern time zone.) Be to the airport by 8 AM, be to the drop by 9 AM, do the next pickup at 10 AM and be back to the hotel before 11 AM. And then hopefully make it back to the north side of Chicago by Friday night. ... the trip continues HERE
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