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...My Life as 'Drive away' driver
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.. the trip continues from HERE 2024 04 11 IA-CA 2 RV's, 1 to Davis CA, 1 to Freemont CA ... spending the night at Rocklin CA No alarm. Breakfast is mostly taco's from last nights food truck. I did also go down to the office and get one yogurt and one banana. Breakfast doesn't open until 6:30 but they were setting up and got me what I wanted. By 6:30 we are ready to roll. Permit is good starting at 5:30 across the time zone/state line. When I pull out of the hotel, I had an excess range of 70 miles. By the time I was 50 miles down the road, that excess range was 20 miles when I got to the gas station. Too close for an area that only has stations every 50 miles. When we are done fueling, it is late enough in the morning that I can call dispatch to let them know about the dash light. I'm told to keep going, but not deliver it with the light on. First stop was at Loves in Wells. It was BB's turn to pay at the Loves so I wasn't in on this but they didn't want to deal with our way of paying. Go to the back and use the card reader ... BB heard the same when she went back in to pay after fueling. 2nd stop was at Battle Mountain for fuel for BB. This time we fueled at Golden Gate instead of Maverick, fuel was $.20 cheaper for her. I made a couple of phone calls while I waited. One was to find out if the closest MB dealer to the drop worked on this size units. After they confirmed that it was an MB and not a Dodge, they said they could work on it and set up a time for me to drop it off. All I wanted to know is IF, if they could work on it not set up an appointment that I don't have approved for yet. 3rd stop was the Maverick in Winnemucca for fuel for me. And shelf food for both of us. Getting the food rung up took a while, there was a sign that said 2 for $5 but the machine would not ring them up that way. Plenty of fuel range. We must have had a brief tailwind for a while. I was up over 20 mpg for a while. When I start the RV, the dash light was off. :) Now I get to deliver. Lots of dirt devils in the 30 miles before Fernley. Sometimes just a couple in the distance. Sometimes so many it looks like a car has gone down a dirt road, but it's just as string of dirt devils. 4th stop is the Flying J in Fernley, just for the rest room. Pretty empty place today. Once we cross the NV/CA line it is a 'stress ride.' The road has ruts from all the tire chains, so I keep the speed on the slower side. Some of the mountain side turns should be taken at less than 55 mph. Going up the mileage would be better at 55 mph, on the way down, the hills and the ruts are the same but traffic is usually going 65+ mph. Hang on with both hands. 5th stop is the Gold Run rest area. All that up and down has the ears plugged. It takes quite a few yawns to be able to hear properly. Barely back on the road and the dash light comes back on. Glad I did not cancel the appointment. Today it came on 240 miles after fueling, yesterday it was 270 miles after fueling. 6th and final stop is the Comfort Inn for the night. It is 89 degrees so BB doe not want to do any long walks for food. So we go to the closest fast food, across the parking lot, Arby's to go. Once we check into the hotel, I make a call about my farm work, they had left a message earlier today. Sounds like it will be down to 2-3 days this year. A few years ago it was 2-3 weeks. We have almost three weeks until the end of the month, we should be home before that. Fuel mileage today was 16.8 for the first 50+ miles. Interesting that I gained .6 mpg but lost 50 miles range. After the first fill today is when I averaged 19.1 mpg, this is where I was hitting over 20 mpg for a while. From the second fuel to the hotel the mileage dropped back to 16.8 mpg. As of now, I have 30 miles extra range. More than likely I will add fuel when BB fuels before her drop. Load board US - 230 IA - 29/26 MN - 6 WI - 3 Tomorrow we drop BB's RV, then another hour to the rental car and then my drop or the shop. All that should be before noon. No call from the bus dispatcher today so we will not know about a bus until after 3 PM tomorrow. 2024 04 12 CA-TX 2 RV's, 1 to Davis CA, 1 to Freemont CA (delivered) 1 bus to Fort Worth TX ... spending the night at Santa Nella CA Long day Load board US - 170 IA - 4/1 MN - 1 WI - 4 2024 04 13 CA-TX 1 bus to Fort Worth TX ... spending the night at Needles CA We coast, we are up before the alarm and before the sun. We each eat the second half of our quesadilla's for breakfast. Still a lot of food when split in two. Some bites were hotter than I liked but BB loved it. Sometime this AM, I have problems starting my bus. Not sure if was this time or the rest area. But I got it started and we are ready to roll. We were not quite on time, running about 15 minutes late this AM so we are pulling out at 7 AM local. 1st stop is an hour down the road at the Avenal rest area. 2nd stop is another hour down the road for CNG fuel at Buttonwillow. These pumps share a parking lot with the Sinclair service station. Today the name on the CNG pumps is Chevron. I think it was been two different names the last two times before that. Pumps still work. Today there was one other driver filling so I did get a good fill, other times all pumps have been in use and the compressor can't keep up and shuts the pumps off. This driver was with Frito Lay. They and Pepsi are the two big companies buying the electric trucks. This guy says the drivers love them. He has ridden in one, the 2nd seat is offset behind the driver who sits in the center of the truck. He also said that there is a new CNG station just a few miles from here if this one is ever down. Newer and better. BB had the map up to see what time we would be eating, and it wanted to re-route us. CA-58 is now done from I-5 to I-15, four lanes all the way. This will save us time, both routes we have been taking, take us through the farm fields, which are interesting but slow. And then we get to the city stop lights which are even slower. Something new today. This bus does not do great on the hills, down to 45 mph but it is able to get back up to 45 mph when I got behind even slower trucks. Sometimes we have buses/trucks that can't increase their speed on an incline. Snow? BB was worried last night that we would not be able to stay ahead of the snow in the pass today. Sunny when we went through. It did rain and snow much later in the afternoon. 3rd stop is at Boron at the Loves for food. Carl's Jr. BB ordered a chicken sandwich, I ordered chicken tenders but was told there was none. Then I changed to a burger before another staff came over and said there was tenders, it would just be a few minutes. I stayed with the burger. When we got our food, we had two burgers, exactly the same. BB almost got up a couple of times to complain, but that is the way the person rang it up and we hadn't looked at it before paying, or after we had the receipt. When we go to leave, the bus won't start again. This time it was 15 minutes of turning the battery on and off and even trying to start if from the rear. Finally it started and off we went. Before we got on the freeway, I noticed the oil pressure gauge was not working so I make a u-turn and head back to Loves. :( the person answering the emergency weekend phone for buses knows me by name when I call. ... while I am talking to him, another one of our drivers is calling him from the next town, they are broke down also. The gauge is not an issue. There would be warning lights and engine shut down lights if there were no oil pressure. As long as we are talking, I ask about two other things. One turns out to be that this city bus now has some of the school bus features. The break-down tech is fine with me shutting down and wait for service on Monday or keeping going. I decide to drive to the next town for more fuel and if the bus has issues again there, we shut down. If no issues there, we keep going. 4th stop is the city CNG station for fuel. It is not on my list to stop at but I both, wanted to give the bus a chance to break down, and with the wind, I wanted more fuel. I'm set for 500 miles between stops. Which I can do, without wind. But what if the next pump is down. We've had issues there in the past. No issue with the bus restarting. And we got a good fill. 36,000#+ and I finally stopped the pump. From there it is 140 miles to Needles. It is less than the 500 miles we shot for, but the hotels are half the price and we only run 2-1/2 days before I get more driving hours so we need to be off the road early some day. 5th stop is at the Wagon Wheel in Needles. Great food. We each could only eat half of our food. But glad it was more than enough as we spent $50 on breakfast for two people. Breakfast at the hotel is free, but this location does not have much and we may be leaving before they open. Between the diner and the freeway, there is a panhandler sitting on a lawn chair with a sign. But this guy looks like he has been doing office work during the day. Too clean cut and well kept. Final stop is the Quality Inn/Rodeway Inn in Needles. Never have asked what the difference is between the two wings of the building. Same desk serves both guests. After we are checked in, we go for a half hour walk around the parking lot. It is still warm and sunny when we start but mostly shade on our last trip around the building. BB is still not happy about having left the shipper on Friday. We have talked about not leaving until the following morning but because we could leave so early we both thought it was a good idea. At the time. Load board US - 172 IA - 4/1 MN - 3 WI - 4 Because of my hours, we will likely make it to Grants on Sunday night and Amarillo on Monday night. That will leave about six hours driving before delivery on Tuesday. ... the trip continues HERE |
