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...My Life as 'Drive away' driver
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2024 08 19 IA-NM 2 RV's to Albuquerque NM (Tuesday) spending the night at home Today, the weekend load board numbers are from Monday AM before dispatch opens. It looks like someone has added 40-50 trips over the weekend. But there is still nothing in IA, MN or WI for us. In the AM they put out a total of three, two of them to FL but not at should be run together. Then nothing all day until just after 3:30. BB comes down the hall (without her phone) and tells me they have started putting trips on the load board. So I start hitting refresh, there are two for AZ so I decide to call as I am asking her if we should. But I had left my phone a few feet way and BB's was in another room. So by the time I got through, I got put on hold. And by the time a dispatcher picked up, the two AZ were gone. But by now there were also two to NM, so we took those instead. If we left right then, we would have gotten to the shipper between 6-7 and only got a few miles down the road before shutting down. And we still would not have been able to deliver until Thursday. So we will leave tomorrow at our usual leave time. That should get us to the shipper by 10 AM, leaving the shipper by 11 AM and shut down either before or after Kansas City tomorrow night. That would put us in Dalhart TX the 2nd night with delivery about noon on Saturday. We'll see how that works. Nothing on the load board that works coming back. Half the load board is chassis out of TX which I won't do. Other than TX, the only two trips that are not 500-1,000 miles out of route are a truck from MO to KS and one from IA to MN. 10:14 - 3 10:15 - 2 FL 10:17 - 1 10:27 - 0 3:35 - 8 3:43 - 0 Load board - weekend US - 205 IA - 0 MN - 0 WI - 0 Load board - Monday US - 190 IA - 1/0 MN - 0 WI - 0 2024 08 20 IA-AZ 2 RV's to Albuquerque NM (Fail) 2 RV's to Phoenix AZ spending the night at Cameron MO NOTES - left late, traffic, dented hood, wait time, marker light, tail light, lunch, Ellsworth busy, Eagleville, Cameron, walk, planning Up a half hour earlier than planned, still left 15 minutes later than planned. Then we hit some minor road construction before we got out of town. Just fixing holes in the road but before rush hour was done so it was a slow down. 1st stop was Albert Lea for fuel and rest room. 2nd stop was the shipper. We get our paperwork and find our RV's. As BB is walking up to hers, she notices the reflection is not correct. Looking closer, there is a dent in the hood. So we tell dispatch who just happens to be walking across the parking lot for another issue. And he calls over the shipper yard man who is already working on another unit close by. The yard man looks at it, goes and gets a tool and as he is walking back, he sees it from a different direction and realized there are two dents. He can't fix it on site. And the shop can't fix it today. So we sit for an hour plus before the first RV's come over. We have a choice of 2 for PHX or 2 for Davis. :( :( We have been waiting for a Davis trip for two weeks and now that we no longer have enough time to take the trip, we are almost handed the trip. We have to go with the Phoenix. As we walk out, another driver asks where we are going ... "%#@ !!, I've been sitting here waiting ...(for work)" We just keep walking. After we are almost done inspecting, BB notices an issue with one of her marker lights. We look closer and find out it has tape over it. Minor issue but we can't reach it. Luckily the yard man is two RV's over so we let him know. We don't need any paperwork for this 'repair.' He carries a latter so a quick and painless fix. Then the last thing we do for inspection is check each others brake and reverse lights. Something that takes two people. BB does mine first ... I can tell right away something is wrong. ... there is. One of my brake lights is upside down. The brake and reverse lights are on the same housing and they manage to get reversed. Yard man is just stopping at the office as I walk in, I ask him not to go too far. No paperwork on this one either as it isn't going back to the shop. But dispatch does come out and look at this one. Today we found three issues that both the shipper and our carrier yard person missed. By now we are almost two hours behind schedule. It is past lunch time. 3rd stop ... is Kwik Star / Kwik Trip. When we walk in, they are giving away tiny slices of pizza. BBQ Chicken. It was good but ... I hadn't drank enough water today and almost thought I was going to have issues. But didn't. Three kinds of soup I would eat but got the BBQ rib sandwich instead. They were on sale today. But almost no chopped onions on the condiments bar. I did let them know. We ate outside by our vans as BB had brought her own food and there is not a lot of place to sit at this location. The south exit from Forest City to the freeway is still closed. So we took US-69 to Garner. That had one lane traffic for a short ways. And it takes a little longer because we go through towns that way. ))) the rest is written up two days later ((( 4th stop is the Loves in Ellsworth. All pumps are full so we circle the lot. Finally we each find one and pay separately. Usually we try to park across from each other or one behind the other so we only have to pay the transaction fee once. Before we are ready to leave, I see a transporter just parking. Of course I have to talk to him. He is heading to ID. Used to for for our carrier, sort of. He worked for a carrier that we bought out but he didn't like the way it was handled so he moved on. We had planned on stopping in Osceola at the rest area, but now that we are running later we push on to the next truckstop 5th stop is the Loves in Eagleville for food. Subway for me. Chicken salad? At Subway? Crew was interesting. One was cashiering, a second one just walked away from the counter between customers. Came back a few minutes later as we waited. Finally a 3rd one came back from break and then the 1st one left. My was a 'new' item and they didn't know how to ring it up. But it was good, bread was very fresh and all I got on it extra was black olives. (but have the ones he put on the sandwich fell off before he wrapped it up and he just threw the extra's away :( ) 6th and final stop was the SureStay/BestWestern in Cameron. 20 years later and still lots of memories every time we go down this highway. We were in early enough that we took a walk around the parking lot. ... no tomorrow type notes as tomorrow is already yesterday. Load board US - 152 IA - 2 MN - 1 WI - 0 2024 08 21 IA-AZ 2 RV's to Phoenix AZ spending the night at Dalhart KS KS reroute, Ottawa fuel pumps, road construction, call for permits, fire trucks, u-turn, Pratt, road closed, mead 3 stops, liberal full pumps, no food service, used free room, occupied room, 2nd room, re-lock trucks, 14 hour notice. ))) written up 1 day later ((( We dropped some things off at the RV's before we ate, and then someone in the lot asked us about the RV's. BB had her keys with so we went back and let him look in the door to get an idea of what size they were. We are not supposed to let anyone inside, don't want them breaking anything. Opps. Breakfast, good but not a lot of it. When we got down there, someone was working with the food. Then he said he was just covering the utensils to keep the flies off of them. ;) GPS said that going around KC was faster this AM so we did it that way. I-35, I-29, I-635 back to I-35. Kept us moving. Did have to cross the KS scale heading out of town. No issues. 1st stop was the Loves in Ottawa. I go in to get the pump turned on and they can't. BB has already taken the hose off the hook. So we hung it up and tried again. Nope. Then they sent a staff out to check to make sure they were hung up. Still doesn't work. Then a manager came out and did the same things. Finally I met the big boss coming out. And apologizing. None of the four pumps on that island work as pre-pay right now. So we had to move to another pump. We did and they had the pump turned on before we got out of the RV, they were watching us. No issues from there but a delay for sure. At least they did not say we couldn't fuel with the cars. On the round-a-bout in Emporia, there was a KC city on the other side of the circle. Couldn't see the driver but did see the placard, it was one of ours. We decided to stay off the toll road today. That took us past the Flying J in Emporia . The Huddle House is gone. All the signs are gone. It looks like they are re-building without a food area. It's been a year or two since we went this route. Lots of changes. And lots of road construction. 2nd stop is the Arby's in Newton. BB didn't want to stop at the now Pilot. There lot was kind of small when we stopped last time but today I looked over and it was almost empty. There I would have had a Subway. Arby's is better. BB wanted some caffeine so I added potato cakes to the list and made it a meal. Right now anyway, they gave me three cakes instead of two. And before we left we had to call for permits. I know all the questions, or should, but twice I gave wrong info before correcting myself. But we got it right. With the sirens in the back ground. Fire, police, ambulance. Not sure where they were going other than right past us as I was on the phone. I also called the drop in Phoenix, they did not need to know the exact time. Just the day so that is better for us when we are calling from over 1,000 miles away. Yup, it's been a while. Forgot the fastest way to get out of here is go thru the Walmart parking lot. I just went back to the main street where I have to turn away from the highway. So U-turn. More road construction. We are off the freeway for 400 of our 570 miles today. Some four lane, some two lane with passing lanes and some just two lane. And lots of small towns. 3rd stop Pratt at Casey's. Short leg but otherwise the next stop was a rural rest area that is sometimes closed. No major truck stops for hours. So this makes the next leg an even two hours. Quick restroom stop. The former Comfort Inn here is now a Baymont so no Choice hotels in this town anymore. And the former Long Johns is closed once again. Lots of names have been there since Long Johns but none have changed the outside so it still looks like a Long Johns. ROAD CLOSED AHEAD. No where else to go so we kept going. The highway splits there so we followed traffic down the other road. Every street in town was blocked with a city truck so we headed out of town ... for miles. Lots of dirt cross roads ... Finally BB starts flashing her lights at me so I pull over. She thinks I have been day dreaming and will keep going forever ... ... no, by now I can see the next town on our original highway so I am assuming there will be a blacktop cross road to get us down there. BB looks at a map and there is a road coming up. There is, and it says 'no commercial vehicles.' We are RV's so we turn anyways ... and BB said to. From that road I could now see truck running parallel to us about a half a mile away. If we could have just waited, but no. And at one point BB is honking at me because I went right and the GPS said left. I didn't know what her GPS said but I knew that left was a gravel road and right was paved. I'm guessing all this cost us another 15 minutes ... and mileage range. 4th stop(s) were in Mead. We were going to stop here just to see if we needed more fuel. Not sure if we would have if we hadn't detoured but now we decide we do. First stop is an empty lot to talk to see if we needed fuel and where we needed to stop. There is a Loves right on the main corner in downtown but it is small. Even too small for two small RV's, otherwise it is the nicest and newest station in town. So we decide to go to the truck stop. It is an old truckstop, all dirt lot. Only gas pumps for cars. For Diesel we would have to fill at the truck island that have no canopy and the hoses are laying in the dirt. We decide to head back into town to a Conoco that had diesel. One diesel pump, two island total. We each put in two gallons to get to the next truck stop. Had to watch close to not hit anything. 5th stop ... timing ... Loves in Liberal. All pumps are full when we get there and we drive around the lot a couple of times before I find a pump and BB parks. Then I call her and say that the other side of my pump is opening up. Then they all open up. For a short time we are the only two at those pumps. Timing. We eat here. They have a Taco Johns. I go up and wait in line but the cashier walks away after ringing up the customer ahead of me. Then I see there are four others still waiting for their food so I walk over to the Loves part of the store. There total cold food area is empty. So my choices are roller food. They do not have a hot food area. Roller dog and a chicken cheese stick. The old hotel I used to stay at in Liberal is gone. Casey's has a truck stop there now. Good news. Oklahoma is now four lane all the way. 6th and final stop is the Best Western in Dalhart. We park on the street behind the building so no problems parking. No one else is there yet. A 13 hour day for us is a long day. BB's electronic log was already giving her warnings that she would need to shut down within the next hour. First the desk clerk can not figure out how to process our 'free room.' We'd earned a free room months ago during a promotion and needed to be used before the end of the month so tonight's the night. Then when we walk into our room, someone is already sitting at the desk. Luckily they were clothed and still awake. Back to the front desk and they wanted to figure out how that happened before they gave me a new room. So check in took a while tonight, fitting for an already long day of delays. Because of all the issues today, I decided it was a good idea to walk out and make sure the RV's had gotten locked. I just used the FOB from as soon as I could see them, I did not walk to see if they were already locked. ... and we still had to plan tomorrow. Load board US - 226 IA - 3 MN - 1 WI - 12 ... the trip continues HERE |
