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...My Life as 'Drive away' driver
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Trip 64b - New GMC - Refer ... to Newport News, VA Nothing major on this leg ... just a lot of unpaid miles 11/17/04 - Now to finish the rest of the 800 miles for today ... sharing a truck ... dead head miles, just so we can share a rental car. This gets me about 400 miles out of route, the other driver is about 200 miles out of route to follow me. But the directions are simple, both drops are about a mile off of I-64. We make it to Newport News but we are too late to pickup the rental car tonight so the drop will be in the AM ... I was surprised the customer had two locations this close together. Last trip this way I was told me drop was in Newport News, turns out it was in Suffix right across the bay. Our first Motel 6 of the trip ... second night of being a bad boy I guess ... had to go to bed without any supper ... everything is closed ... made it to the convenience store with just minutes to spare before they closed. End of second 14 hour day. 11/18/04 - We kind of slept in, the rental car place doesn't open until 8 ... and we don't get there until 9. And our car isn't ready ... said they weren't expecting us until noon, so I had to wait. Then I didn't find the customer right away ... had to make a couple of U-turns, wasn't expecting the customer to be a used vehicle lot (with a shop) ... gotta start looking at the customer name ... assume nothing. Now for six plus hours in a rental car ... Another reason for not getting going early was to miss the DC rush hour traffic ... and we missed it. Did see one of our customer trucks on the Interstate ... then within a couple of miles passed the location we had dropped it at on our last trip east, might have been the same truck. Not sure what this was about ... looked like the squads were just trying to slow down traffic ... two squads with lights flashing driving down the two white lines covering all thee lanes ??? Thought I had checked the car out ... for damages ... but didn't realize that the radio didn't work ... long six hours. Pickup location does look different in the daylight. The other driver asked for directions at the toll booth even though I'd been here before ... and it was a shorter way, which we used the rest of this trip. Customer says they close at 3:30 PM and we were just going to make it ... barely. First we had to get all the keys ... and the office couldn't find one set. Then we had to find the trucks ... we could only find six of the seven, the seventh was in a different lot. Then to get them started, today is the only day the customer is open when we will be here, so we have let them know of any problems ... Three start, four don't. Not a problem for today, we can take what runs ... Page 3 - The next leg .... |