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...My Life as 'Drive away' driver
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211117 MN-MN 1 pickup to Shakopee MN 1 pickup to Marshalltown IA (Thursday) ... spending the night at Plymouth MN Slept in until almost 8 AM, no rush to get up. By 9 AM the 'auction dispatcher' had put out trips we were interested in. By 10:30 we were leaving the house. I had called an requested two trips but with this dispatcher there is another layer of dispatchers that he has to contact. So we left not knowing if we had the trips or now. 1st stop was at Fleet Farm in Oakdale for fuel. Gas is no longer $2.99 but it is still cheaper than most places and we were down to a range of less than 50 miles. While we were there the dispatcher called back, I got both trips. The first trip is from Hill City to Shakopee, a trip we have done before. Then the 2nd trip is picking up at Shakopee, but not until 12 noon, and dropping in Marshalltown which is near Ames/Des Moines. 2nd stop - Office Max / FedEx to print out the paperwork / Bills of Lading for the next two trips. $1.54 for printing 8 pages. Beats paying a truckstop $2 a page. 3rd stop was at the Jimmy Johns in Cambridge. We took it to go, we do not need a half hour break today. As soon as I take one bite, I remembered I was not going to eat any lettuce today. So I had to wait until BB was done with her sandwich and then she took most of the lettuce off my sandwich. Along the medical line, earlier in the week my mouth/teeth hurt. Not a tooth ache but like a new filling that wasn't ground right. After a couple of days it just went away. Good. I was not looking forward to going to the dentist for any special trips. The restrooms in Jimmy Johns were for 'employee's only' so we will need to stop again. This Jimmy Johns has also taken out all of their indoor seating. 4th stop is the Holiday in Mora for the restroom. From there I call the shipper. Someone answers, they can meet us at / about 2 PM. 5th stop is the shipper in Hill City. There are maybe a half dozen trucks left to be picked up. Mine is the only one that is not sitting there running. The shipper quickly starts it then goes and shuts off the other trucks. The gate is now locked and the plan is to be empty by the end of the month. What he couldn't answer is how many trucks are with the company I move them through. Because the gate is going to be locked, I pull outside the gate as soon as he signs and do my inspection and paperwork there. I have a range of 20 miles less than the drop. For me, this is a non-stop trip to tonight's hotel. Briefly my range goes down. Then it goes up and by the time I get to the hotel two and a half hours later I have an excess of 31 miles range. But I still stop and put in $2 so the low fuel light should not be on. (it was the last $2 on a gift card) When I came through Rogers today I did my usual stay in the left lane instead of waiting in the right lane to merge onto I-94. Wrong choice. Tonight there was not much of a line and there were not any trucks. So no breaks in traffic to cut over without cutting someone off. I'm learning. I get to the hotel about two minutes before BB and she finds me right away. Huge hotel with a bar/restaurant attached. That is where we get food. BB and I split a Cuban and I get a side of turkey wild rice soup and she has coleslaw. Good food and not too much. Load board US - 270 IA - 100/97 MN - 7 WI - 3 What we do tomorrow is every changing. We could have dropped tonight and came back in the AM but that would have meant another 1-2 hours driving in the dark. But a hotel we are paying for, vs using rewards points, will cut into our profit. For a while the plan was to drop about noon and stay and pickup the next pickup. Now we most likely will drop early AM, go to my routine clinic visit, then come back and hope the 2nd leg is ready early. Last night our plan was to be gone over the weekend, likely take a 1,000 mile two day trip. But today were are looking at rental cars and that likely will not happen. Example - FL to MN cars are $350 a day for three days. Usually they are about $100 a day and most years after spring break they are $5-10 a day for a few weeks. It doesn't pay to go to FL. So most likely we will do something local or do a trip where we know we will have a paid trip back to IA/MN. |
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| 211118 MN-IA 1 pickup to Shakopee MN (delivered) 1 pickup to Marshalltown IA (delivered) ... spending the night at Story City IA Breakfast, two cups of yogurt. I didn't care for any of the frozen sandwiches that would have had to have been nuked. We ended up leaving about 9 AM, could have left earlier, could have left later. 1st stop as the drop, and today is also the shipper of my 2nd leg. I have not picked up here before so I asked the check in person where I needed to go. They pointed to a building and said someone should be able to help me. Today the area where we are supposed to park was coned off from the general area. Once I had parked, I walked to the building. It has a receptionist who found the person I needed to talk to. I thought they might just have all the keys on the wall. No, the contact person has to print out a release form and then points you in the correct direct. Today there were about 60 trucks lined up ready to ship for the customer we are working with. They get them in 'like new' condition. They look a little different than when we brought them in. To get out I just had to give the gate my release form and show them my drivers license. No one wants to sign anything, so until someone makes an issue of it I'm fine with it. I'm not going to get past their tire spikes unless I have their OK. 2nd stop is my clinic. Quick lab work, in and out in 10 minutes. 3rd stop was Dows for fuel. I just past the exit for Clear Lake when the low fuel light came on. 10 miles later I loose my range. So I am guessing that I still had a 14 mile range when I got to the gas station. In a diesel. No diesel pumps in the auto area. So I had to pull to the back. The first island was open but the pump said to see the cashier. As long as I was in, I asked if they had any small nozzle fuel pumps. Yes, between the building and the first fuel island. At this point there is a pickup with a trailer parked ahead of me and on the other side of the pump there are two trucks using that area for a parking area. But with backing up a few times I was able to get between the two semi's and fuel. (I didn't think of seeing if the hose from that side would reach my pickup from where I was sitting) I did the math and decided to put in five gallons. 4th stop - Ames for fuel. The low fuel light is on and I still have 40 miles to go. I'd be dropping it with less than a 20 mile range. First I go to the Phillips because it is easier place to get out of. But over half their pumps are not working and the only diesel pump that is working someone is at putting fuel in their 100 gallon tank. I go across the street to the Kum and Go and put in another 5 gallons. Within a mile of the gas station I get on an east west road and catch a good tail wind. I arrive at the customer with a range of 90 miles and the low fuel light is not on. I forget to look at the map for the drop. I didn't last night, I didn't at the last fuel stop. So once I get to the first exit for Marshalltown I pull off on the shoulder. Then a few miles down the road I pull in to a Casey's and look again. 5th stop - I made it. I picked this up an hour before it was supposed to be ready and I am delivering 15 minutes before they close. By the time the paperwork is signed it is 3:30 and people are leaving the lot before we do. We pull out and drive to the fair grounds a few blocks away to finish our paperwork before we head out of town. Earlier today there had been a trip from Des Moines to Davenport but I didn't want to commit until I knew if we would get the 2nd trip dropped. If we had done that trip then there was another trip close to Davenport heading back west that would have tied in nicely. There also had been a short trip in MN that was gone by the end of the day. And IA dispatch didn't put anything knew on the load board that could be done in one day. Nor did the auction dispatcher give out a list this afternoon. He usually does one in the AM and one in the PM. I even call that dispatcher to see if there was anything he didn't have time to deal with today. Nope. As we are talking I mention we might be coming to FL when the weather gets too bad in MN. So he tells me his family will be driving north this winter because some of them have never seen snow :) BB and I have more discussion and finally decide to stop in Story City so that we are off the road before dark. And before the deer are out. 6th and final stop is Story City and the Comfort Inn. It was $10 less than the Best Western in Clear Lake. I would have liked to have gotten to Clear Lake but with a full moon coming up, who knows what is going to be happening on the highways tonight. Before we get to the hotel we stop at the Mexican place in town. It is still open, our other choices were Pizza Ranch, DQ, McD's and Subway. The first bite tasted much better than the last, too much food. BB didn't eat all of hers, I did but I didn't eat lunch. Once in the hotel we are looking at work. Rental cars out of Ann Arbor MI are $1,250 a day so those trips are out. Actually it is only Ann Arbor that was that price, other nearby towns were closer to the $100-200 a day price. We also looked at Kalispel MT. Nice trip, I would like to do it sometime. But we crunched the numbers and we would have to do 500 miles a day and 400 the first day after we get to the shipper mid-morning. And as long as we were going that way, the auction trucks in ND add almost no miles. But with or without the ND truck we would be getting home late Wednesday or early Thursday / Thanksgiving day. (And I still have things I want to do before we leave the day after Thanksgiving) Load board US - 270 IA - 98/97 MN - 6 WI - 8 So as of now we are not doing any trips that we see on the load board. Maybe the auction dispatch will add new trips that work or IA will. But we don't want to be putting a 1,000 miles one way on our car and most rentals are too much this close to Thanksgiving. 211119 MN ... spending the night at Albert Lea MN We awake and wait. We watch the load board, we wait for emails. Nothing that is of interest to us. We ate breakfast. We both had eggs, BB had potatoes and fruit, I had bacon and yogurt. I finally contacted the auction dispatcher, opps, he had thought he had updated the drivers and had not. But nothing new, nothing good. And IA did not put anything new out on the load board in the AM. Long morning hitting re-fresh on the computer. When it gets to checkout time at 11 AM, we check out and head north. Because of the up tick of Covid cases, our Thanksgiving day host has asked all to self test before we come. So that is firs to our list today. 1st stop - Kwik Star in Clear Lake - Quick change, someone needed to use the restroom ... and I needed gas. 2nd stop is the Walgreens in Mason City. I asked where the self tests were but didn't see them one place and the other place had a price but no stock. So we waited to talk to the pharmacist. When I looked in the first place I should have been looking behind me. There were four tests left, we took two. When we are done there I in our to go order at Pasta Bella. Good food, we each eat half of our food and save the rest for later. Now that the temps are near freezing we don't need a cooler, just put it in the trunk. We took our time eating and watching the load board. They have started putting trips out so we know they are working. Now we wait. Same as we have been doing. Finally we decide to get out of the Pasta Bella parking lot. So we drove to Fleet Farm to look for tape. We use take for taking our placards plus a few other things. We have found some yellow tape but I like the blue better. It is darker and wider so it takes fewer pieces. Fleet Farm doesn't have it either. 3rd stop is Culvers in Clear Lake. We haven't had our treat after the last two drops so we have it today. Still only the drive thru open. I don't thing we have seen inside dining open since Covid started a year and a half ago. We eat in the parking lot and watch the load board. Finally it is 3:30 and if they put anything else out it will be dark before we get the paperwork and get it inspected. So we head to the hotel in Albert Lea. 4th and final stop is the Comfort Inn in Albert Lea. Once we are checked in, we are again looking at the load board and wondering what we are going to do. IA did end up putting about 20 more trips on the load board in the last couple of hours of the day but nothing worked. There was one Sioux Falls but that was gone quickly. The shortest trips are St Louis but there are zero, -0-, cars from St Louis to MN. Not at any price. Now that it is after 5 PM we can no longer line up any auction truck work until Monday. Sometime late IA added a 2nd Bozeman trip. That is a lot shorter than Kalispell so it might work. Maybe. We look at rental cars back to MN. $1,200. $400 a day for three days. So our next thought is we could take a rental car from Bozeman to Minot for $100 for one day and pick up one of the auction trucks and drop the rental car. But now we will not know if we can get one of those trucks until Monday about the time we would deliver. BUT I decide to look for a non-MN drop. Sioux Falls SD. $100 a day for three days will be $300. We can deal with that. So we made that reservation. Now we have until Monday to decide if we want to do the auction truck on the way home. The car is cheap enough that BB will just follow me if I do the auction truck. We will see. That means pickup Saturday morning, stay in Rapid City Saturday night. Get to Bozeman Sunday night. Monday deliver in Bozeman and then drive 400 miles to close to Minot. Tuesday AM pickup and drive 600 miles to Shakopee, or close. Drop in Shakopee Wednesday AM and drive another 600 miles via Forest City and Sioux Falls before getting home that night. ??? Maybe. And then it is Thanksgiving Thursday. We likely would NOT leave again on Friday. More likely Monday or Tuesday. They will still be adding more trips through the end of the month so no shortage of work. There are still three Gilroy, one Vacaville and one Reno that would all get us to CA. Otherwise without a deadline we could do a Kalispell, if the weather holds. Load board US - 274 IA - 100/99 MN - 4 WI - 7 One of the WI trips is coming right back to IA but no RV's going to WI right now. Someone could still get the MT trips before us but one of them has been out there for two weeks. But now that there are two, we want them so someone else could too. Tomorrow is a Saturday so our permit company is closed. There is a second one that we could use, but I called the SD scale and they will be open and we will be able to get them at the scale. We do not have to have the permits before crossing the state line. All good to know. 211120 IA-MT 2 RV's to Bozeman MT ... spending the night at Rapid City SD Alarm at 6 AM, breakfast before 7, rolling before 7:30. No good bacon patties for breakfast, I thought they would have the good stuff on the weekend when they have closer to a full house. 30 plus cars in the lot instead of the usual half dozen. We had eggs, sausage and grape juice. We do not get to the RV's by 8 AM so I pull over on the side of the road to call. We got the trips. I thought we were five minutes away, we were closer to 15 minutes away. For once dispatch has time to talk to us, so we did. Even though we were in a rush. By the time we got rolling it had taken us 45 minutes to do our inspection. We have done them in 30 minutes if we are only picking up one small RV. BB has a half a tank of fuel and I have about 1/8 with a range of 41 miles. And it is 47 miles to Blue Earth where we had planned on stopping for fuel. Then we talk and I look at my mpg, 5. It should be 15-20 mpg so I feel safe waiting to fuel. No other drivers picking up but there were trailers picking up those that are going to be hauled. And the shipper was working, hauling over more RV's to the lot. Usually there is only one dispatcher working on Saturday. Today there are three people in the office. And by the end of the day they have added another 35 trips to the load board. 1st stop is the Kwik Star for fuel. I add 22.5 gallons so I still had 1.5 gallons to go. Small station, it would have been tight to get both RV's on one side of a fuel island so I moved. By fueling here instead of right away in Forest City we eliminated one stop and it is going to be a long day. Last night I had called SD to see if I could purchase a permit at the border, I can. This AM I called the Sioux Falls scale to make sure someone was there, they were so we will get our permits there. (I don't want another $400 mistake) 2nd stop was the SD Port of Entry near Brandon, I think the exit ramp starts in MN. New place, now with an inspection shed. I get the green light and BB gets the 'park and come on in.' We both went in. A few minutes and $30 later we are done. They redid this scalehouse about a year and a half ago. I was wondering if he was going to say five years ago, it has been a while since we have been this way. The scale shares the ramp with the rest area so there are no restrooms in the scale house, we have to walk next door. ... when we pulled in we noticed a pickup getting ready to unhook from their trailer in the scale area. When we came back out the pickup was gone but not the trailer. ??? Something must not have been legal. 3rd stop was 10 miles down the road at Loves for Subway. Burger King is across the street and would be easier to get back out from. There is not a traffic light for the cars, but I suppose we could take the long way and exit where the trucks do. Temps in the 40's so we eat outside. Miles and miles of nothing. Nothing exciting. Farm crop land, pasture. All brown before it turns white. 4th stop is the Speedway in Chamberlin for fuel. $3.09 here and $3.39 across the freeway. Usually we take the next exit and stop at rest area. This may be my first trip where I spend more than they allow us for fuel. It's all 'my money' but the company splits it into fuel and mileage pay. It's going to be a long day ... 5th stop is in Kadoka at a Connoco for the restroom. It is the halfway point for the miles we have left. By now we have seen the sunset and it is getting dark. Not too much driving into the sun as it has been cloudy with light sprinkles most of the day. Day one of driving into the dark hours. Most likely four of the five days this trip will end with us driving into the dark. And lots and lots of road kill in SD, they must not clean them off the highway. I'd rather not do the night driving but it is the only way this trip is getting done. Tomorrow/Sunday will likely be the only day of all daylight driving, if we get going early enough. 6th and final stop is the Sleep Inn in Rapid City. As soon as we check in we walk next door to McDonald's. Sorry, doors are locked. Drive through only. So we walk across the street to Arby's. There both the counter and dining are open. We get it to go. Load board US - 301 IA - 135/134 MN - 4 WI - 7 Looking for where we will stop tomorrow ... Fuel in Gillette is $.50 cheaper than here and I have fuel enough to get 30 miles past Gillette if my range holds. We looked at Sheridan for lunch. The Country Kitchen we used to stop at in a truck stop is closed. It was going to become a 4B's last I had seen. But then the highway moved the exit so it was no longer easy off easy on and both the truckstop and the restaurant are now closed. Doing that does in a lot of businesses. We did 500+ miles today and will again tomorrow. I need to watch my log's a lot closer. BB looks at them before she scans them for the office and tonight found errors on three of the last seven. That would be an issue if the officer was the one that found the errors 211121 IA-MT 2 RV's to Bozeman MT ... spending the night at Bozeman MT Alarm for me, BB is already up and ready before the alarm goes off. Not much for a breakfast at this 'higher end' hotel. Nuke your own burrito or waffles. We took the burritos. The filling was about as big as a pencil and the wrap was five layers deep. Glad I also grabbed yogurt. The sun isn't quite up when we pull out. Before we get to our first stop we get past by someone who drives for our same parent company. He isn't going that much faster and I watch as he signals to turn off for the scale. 1st stop is the POE in Sundance WY - Even with BB being her usual slow getting out of her RV, we still beat the driver who pulled in ahead of us. He is heading to Great Falls. There were four people ahead of us when we walked into the scale house. Two of them were also transporters. We know the routine, easy in and out. We, or I, am not going to have enough fuel to get to Gillette so we stop at the Conoco before getting back on the freeway. I was going to put in two gallons but when BB decided to put in fuel also I upped it to three gallons. She put in $4.99 and I put in $10.01. I had to go in to get receipts and the guy was kind of confused, I guess not too many people but $10 or less in fuel anymore. 2nd stop was the MG Oil Co in Gillette. $.50 or more cheaper than anywhere else except the Maverick next door. This Maverick is a small place and we have tried it before. MG is larger, easy in and out with any size vehicle. Today some of the pumps aren't working and I drove around the pumps a couple of times before one opened up. This place also only has portapotties. After we leave Gillette, we see the travel trailer driver we had seen at the scale, he is now on the side of the road feeding his dog. We also see a semi tractor that is running without plate and placard, but there are no markings on the truck and it still has the temp mudflaps so it must have been the drive tractor from a stack of trucks. There are also three tree trucks pulling chippers that pass us. These are likely the drivers we have talked to before. They past us a while before Sheridan, maybe even before Buffalo but when we got to Sheridan they pulled off at the same exit we did. 3rd stop was Sheridan for food. We had planned on stopping at a truckstop for shelve food but I forget that Sheridan is more than that one exit. When I saw the main part of town I pulled off on the exit and on the shoulder and called BB. She would rather have anything other than shelf food. The sign says left so we go left. I then missed the other sign but saw the building when we were waiting at the stop light. So we end up going through Home Depot to get where we were going. Taco Bell. They must have had huge DoorDash orders because it took a while. That and getting lost. This place had plenty of help so that wasn't the issue. By noon today it was close to 50 degrees so not too bad eating outside. 4th stop was the POE for WY and MT. For some reason the person I got wanted my name and my email. The person BB got did not ask those questions ?? Just before we get to Billings a little Ekko passes us, no transporter plate no visible placards. 5th stop was the Pilot in Billings for the rest room. We decide to go another 40 miles before adding more fuel. 6th stop was the Town Pump in Columbus for fuel. I just ignore the weather signs along the road that suggest tuning your radio to ... But BB told me later that the station was saying that traffic should exit the freeway and go through town near Livingston. Opps, but we made it. 7th and final stop was the Comfort Inn in Bozeman. Again we take the scenic route, this time through the Walmart parking lot. Food is the Famous Dave's across the street :( I didn't find any main food I wanted so I got a bowl (the size of most cups) of wild rice soup. And a loaded baked potato. The potato was huge, the 'loaded' was on the side. The bacon, cheese and butter were less than what I would use for a potato one fourth that size. BB said if we had eaten there that she would have asked for chicken with meat on the bones. So not real happy. We should have taken the front desk recommendation (I had a French Dip picked out from their menu) When we got to the hotel two of the tree trucks were sitting in the parking lot, when we went to get our food all three were there. Haven't talked to them yet. Maybe at breakfast if I recognize them. I was wrong. We ended up driving in the dark today too. So every day this trip will include driving in the dark. Tomorrow ... go, go, go. We have a plan and the alarm is set. ... the trip continues HERE |
