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...My Life as 'Drive away' driver
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230325 MN 1 trash truck to Summit IL (Monday) ... spending the night at Rochester Because we don't spend enough time on the road, we decided to take a little road trip this weekend. Saturday - I had emailed dispatch on Friday to make sure my paperwork would be ready Friday night. 1st stop was the office, no paperwork, doors locked. But I know the dispatchers truck so I knew they were there, just not picking up. Finally they did and were able to give me my paperwork, whoever was working on it did have it completely done. As long as we were at the office, I checked the lot. They now had three 60 foot buses parked. The one I had turned around for them. The one that won't move and then the 3rd one that was also driven it. I did not offer to get the newest one turned around. 2nd stop was for fuel at the Shell/TA in Hudson. Not sure how Shell can give us a discount but Pilot and Loves can't. 3rd stop was at Norske Nook in Osseo of lunch, but we all had breakfast. Good food and spent a little time with family. From here it is some non-Freeway to our next stop. Heading through Le Crosse, we see eagles. About a half dozen sitting one place on the ice. Another dozen in the trees and in the air. With other eagles back at their nests i was surprised to see that many. 4th stop is the Great River Bluffs State Park. Muddy, snow covered paths. Sunny day, above freezing. We walked a hair under 2 miles in a little over an hour. Top of the hill, looking out across the river and a 2nd dispatcher calls me about Monday work. Wasn't expecting them both to be working on Saturday. Sounds like I may be seeing other drivers on Monday. Our nice hotel in Le Crosse was full, the others were at nice prices for a not so nice hotel. The miles for where we plan to go tomorrow are about the same if we stay in Rochester so we stay there instead. Then before we reserve, we decide we will just stay both nights in the same hotel. 5th and final stop is the Comfort Inn. It is right next door to the Sleep Inn but this is the first time we has stayed here. We're using rewards points for both nights. We must have gotten a nicer room here. Before we get here, BB had ordered BBQ from the place down the street. They are set up for take out so quick in and out. We do like the 5 West but they are not set up for takeout so we may do that tomorrow night when they are not so busy. Load board US - 145 WI -0- MN - 4 WI -3 A couple of more parks on Sunday, hopefully not as wet and snow covered. 230326 MN 1 trash truck to Summit IL (Monday) ... spending the night at Rochester No breakfast at the hotel. We do grab some yogurt and fruit for later. We are out of the hotel by 9 AM. 1st stop is in Fountain at the end or start of the Root River trail. It is not maintained in the winter but it is late enough in the season that it is all clear. Before we walk, we eat our yogurt ... The trail is listed as a 'rail trail' but on this end of the trail the hills don't seem to be graded, the trail is almost the same as the lay of the land. There is a large paved parking lot at the edge of Fountain right next to their city park so it also has restrooms that are open already in later March. We only walked the first 1/2 miles today as we are planning on walking all day. This part of the trail is all open. There are fields on one or both sides of the path. Along on the path there is a 'sink hole education area.' It looks like they are common in this area. 2nd stop is the Forestville State Park. There are signs that the bridge is closed so we park before the bridge. BB uses the restroom, they are open here also. Then we walk. We walk along the river in the direction of the Historical Society town. The bridge is blocked, but it seems to be because of a non-park issue. We can see people on the other side of the river but not a way to get over there. So we just walk. Again it is about 1 mile. Partly snow covered trails. 3rd stop is the Mystery Cave portion of the same park. We know it is closed, the caves are closed but we can still drive into the area. We sit here and eat our lunch of leftovers. Then we walk the short distance to the cave. Interesting signs, of how the water on one side of the cave area is warm and on the other side it is cold. And that in dry times, the creek bed drains to the area below ground. This walk was only a few blocks and on flat ground. 4th stop was in Preston at the start of that wing of the Root River trail. For the third time today we walk about a mile. This time on a flat, likely railroad bed along a river. Parking area is paved and the rest rooms are open. The walking rail trails are free. The State Parks require a park pass. 5th and final stop is back at the hotel in Rochester. Food tonight is from next door at the 5 West. Soup and burger. The Easter Bunny was there today but BB would not get her picture taken with it.
230327 MN-IL 1 trash truck to Summit IL ... spending the night at Rockford IL Alarm at our usual 6 AM, ready to leave the hotel at 7:30. We did grab two more yogurts for the road again today. 8 AM we are at the shipper. The large shuttle van from my local company is there, that usually means there were more than five drivers coming here today. I didn't count. I did see a few drivers, two headed to the shop with their trucks. One truck had already left when we were arriving but he may not have been one of us. I waved at a few of them as I walked by and they were in their trucks but didn't talk to any of them. No one I knew so they likely did not know me. I didn't think about it at the time but BB said she hadn't seen any drivers with their reflector vests on. We are supposed to and the shipper's employee's do when they are out of the buildings. No issues. 2nd stop is the Kwik Trip in Kasson for fuel and scale. No one else in line so two cashiers waited on me. One of them was asking questions more or less about why we scale the trucks here when they never see the DOT scales open. I didn't think about it until later that most people only travel on the weekends when most scales are closed. Just before I get to the DOT scale near La Crosse, I catch up to another of our drivers. I might have been able to pass him but didn't. Scale was open so I followed him in. He got the by-pass lane and I had to weigh. I sat on the scale a couple of minutes but then I go the OK to go sign. I was 1,000# under on the scale ticket so I should have been good. Within a mile or so I have caught up to the other trash truck again. I'm guessing he was going 55 mph and I was doing 65. 3rd stop is the Double Nickels Deli in Camp Douglas. BB just realized a week or so ago that this place may have gotten it's name from being at exit 55. :) We have eaten at the Log Cabin Deli so often lately that we were ready for a change. Good food. We each at half our sandwich. ... my paperwork says the drop is open until 11 PM, but it also says that there is only one person who can sign for new trucks. So I made sure to call. I had tried a few times from Kasson this AM but all lines were busy. So I called when I got here and got through. The only person who can sign leaves at 3:30. IF I don't stop again for any reason or have any traffic slow downs I would make it right at 3:30. So we decide not to try. 20 miles down the road, I notice my check engine light is on. I pull over at the next exit. 4th stop is near Wisconsin Dells, on the exit ramp. BB is ahead of me so I first leave her a message to get her stopped in case this is a bigger issue. Then I call dispatch. He's new to this account so he has me stay put until diagnostics can be run on my truck. When dispatch calls back, they want me to try a couple of things to get the light to go out but the computer will not respond. There is a closer shop behind me but they allow me to go forward for another hour to the next shop. 5th stop is the shop in Madison. They say they will be able to look at it as soon as a shop bay opens up. Then it will be an hour or so IF they have the parts to fix it. By the time the get a bay open, it is shift change and then before they are done they get a break. So we were there four plus hours but they did get it fixed and it was under warranty. At first when we got there, we sat in the car. Then we decided to go sit in the drivers lounge. They had told me where it was when I got there ... across the shop, third door on the right, upstairs. We pass two doors and then it was a parts area, so we went back to the first door and up the stairs. A few tables, a place to wait, big TV. Finally a shop person came up and I asked ... no, this is the drivers lunch room :) there is a third door a ways further down with a big sign that says 'drivers lounge.' Once they tell me it is done and I get paperwork to show dispatch that I was at the shop and not a casino :) I'm waiting for my truck. The guy at the service desk doesn't know why it hasn't been backed out ... that mechanic can't pull his next truck in without getting mine out first. But that is what the mechanic had done, gone to get the next truck. By then the service manager has backed it out and brought it up for me. Once we realized we couldn't deliver yet today, we had decided to stay in Schumberg. Instead, now we will stay in Rockford. So we will be an hour behind in the AM but (hopefully) get paid for four hours downtime. 6th and final stop is the Sleep Inn in Rockford. It is a known. We could have gotten off the road at Madison or Janesville but we don't have 'our' hotels in those town. We do often stick to what we know. Once we check in, we head to Jason's Deli for food. Sometime at the end of the day, after we got our truck so it was the last few minutes of the day ... IA puts out five RV's to our favorite place in NC. But we still have the rest of this week that we planned on working local. Load board US - 179 IA - 6 MN - 14 WI - 4 Leave out tomorrow AM as usual, fuel in about 20 miles and then another hour to the drop. Should be dropped by 10 AM. By then local dispatch should know if they have anything else for us. It will likely be too late to leave out of Dodge Center again so we may be back to Rochester for the night. ... or there is still a tanker a few miles from the drop heading to MO. 230328 MN-IL 1 trash truck to Summit IL (Delivered) 1 trash truck to Foristell MO ... spending the night at Rochester MN No breakfast so we were leaving the hotel at 7:15 this AM. Well, we didn't eat breakfast there ... when I was checking out, I did see they had bacon so I grabbed a bowl and put a few strips in it for later. 1st stop was the TA in Hampshire for fuel. I was down to 1/8th of a tank but the low fuel light was not on yet. No idea what I was getting for mileage so I was going to put in 20 gallons. Or more. I have no idea where fuel is after here, or if it is safe to fuel where I might find it. I have to fuel on the opposite side as the meter so I over shot the goal because these pumps run fast. It was slow enough today that I could have come into the pumps backwards. BB fuels at the Loves across the highway so we don't see each other, I text her when I am leaving and she leaves after that. By staying on the freeway, this is an easy drop to find. A dozen or two miles from the drop a semi gets in front of me and the 'white line is his.' For some reason he moved two lanes over and I stayed in the right lane. When people tried to pass him between us, they would come over my white line ... so when there was concrete to my right, I claimed my white line ... making the lane between us too narrow to pass. Otherwise I rode the right shoulder so others could pass between us. 2nd stop is the drop in Summit. As I am getting out of my truck I see BB pulling in. This location only has one person who can sign for new trucks, but I don't see a line today. I was expecting a detailed check, over, under and around. This guy walks around the truck twice, checked a couple of things in the cab and he was done. In and out in 15 minutes. Bad news ... all the good trips we had looked at last night are now gone. So we call my local dispatcher. They only have one trip that is not covered. It needs to be there by Monday. I tell them I will call back after lunch. Traffic coming out of Chicago was a lot worse than coming in. But we finally make it. 3rd stop was Belvidere oasis. We aren't sure what happened yet, but for some reason my truck I-pass isn't working today. It did work yesterday and I left it in the same place. At about 1 PM, I call dispatch back, the MO trip they mentioned this AM is still the only one they have for me. For me? Sometimes I wonder. This dispatcher has to call to see how to take care of the paperwork because he will be faxing/emailing it to them. Our shipper contact leaves at 4 PM and we may not be there by then. Double Nickels Deli was good yesterday ... but they don't have cookies. 4th stop was the Log Cabin Deli in Mauston. BB has their daily special of taco something. I have my usual chicken salad wrap, plus cheeseburger soup. We thought we may get there before 4, but then we stopped for food ... and now gas. 5th stop was the Loves in St Charles. Gas was $2.99. We did have enough to make it to the shipper but we would have had less than a 20 mile range, to low for BB. 6th stop is the shipper. My paper work is where I asked them to leave it. Mine and a couple of others. Seems our shipper contact just grabbed what was laying there. Two other drivers info from their last drops was clipped to mine. Our contact was gone so I slipped it past the window. In the yard there are three rows of trucks. BB and I each take one and then we both walk the third one. One truck from the end is mine. But good news. No issues. We do see one other driver from my other carrier. His placard and plate were in the front window ... with the plate upside down. ?? 7th stop is the Kwik Trip in Kasson for fuel and scale. Legal but a few pounds. But legal. I only have one scale to cross. 8th and final stop is the Sleep Inn in Rochester. After checking in we go for a walk. Trying to do that again. Then we eat leftovers. I had the other half of my chicken salad sandwich. During the day, there has been a few RV's come and go. Some we would have been interested in. Maybe by Friday or Saturday. Load board US - 178 IA - 3 MN - 4 WI - 3 Tomorrow we have 400+ miles to go, plan is to leave by 7 AM. They close at 5 PM so that gives 10 hours to get the trip done. What we do from there is still a question. There are currently no trips out of MO and there rarely are. But this is the trip they had ... 230329 MN-MO 1 trash truck to Foristell MO ... spending the night at home We have 10 hours to go today so we are ready to go by 7 AM. No breakfast, I didn't even look at it. Less than 10 miles down the road, the check engine light comes on. I know there is a truck dealer in this area but don't remember the road layout. I had thought it was all over passes so I am in the right lane when I see the entrance to the dealer was at a cross street. I check my mirrors and quickly cut across, hitting the breaks as I go. BB wasn't ready for that and someone was blocking her in so she went sailing past. It is not even 7:30 yet when I start calling dispatch. There used to be a dispatcher that started by then. The one that is gone. When no one picks up, I call the after hours number. Again no answer, but I get a text back that they are already helping someone on breakdown. So I keep calling the office. Someone 'newer,' picks up and says the two I want to talk to will not be in until 8:30 and the other person even later. When no one calls back by 8:30 I try again and get a different person. Finally closer to 9 AM I finally get ahold of someone ... who has six other breakdowns ahead of me. So we wait. Then my number comes up, this location will look at it 'within the hour.' So I pull it over to the service area and go inside. Someone comes out and gets the info they need right away and then we wait for a tech. Within minutes of the hour, someone goes out to run a check. At about the same time, the afterhours person finally calls back. They had worked on four other breakdowns before having their dentist appointment. Glad I hadn't waited for that dispatcher. Minutes later the shop foreman comes over to us with the bad news. They don't have the parts, even if they did ... they are behind a week. There look to be about a dozen new trash trucks waiting to go back to the shipper, plus about that many waiting in an area that looks like the 'to do' area. Now we have nothing. This dispatcher doesn't have anything under 500 miles. All the load board trips are gone that we were looking at. We are a couple of hours from home so we are kind of waiting for something to show up. We decide to go eat breakfast at the 5 West. That is where we often get our evening to go meals. Food was good, twice as much as we could eat. Once done, I finally decide to call on a local trip that has been on our load board for weeks. ??? They are paying half of what we guessed and what we guessed was less than what we had been willing to do it for. When I say no, the dispatcher quickly rattles off other trips. No ... I don't do your truck going more than 500 miles. They understood. So we head home. I do paperwork and then drop it off at the local dispatcher. One issue we still have is that my tolls have not shown up yet. Monday's did, but not Tuesday's. So I will not be getting paid for those. They do have three dump trucks and one tanker in the parking lot waiting for drivers. This tanker is going to FL. The OH tanker that BB and I have been talking about is gone. Later in the evening, that dispatcher calls and wants me to commit to doing a local on Friday. I pass. RV dispatch has finally put trips out. A couple of pairs that will work if the weather works. There is also one RV to NE that works, but it didn't show up until after we are home. If it had shown up earlier we would have headed out today. Load board US - 228 IA - 21/20 MN - 3 WI - 4 (I don't see how the load board jumped by 100 when the midwest is still lower than usual) As of now, we may do the NE tomorrow. Then either do the SC or CO over the weekend.
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