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...My Life as 'Drive away' driver
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230330 IA-SC 2 RV's to Greer SC ... spending the night at home We go over what we had talked about last night and agree it is still the best plan. So at 8 AM I call in, not sure why we both did not call in. The NE trip we wanted to do today is already gone but the two for SC are still there so we take them. Now we have nothing to do today but watch the load board. Good thing we were not already on our way, we had talked about doing that. Dispatch did suggest that we leave out today to get ahead of the storm coming through tomorrow. Our plan is to come in behind it. Right now it should be past the shipper by 2 and if we take things slow we may get as far as Waterloo by dark. Then Saturday the winds should die down in the AM. These are RV's don't have canopies, slide-outs or pop-ups so there is less chance of damage. The trip is just over 1,000 miles so we don't need to push it to deliver and still deliver on Monday. There are still lots of trips out of SC/NC but the two heading back to the midwest are gone. ... and the MN to Fargo trip we called on yesterday is finally gone. Once I saw all the other MN trips were gone, I expected that one would go quick. Then dispatch put a trip from Fargo to NC on the loadboard and both were gone quickly. Late in the AM IA does add a few more RV's and then again later in the afternoon. But none that would have worked for us. When we called, there were three pairs that would work for us, we took one and the other two pairs stayed for a few hours. Load board US - 206 IA - 9/6 MN - 7 WI - 5 230331 IA-SC 2 RV's to Greer SC ... spending the night at Charles City IA No alarm, no rush. We leave the house at 8:30. It has rained, is raining and will be snowing here. Where we are going it they are expecting storms. Lightning, hail, rain and then wind until sometime around tomorrow noon. If we were going to get this RV's, we needed to grab them yesterday and pick them up today. There was no way we could have stayed ahead of the storm, even leaving yesterday so we'll get a small start today. 1st stop is the Loves in Albert Lea. It has rained most of the way so far. 2nd stop is the shipper in IA. They are back to having 100's of RV's in the employee lot. That is usually an 'end of quarter' thing. There are only four RV's left on the load board and there are 100+ in the lot today. We are the only ones there. Other than getting our paperwork, the yard person stops on their way out of the lot and says I no longer have to leave log copies with them. OK. One less thing to do. Both RV's check good and we head out. 3rd stop is the Loves in Floyd for fuel. These are diesel so we park on each side of a pump and only use the one pump. The person at the fuel desk thinks they know how to run my card but I end up swiping it a half dozen times and in front of a total of three fuel people before it goes through. It looks like they are giving us $.10 off per gallon before we get our company discount. All helps. 4th stop is across the street at the Wagon Wheel in Floyd. It's a sit down restaurant instead of fast food from Love's. Meatloaf sandwich and potato salad for me and a club and fries for BB. I also get lemon meringue pie to go. Finally. It's only a couple of weeks past my birthday. We had hoped to make it to Waterloo but all of 'our' hotels are full. And that is a little closer to the storm and we need to be. We take an hour plus for lunch and then, as the weather forecast has not gotten better, we make a reservation in the next town. Charles City. Oh, surprise here at Floyd. The are working on the 2nd overpass and now have all traffic running on the former exit and entrance ramps. 5th and final stop is the Sleep Inn for the night. Because of the storm coming in, we park on the East side of the building. The winds are supposed to be from the west. We check in around 3 PM and start watching the weather on TV and our computers. There are now tornado warnings, and sightings. One was between this hotel and the next one we planned on staying at. Not sure how many warnings there were at one time but I think it was between 1-2 dozen. It looks like the worst one was down in AR. But there were also 'several' in IA. After the storm and rain pass, we head out for a walk.. We walk around the hotel parking lot a few times as there is no sidewalk. Then we decide to walk across the Kwik Star/Trip parking lot for a change of pace. During our walk so far, the winds were likely in the 10 mph range. When we got past the Kwik Star they were suddenly up around 50 mph. We were holding on to each other as we tried to walk into the wind a little further. Instead we turned and let the wind carry us which also isn't easy. We did look up the wind speeds when we were back in the room, the wind front had just moved through our area. Yesterday I had said that these RV's didn't have a canopy/awning. They do. ... and I also have a check engine light on, so I had called dispatch when we got to the hotel. I'm OK to run with it, for now. Food was the leftovers from lunch. The only food close is Kwik Star, which we often do in IA. Load board US - 220 IA - 18/15 MN - 8 WI - 5 There are two in MN and one in IA that are under 500 miles if we had still wanted to stay local. Winds are not supposed to die down until noon tomorrow so we likely won't get our 500 miles in but should still make delivery sometime on Monday. 230401 IA-SC 2 RV's to Greer SC ... spending the night at Danville IL We are/were trying to cut back on eating so today we were going to eat a late breakfast and then one more meal. Late ended up being before 9 AM. I had an omelette, bacon, potatoes and yogurt. We spent the morning watching the weather maps to see if the winds were going to die down early. They did not. We end up leaving our room at 10:45 so we can pull out at 11 AM, that is when the winds and wind gusts were supposed to drop below our threshold. 1st stop was in Cedar Rapids at the rest area. Didn't even think of looking for storm damage. Nothing was bad enough that either of us noticed any. 2nd stop was the Loves in Davenport for fuel. When we get there, all island are being used so we couldn't park across from each other. By the time we left we could have parked almost anywhere. 3rd stop is the Stake and Shake in Morton to eat. We each had a burger. 4th and final stop is the Quality Inn in Danville. Nine hotels within a couple of blocks and the only food is shelf food at the Shell station. There had been a Big Boy here but that is now a weed shop. There also had been food inside a Holiday Inn or Best Western but that whole building is gone. The closest food is a McDonalds five miles away in town. One of my first pictures of my trucks was taken at this exit in the fall of 2003, the year I started. I asked the guy at the desk if he remembered when that hotel was taken down, he didn't. It was a park at the door, single level hotel. Not sure what they were built as, but I remember them as Knights Inn's. Once we checked in, we went for a short walk. The road past the hotel turns into a dirt road at the state line so that is as far as we walked. Then coming back it was windy, cold wind. Glad we didn't walk any further. We usually spend some time planning the next day. Today it was a lot of time. We would remember a different fact and re-plan it from start. We will likely do over 500 miles tomorrow and still be short of the drop. Load board US - 249 IA - 39/36 MN - 8 WI - 5 IA added trips to the load board today. SC/NC did not. 230402 IA-SC 2 RV's to Greer SC ... spending the night at Corbin KY No breakfast and we are leaving the hotel at 7 AM. 1st stop is at Pittsboro at a Loves for fuel. It is only an hour down the road. Less than two hours between all of our stops today. Fuel pump was running slow today. So slow that there was not enough back pressure to stop the pump flow and we ran fuel on the ground. Luckily we were standing right there but it is still fuel on the ground. Traffic is down to one lane instead of 2-3 on one part of the beltway, but being early Sunday AM there isn't more of a slow down than usual. 2nd stop is at the Batesville Burger King for breakfast. But we are now in eastern time so it is the lunch menu here. We each get a Whopper Jr. 3rd stop is in Sadieville at another Loves for fuel. This person didn't know how to combine fuel receipts and the islands are all in use so we fuel at two different pumps. While we are fueling, someone comes and and parks within a foot or so of BB's RV. She's at an angle against the pump so she's wondering if she will need to back out. But the other person backs out before she is ready to leave. Not sure why the parked there, I didn't see them get out of their vehicle. 4th stop is the Loves in Corbin. We weren't sure if we would want to eat again here or wait until we got to the hotel tonight. We had talked about parking at Sonny's BBQ but their lot was still full on Sunday afternoon, so Loves it was. We get out of the RV's and BB is just zapped. She's not sure why, she's hoping that some food will help so she gets food at Hardee's. That doesn't help. ... and we have a new issue. The freeway ahead of us is closed due to an accident. The computer will not even route us beyond where we are. We hear the same with other people talking on their phones. We would have to take a non-freeway the next 200 miles to keep moving. The good news is that route starts at our exit. Bad news is that neither of us want to drive on non-freeway somewhere new when BB is not feeling well. After an hour we decide to go to the hotel across the street and get going early tomorrow. So the 4th stop was our final stop. The hotel is the Quality Inn, it is across the street from where we are, it is across the street from Sonny's, it gets a higher rating than the higher class Comfort Inn and is cheaper than the Comfort Inn. Instead of 10-11 hour day we are having a seven hour day. Later, we walk across the street to get the order we made online at Sonny's. We don't see our cookie in our bag so we go back in ... it is there. But when we get back to our hotel we see that they did short us one order of beans. All good food. If there was anything exciting today, I have forgotten it. Tomorrow the alarm will go off at 4:30 AM home time. We want to deliver by noon. We have miss guessed on fuel so we will put in a few gallons at Loves tomorrow before leaving town. .. the trip continues HERE |
