... spending the night at Livermore CA

No work, we are heading home.

No reason to get up, nowhere to go. Not much for breakfast at this place. Breakfast area only has one table in the middle of the room and two small ones against the wall that I have never seen used. They are finally back to having hot food. Eggs, sausage and because we are going to be here a while this AM, yogurt.

We spend the AM watching the loadboard and looking at emails.

We do not request a late checkout today and leave the hotel at 11 AM. We drive by the buses again. Way too many to be able to tell if there are more or less. Then we head to BJ's to eat.

We request outside and we are the only ones sitting outside. We notice lots of cobweb's on the other tables and chairs. BB has shrimp and I have chicken and noodles. Then we share one cookie with ice cream. BB only eats a 1/4 and she is full. I don't want to waste good food so I eat the rest of it. It is about a nine inch cookie covered with ice cream and whipped cream. Very good.

Before we leave the restaurant BB heads to the restroom. I'm sitting there alone and look at our available work. There is now a truck in CA heading to MN. I call and put it on hold until BB gets back. BB knows where the truck is and it is six plus hours away, there is no way we could pick it up today. I call back to say it is a no-go for us and why. Dispatch offers to call the shipper to see if we can pick it up tomorrow ... but the truck has already been assigned to another driver. :(

A couple of hours later I began to realize I should not have eaten the whole thing. I didn't get sick but wasn't feeling real well.

First we go and sit at a park across the street from the outlet mall and then when we need to use the restroom we move to the mall parking lot.

... Looking at the timing. IF we had delivered earlier on Thursday, we would have had time to take one of the trucks going to Bakersfield. And we would have gotten to Bakersfield this/Friday AM about the time there was a Bakersfield to Pomona CA trip. And if that had happened we would have been in route to Pomona when the Pomona to MN truck hit the board and may have gotten that ... all would have been good. :) 20/20 hindsight.

I had called local dispatch at noon to say we had stayed. I call back at 3 PM to see if there is work, there is not. Dispatch confirms there are likely over 100 buses sitting there. The buses going to one of the locations are actually ready to ship. But the drop will not accept them because they have to room to park them. So 20-50 buses, at a half million plus each just sit at the shipper.

I had also called on other work earlier to find out how late I could call them in the evening, after I talked to the local dispatcher. The dispatcher here rarely knows anything before 3 PM local, that is 5 PM home time and 6 PM east coast time where a lot of the dispatchers are. Everyone else is closed by the time I talk to dispatch here and will not open again until Tuesday because of the holiday.

We area heading home, we knew that was a chance so that is why we have a rental car set up for the AM. We looked at getting closer to our cheap one-way rental but there was only a $10 difference between hotels there and here so we head back to our known hotel here in Livermore.

No work heading back and little chance of getting more work because of the long weekend means we will come in at the bottom of our 'acceptable pay' rate for this trip.

It was later when we headed back out for food, one of our choices was Mr Pickle but they had closed at 6 PM. We ended up back at a Cheesestake place we have eaten at before. Good food. This time we split a 10 inch sandwich. That seems to be about the right size.

Load board

US - 264

IA - 99

There is work near Denver so we are looking at heading via that way home. Tonight it is showing that if we go to Denver the preferred is going via Las Vegas. Something to look at in the AM. Hotel prices in lots of area's this weekend are $300+ or NA/sold out. So we will be making reservations as soon as we have our car and know our timetable.

It is about 1,100-1,200 to Denver/Cheyenne, so about two days. We could make it past there if we decide not to take any Denver trucks on Tuesday. We should be dropping the car on Thursday either way. But we have the car for a week so we may do local for a couple of days and use the car we have already paid for.

By the time we get back we will not have time to come back out to CA again this month. But we do plan on working for this company until mid-month before working for my local company the last few days of the month.