1 pickup to Fort Wayne IN

1 box truck to Sioux Falls SD (Thursday)

... spending the night at Decatur IN

Eggs, sausage, juice. It was enough.

Rolling at 6:30 home time. Rain has passed and the sun is just coming up. Another un-eventful day of driving. A couple of slow downs in cities. A few more speed limit signs in the middle of nowhere.

The one thing we hadn't thought of when deciding to ditch the 1st rental car was that if we did, BB would be able to watch the load board. The only excitement was before our first stop. BB likes to sort the board so she looks at what is knew today. But sometimes things are put on the loadboard with older dates.

Like today. She saw two IN to CA trips with an older date that were not there the last time she did a detailed look. But ...

She always needs to do the math before we can call on the trips instead of calling right away (like others) and putting them on hold while we do the math. Yup, they are gone by the time we call. The shipper is 20 miles from where I will be dropping and they were going to a more rural town far enough south that we could take the southern route.

... and have been in CA in time to still do one more bus this month. And ... they were the small class B vans that we both will drive. It would have been just as well if we had not seen those trips.

That was the only new trips on the load board that were of any interest to us.

1st stop is for fuel in Newport at Loves. Someone had taken the highway sign down so I missed the 'B' exit and ended up taking the 'A' exit. It was worth it. Gas was a dollar a gallon cheaper than the next time I will fuel. Tried to squeeze too much in and ran some on the ground.

But first I did put air in the tires. The low air message/light was on since right after I picked it up. BB sat inside the pickup and told me when the screen showed the correct amount. By this evening all four tires were back below the recommended setting but no warning, yet.

2nd stop was in Corbin. BB listed off a bunch of fast food places. Our choice had been Cook Out but they do not all have in-door seating so we changed our minds. Then before we got to Corbin, I saw a sign for Sonny's BBQ so that is where we ate.

Good food. We both had pulled chicken, BB's on a bun and my on garlic toast. Plus either beans or coleslaw. Way better than another fast food meal.

3rd stop was at a rest area near Georgetown KY. From here I called the drop and left a message, they called back and said Friday AM was OK to drop.

4th stop was rest area near Monroe OH. From here I called about the Sioux Falls SD trip. It is now after 3:30 local so the day is winding down for these dispatchers. At this point I just wanted a number to call to see how late we could drop or if we could drop on Saturday. Surprise, this time the info was actually on the paperwork so the dispatcher knew.

Back on the road, BB and I talk a little bit and then she calls while I'm driving so I can talk to them. All they ask is for my driver number. We have the trip. From tomorrows drop it is about 65 miles to the next pickup. We will need a rental car for those miles plus to the the airport in South Bend where we will drop the 2nd rental car.

And on this trip it will only add five miles to swing in and pickup up our personal car and use that for the last drop of this trip.

We had been doing good on fuel. When we pulled out of the fuel station this AM I was about five miles short of the drop, then I got up to about an excess range of 30 miles which held most of the day. Until we turned off the freeway tonight. Right into a now headwind.

5th and final (?) stop was our Quality Inn in Decatur. This is the same town where we have a shipper that ships a lot of RV's. Just not today.

Once we checked in, we drove to get enough gas to get to the drop. The first time I swiped my rewards card at Shell it showed I would get a fuel discount. Then I tried to tap my chip and it declined my card and when I swiped my chip I didn't get the discount. Not much on four gallons.

Then we stopped at a small restaurant. Very quite tonight. We were one of the last three customers to walk out all at the same time. Then the place was empty, at 6:30 PM.

We thought we were going to split a patty melt but then BB decided she wanted a BLT so I got a cup of potato soup and a cup of chili. Chili was too hot, temp wise, when I ate most of it. The soup was good. Cups didn't seem like enough, should have topped it off with a cookie but we didn't see any deserts.

Load board

US - 278

IA - 82/81

MN - 20

WI - 1

IN - 23

Tomorrow. We have a half hour to the drop but we can't pick up our rental car until 9 AM. So we will be running about an hour later than usual.

We should be done in Fort Wayne by 10 AM and in Bristol by about 11 AM and gone by 12 noon. By 1 PM we should be dropping the rental in South Bend. From there we have about four hours left of daylight. If we are lucky we can make it to Davenport.

We might push further because if we only make it to Davenport that leaves eight hours for Friday ... so dropping in Sioux Falls about 4 PM. Paperwork says we can drop until 9 PM, sunset is about 5 PM so we likely will just stay Friday night in Sioux Falls.

Too early to line up our next work. If southern CA shows up at the right time we can still make it if we head out Saturday ...