1 trash truck to Muskego WI (delivered)

1 box truck to Fridley MN (Thursday)

... spending the night at Janesville WI

Awoke to an alarm this AM. :(

We are out of the house just about on time. One and a half hours to Dodge Center. No issues. Dispatcher is sitting on his deck when we get there, with a walker. We've guessed he wasn't doing well but still don't know the how or why.

Paperwork says the name of the drop. The drop has lime green trucks. There are four in the shippers lot. It is the first one I look at, doesn't happen when it is -40 out.

Truck all checks good, in and out in 30 minutes. When I turn in my paperwork I see that my local company has already picked up today, about a half dozen of them.

I call the drop, or try to. The number on the paperwork is dis-connected. The number listed online has a few basic choices ... residental pickup, commercial pickup, dumpster request, make a payment. No way to get to a live person. I've tried faking it before but without an account number or a address to create an account number I can't get past the computer. Not sure if I could with that info. I don't try this time.

Truck has AC and runs at 65 mph. It does not have cruise. For some reason it seems to be a rougher ride than usual. And the mirrors aren't mounted for good visibility. Oh yeah, as soon as I reach road speed the alarms start going off. For the next 300 miles. Sensor's that are not set correctly.

No traffic issues, just a long ride.

1st stop is for fuel after 200 miles. At the TA in DeForest. I watch to make sure that I am not really hitting anything as the alarms could be correct.

No waiting for fuel. Last trip I put in 44 gallons and left too much fuel at delivery. This time I put in 33 gallons and still left too much fuel. My first thought was to put in 24 gallons but then the gauge dropped to below half and I re-did the math.

I text BB of my location, she calls back. We confirm we still want the Fridley trip for our return trip.

After filling, I pull ahead and then go in and get my receipt. When I come back, the truck has done an idle shutdown. When I re-start, I have a warning light on. So I park and call dispatch. Run with it.

I call the Fridley dispatcher and get the trip. 100 miles to go to the drop. Once I pull out, I remember that I haven't called the drop for my canceled trip. He had offered to stay late so I could get delivered today. He answers. He has not heard the trip was canceled. News to both of us.

I have now looked at the drop location, two basic turns and an exit number. GPS says side streets but staying on the interstate is much easier and only adds 10 miles. I almost stop to look again at directions once I am out in the farm fields but don't. And I do find it.

The drop does a quick walk around, signs and takes pictures of my paperwork. Once we re-park out of the way, I call the shipper for tomorrows trip. Then we are off.

There are a dozen hotels in town but we stay at the Quality Inn again. This time we walk to the Road Dawg. Small bar (?) There are about a dozen people there today and room for another dozen. Not at all like the large restaurant with the same name in Beloit.

Food was good, I had a Philly with a side of curds and BB had a burger. All good.

Then we went for a walk in the almost 90 degree heat. And I tried again to print my one paperwork and then the help tried to print it. Then they called someone and were going to have me print it on the front desk computer again. I offered to email it to then instead so we did that.

All the other Janesville trips are gone now, first time in two weeks. Not sure how many RV trips IA put out as we were both driving most of the day. MN only has one trip that might work for us for Friday. Last time we didn't commit until we had dropped in Fridley. We will likely do the same thing tomorrow.

Loadboard

US - 150

IA - 2/1

MN - 4

WI - 4

Seeing we just did this same trip last Thursday it hopefully will go even better tomorrow. Pickup, now we know where and how. Put in more fuel right here where fuel is cheapest. And we know where the drop is. We dropped at 3 PM last week, hoping for a few minutes earlier tomorrow.

There is still one truck in MN going to NE that we could do, if it is still there after we drop. Otherwise it would have to be something new.