1 bus to Beloit WI
... spending the night at Rocklin CA
This AM we are up at our usual time. Green eggs and ... sausage. Yesterday the meat was ham.
We have decided not to do a trip that could have worked for us. But it would have been 10 hours of just driving time. Too close to push for a Friday on a Holiday weekend.
One of the drivers who also works at our long haul company just posted that they got an RV heading back from CA, right next to where they were dropping off.
))) the rest is written over one week after these events (((
We had talked about doing another local trip and about visiting a few cemeteries. But we ended up sitting in the hotel until check out time.
Plan had been to visit one cemetery, eat, visit a second cemetery. But when we pulled out, BB saw that there was a Black Bear restaurant just down the street so we headed there. We used to eat here more often but we now haven't eaten at one for about two years ... since our car was broken into while eating.
Foods still good, I got a meatloaf.
Then we headed further away from the shipper to a cemetery in Delano. The place still says to wear a mask so I did, but no one else was. This place has a few thousand flat makers and an office so I asked the location of the marker I was looking for. In and out in a few minutes. BB didn't even get out of the car so no walk for us today.
By sitting eating at the Black Bear and sitting in the hotel all AM we no longer have enough time to stop anywhere else. I decide to take the back roads to I-5. Long road.
At 3 PM local, bus dispatch calls me before I can call them. No Duluth bus but one going to Beloit WI. Now we realize we are running late.
Cheapest fuel is at the Loves in Patterson. It is a zoo, only one driveway for in and out and travel trailers are blocking it. We do buy food, don't remember what it was. Then we buy Cherries from a vendor in the parking lot. They try to talk me into buying three baskets because they are ready to close down (?) But we have no way to keep them cool so we stick with just one.
We arrive at the shipper. There are four other drivers there picking up. We talk to three of them. The first two said they first met about 20 years ago in Roswell delivering buses. The other person I talked to, I had talked to before but don't remember his name. This third driver had been down the road already when he was called back. Instead of leaving tonight, he gets the weekend off. Then puts some miles on one of the electric buses before he takes his original bus somewhere first for a demo before he delivers it.
From this 3rd driver we find out that we are driving electric buses to places like Vancouver WA and San Antonio TX. So they are not all being flat bedded. I will need to talk to dispatch. I'd be interested if there isn't 750 / 11 hours between charges.
From the first driver we learned that we may have lost most or all of the AL contract. I will need to check on that. The 2nd driver didn't have much to say.
All four drivers were heading to the hotel here in town. THAT got BB's attention. She doesn't like driving until 7 PM (9 home time) and then eating right before we head to bed. Now that it has been a week, I don't remember where they said they were staying.
We end up taking about an hour at the shipper, some times we are in and out in 15 minutes.
And the trip out of town takes an extra hour. It is the Friday of a memorial day weekend. I am reminded several times that the other drivers are already shut down for the night.
There is still room at the hotel to park a bus at the hotel. 'Our spot.' Once we check in, we walk next door to the Taco Bell. They lock the doors behind us, an hour before the time on the door says they are to close.
1 PM / 11 AM local - Tulare CA - Comfort Inn - leave hotel
1:15 - Tulare CA - Black Bear - food
2 PM - Delano CA - Cemetery
5 PM - Firebaugh CA - roadside phone call
6 PM - Patterson CA - Loves - fuel and cherries
6:30 - Livermore CA - shipper
10:30 - Rocklin CA - Comfort Inn
10:45 - Rocklin CA - Taco Bell
Loadboard
US - 195
IA - 29
MN - 7
WI - 1