1 box truck to St Paul MN (delivered/refused)

1 trash truck to Ortonville MN

... spending the night at Owatonna MN

Left home <> 7:30.

1st stop is two hours down the road at a rest area near Lewiston.

2nd stop is in La Cross at the dealer where I pick up. It takes them three tries again to find what I am looking for. Then everyone knows, not sure why it doesn't come up in their usual searches.

We check the truck out, it has extra parts in the back I tell the office about. Then I get back to the truck to move the parts so they can look at them and realize they are just the lights that were used when it was moved as a chassis. So I kept them with the truck.

Eagles. Lots of eagles. South side of freeway, between exits 2 and 3. I was just able to glance over and counted three dozen just in the main trees. Also saw them other places within a mile or so of there.

In La Crosse, the former Quality Inn is now the AmericInn and the Quality Inn is across the street.

... on the topic of hotels, we had not been getting our rewards points correctly. So I was in email contact with them and someone was supposed to call. And I posted about it on FB. Finally today, BB re-read the fine print. 5th paragraph, 2nd half ... 'limit four per customer.' No one else had seen that, customer service never said anything about it. ???

At pickup, I had over a half a tank of fuel. I'm guessing the person who broke down thought they had enough to get to the drop. I thought they had way more than enough. BUT, the gauge drops fast.

3rd stop is the Pilot in Inver Grove for fuel. I have no idea what size tank or what mpg I am getting. I put in 10 gallons and the gauge hasn't moved so I put in two more with plans on adding more before I drop.

... but it keeps going up and up. It is still over a half a tank at the drop. I likely put in $25 more than I needed to. Oh well, still made plenty on this trip.

This truck is going to an area that I used to hear of daily. It is an industrial area of the city where we used to pick up a lot of freight when I worked at as a dispatcher/manager for a trucking company. Lots of street names I used to hear of but had never seen.

So I am looking at all the interesting things and miss my cross street. There were two street signs and I only read the first one. But this street dead ended so it was a very short opps.

When I get to the drop a block later, I see I have a call and a text message from the 3rd party of this truck. The fun begans.

4th stop, the drop in St Paul. There are address numbers on some of the doors but none that match my BL and no name that matches my BL.

The text I got asked that I send a picture of my truck ... OK. I do and then call. Then they ask me to send more pictures. With this customer, we are NEVER to call the drop. The 3rd party does it all.

They even called the drop to tell them I was sitting in the parking lot ... they were un-loading a truck so it would be 10-15 minutes. (when that truck left, it dragged the tire chalks with them until they drove over them and broke them)

A little wait, and then a guy comes out to the truck with the license plate ... he's ready for it ...

BUT ... "I'll have to call, but I'm likely going to refuse this truck"

Seems it has the wrong box, and the wrong name on it.

After a 15 minute or so call on his part, he refuses it.

I call my 3rd party contact back and let them know. They are not surprised. They want to know if I can take it back to WI to the shipper. Not today. I have another truck lined up this time.

I would like to know what happened. I looked at some paperwork in the truck and this truck was picked up four weeks ago from the shipper. So about that long at the shop. How/why did my contact realize an hour before my drop that something was wrong and she wanted pictures?

My dispatch doesn't care. I was at the right address, not his problem. I'm to do what ever the 3rd party contact says.

They make a call and get the drop to accept the keys, without signing for it. And I can leave the truck where it sits. Someone should be happy, they get to start out with a 1/2 tank of fuel. Maybe me?

From there it is about a half hour to the office where I pick up my next paperwork. As I am pulling out of the lot, that dispatcher calls and said the paperwork is ready and they will be gone for the day ... I am now running late.

It is after 2 PM and I haven't eaten since breakfast. We stop at an Arby's in St Paul. As we walk in, the cook and a customer are yelling at eat other ??? By the heat of the conversation, I'm guessing the yelling has been going on for a while. Not sure why no one told the cook to stay out of it. (maybe they knew eat other?)

Our food was OK.

Quick stop at the office and we are heading south on US-52 for the 2nd time today. We did have a conversation about just heading home and starting over tomorrow. Then we did the math and realized the sun now doesn't set until 7 PM ... not 4 PM. We got time ...

At the shipper, everyone is gone. Not a problem unless we have issues. Today we do not.

The lot is full but only three sets of keys in our lock box. I see my other company has lost their 2nd box now too. For a while my two companies had two lock boxes and we seemed to get all but a few stray trucks. Now we are back to six major carriers.

Found the truck, not issues except that every time BB would get near the truck an alarm would go off.

This is a front end loader so for this company I need to go to Kasson, in the wrong direction, the scale the truck.

Kasson Kwik Trip. Truck scales legal. I'm good.

... BB is not. She is in pain, can hardly walk or stand up strait. Sitting is a little better.

From here we decide to stop at the Quality Inn in Owatonna. Closest cheapest hotel. And we know they have parking.

55 mph. Trip is going to take a little longer. Also, before we had picked up the truck we had looked at the GPS route to the drop. Lots of lefts and rights on small roads. I had not looked to see how "I" would do it. This time I will do it like the shipper says. I-35, I-494 and US 12 right to the shipper. I don't need to write any of that down. I've been on all those except the last few miles of 12 and when I see the Welcome to South Dakota sign I make a U-turn and come back a half mile.

BB lays down as soon as we are in the hotel. I run to Culver's to get soup.

Load board

US - 149

IA - 1/0

MN - 1

WI - 1