1 trash truck to Bloomington IL (delivered)

1 roll-off truck to Hopkins MN (Wednesday)

... spending the night at Rensselaer IN

Breakfast is going to be leftovers from last night. This fridge works, the meatloaf is frozen solid. So I need to go down and get a paper plate so I can nuke the food, we brought it home in a styrofoam container.

Enough out of normal things this AM so we do not get going at 7:30. We still do not have a plan for the next leg.

1st stop is across the street at the Flying J for fuel. I put in 30 gallons and as I am pulling out I think I should have put in 50? 30 gallons was the right math, not sure where the 50 gallons came from. But I should have put in a little more as the gauge was under 1/4 by the time I got to the hotel last night.

Rain. Not much going on in the fields today. And lots of work left to be done in this area.

One scale yesterday, one scale crossing today. I do not get flagged in.

My fuel gauge is just about to 1/4 as I am getting close to Bloomington ...

I have memorized the route in so I did not write anything down :) It is a few more miles but all I have to do is take a freeway exit, a left and the a right into the drop lot.

2nd stop is the drop. I follow a mechanic into the shop and he locates my contact for me. It's raining so the inspection is done outside and the paperwork is done inside.

Nothing on the load board has changed since yesterday with all trips losing us money.

So ... I call the local dispatcher to see what else they have. The have a truck coming back to the cities (home) about three hours from where I am. Miles wise it is the best option so we take it. BUT ... because of how this company pays, doing back to back trips does not pay as well as matching a solo trip with them to trips with other companies. That is they way it has always been, I just haven't done back to back trips for them without a 'home' night between for a while.

3rd stop is the Steak and Shake here in Bloomington. We eat inside, the shipper closes at 2 PM eastern/ 1 PM central and it was noon when we were talking to dispatch. No way it would happen same day.

Not too far down the road, a trip from Indy back home shows up. The time to get to the truck would have been about the same, but we would have been on all freeway and the paid miles would have been more. Timing.

Glad we just didn't commit to one of the short ones just for $$ to get us back home.

This is a cross country trip, after a few miles we are off the freeway. Roads go from bad to worse. The surface in most cases was not bad, just narrower. Until we were down to 5 ton roads with no center line. Gravel in spots, tared in others. Not sure how fast Google thinks people are going to drive on these roads but it took us a lot longer.

Off the freeway it seemed more fields were not combined than were combined. And it is raining.

Away from the big cities, there is not much for chain hotels. There were a couple of cheaper hotels but they would add miles to the trip. We had the time but decided against a 'cheaper hotel' and stopped an hour short of the shipper.

Looking at the paperwork now, in the hotel, we see that we can do an after hours' pickup. Dispatch had said during business hours only. And that email had ended up in the junk folder so we did not see it until way after hours.

We also see that it is not the same shipper I picked up from last time. Last time I picked up there I wrote that 'nothing looked as I remembered it.' It wasn't the same place, it shouldn't have.

4th stop is the Comfort Inn in Rensselaer. This place allows check in's at 2 PM so we can check in when we get here.

So tonight we have lots of hotel time, it's raining so no walking.

Later we go a couple of miles down the street to a Mexican grocery. BB had seen on line that there is also a restaurant there and has to as the checkout clerk. They hand her a menu.

We order food to go. Good and lots. La Fiesta.

When we come back to the hotel, we stop at the front desk to pick up my paperwork from the email I had forwarded to them earlier. Opps ... I hadn't looked at it. Dispatch usually sends me one page. This dispatcher sent me 8 pages. I don't need it, I don't look at it, I have extra's of everything except the main page. Glad the hotel is not charging me for it.

Load board

US - 280

IA - 13/11

MN - 17

WI - 8

Tomorrow ...

It is about an hour to the shipper. Then 500 miles home so IF we make it home, it will be a long day.