THE ADVENTURES CONTINUE - DFO gets a truck and hops on Schneider's IC Choice Program

No but in a somewhat-related-but-not-helpful-to-you-at-all note, anyone ever tried the showers at the Beckley plaza?

 

http://www.thetruckersreport.com/tr...ventures-continue-dfo-gets-truck-hops-65.html

There is some info on that based mostly on #s from January.

 

Woo that was a close one, almost made my 666th post in my own thread, but luckily pawned that one off in someone else's LOL.

180ish miles from delivery in VA, then I'll run the short load across to the other side and then head home. Truck pulls unbelievably well with this heavy load but MPG feels pretty crappy (I'm guessing 6.2ish, just a gut feeling from watching the fuel gauge drop compared to how it does with lighter loads). Luckily my tool should have arrived so I can hook up to the truck and see if anything is "off" this week. I get some inactive codes showing up from time to time, but no check engine lights since replacing that exhaust backpressure sensor a few weeks ago. It does seem odd that the inactive code shows up though, but I'll know that more once I hook the computer up. I know the truck does regen sometimes, I saw it dumping blue smoke pulling a hill last night, the smoke is from the diesel fuel spit into the system by the doser injector. You can always smell a Cummins ISX when it is pulling a heavy load in front of you, lol. Marking its territory.

I wish I could fuel right after delivering the second load, because that will have been around 800-900 miles of grossing above 75k. Very curious about what the actual mileage is. But, don't want to crap on a paycheck with an end-of-the-period fueling, so I'll just wait I think.

 

Here's my 2 cents on that subject... like CW said, as much as you can, lol. For SURE don't jump in it with nothing, like some guys do. Some make it just fine starting out like that, others have some issues and crash and burn right off the bat because they just don't have anything to cover surprises.

I had a little over 5k in my "truck savings" when I started. I used a good portion of that right off the bat after my first few days out, when I had to have the DPF cleaned and replace some parts. Over $1000 right then and there.

If you don't want to work on the truck yourself, but could pull off about $5k in savings, I'd say go for the new truck route. You've got a warranty to cover labor and parts cost, and that $5000 gives you a little over a months worth of payments that you could make should you need to. But by NO means is that a stopping point for a savings account, even with a truck with a complete warranty.

If you could pull of 10k or more for savings, but still don't want to work on the truck yourself, then you'd probably be ok getting a GENTLY used truck in good condition.

5k worked for me with a used truck because I do a lot of the work myself. Parts are expensive these days but labor rates... holy crap $120 and hour and you know how long it takes to troubleshoot some of this stuff, and you better believe you are gonna get charged for every minute it takes for something to be fixed. Labor rates will CRUSH YOU and deplete your savings in no time, then you have no money left over to make the truck payment while you were down for a week, then you're in big trouble. Of course SFI says they are willing to work with you and maybe set up a "payment plan" for major repairs if you can't cover it completely yourself, but over my dead body will I go into ANY kind of debt with SFI, other than my weekly truck/maint/insurance payment.