THE ADVENTURES MK III - Still doing it my way

OP SUCCESS



Now comes the tricky part of getting out of here. Maybe there will be a load out when I wake up, or maybe I'll have to spend a day at the truck stop. Who knows?

 

Truck ran good last night. Couple things I still need to do, probably gonna get the alignment checked, and my fuel primer plunger is sticking out, looks like the threads that let it lock down are worn out and it's not holding tight. Bungee strap should keep it closed for the time being. Hopefully a quick fix... but probably not a cheap one being a CAT part lol. I was worried the sealed beam headlights would be really crappy, but honestly they did a good job. I'll have to see how the perform when wet. Since I drive at night a lot I really like being able to see.

One thing I'm going to have to be careful with is not getting a ticket for the jake. I didn't realize how loud it was until I had the sunroof open and let it rip pulling off into town to deliver in Chesapeake last night. I'm so used to the one my ISX had that you could barely hear. I had big concrete walls on either side of me and it was echoing off the walls and the face of the trailer where the stacks turn out. I think I'll leave the mufflers on for now because it would just be asking for it if I pulled them off.

Speak of the sunroof, that thing is freakin' AWESOME. I thought it was kinda gimmicky at first and thought I would never use it. But having the windows down got old real quick because of the thin whip antennas that are mounted on the mirrors. The whistle and "thwack" they make got annoying. So I cracked open the sunroof and was really surprised... no wind noise and still a good bit of fresh air. Nice.

APU still running constantly, still need to play with that. On the upside, it does run well and hasn't given me any trouble.

My big inverter works sometimes and other times it doesn't. It whines about a short... not sure why. Need to get that figured out so I can use my microwave. I haven't had a chance to load up at Wal-Mart yet, but I will use the fridge in the truck as a regular fridge, and turn my cooler down to where it will freeze and keep some frozen stuff in there. One of my resolutions for 2015 is to eat a lot healthier and not spend so much on crap food from truck stops.

Looks like a good number of these shippers aren't open back up until the 5th, at least from what I can see on the load board. But, no sense in grabbing a cheap load or taking a long deadhead just because I want to be moving. Patience will pay off I guess.

 

Just for some ideas on new numbers with an older used truck...

It looks like my new weekly deductions from SNI for insurance/plates total $120. I have all of the little insurances for stuff if it gets stolen out of my truck, etc., those weren't more than a few dollars each week so I said why not and continued with it. I also have all the buy-back insurances that they offered. My KW is valued at a little over $30,000.

To transfer my plate from the lease truck to my KW cost around $40.

I got paid $70 for going to Charlotte and doing the yearly training/return-to-work check ride thing. It was probably just for the yearly, I don't think they would normally pay for the RTW check ride, but they were just combined into one thing.

On top of purchasing the truck I have spent about $3500 on various things:

PM service with oil change + labor
Replace leaking wheel seal + top off lost oil in diff (expensive!!) + labor
4 new batteries + labor
Replace coolant filter/air dryer element + labor
New brakes/drums on rear axle + labor
Replace exhaust elbow at turbo, both elbows below the stacks, and around 8 feet of flex pipe, did that myself
Replace exhaust flex tubing on Espar heater, did that myself
Bought a fire extinguisher
Paid sales tax to NC DMV (around $950)

Probably more that I'm forgetting but that's the main stuff so far.