Picking my own freight baby! My journey to & of being on Schneider choice, the Adventure & Numbers!

As a company driver beyond just Shakers being cheap and rattling apart they broke down on me all the time.
I was in the shop endlessly.
There was one time I wrote about on here when I was with Crete my Shaker turned off on me in the middle of the George Washington bridge. When I would start it back up it would only drive a few seconds before shutting down me on again. It was the worst and scariest experience of my driving career by far.
I was in a shop for nearly two weeks once with Crete because they couldn't figure out how to fix my truck and they had to get guys from Detroit Diesel over.
If anybody knows Crete you'll know they don't like to pay breakdown pay and they'll stuck you in another truck.
In that period of time they had zero extra trucks because soo many of them we're all breaking down.
Before jumping the gun thinking someone being "elitist" or turning up their nose think twice.
If anyone drove a brand of truck that broke down on them over and over again and almost caused them to be in an accident they would not say pleasant things about that type of truck either.

 

All trucks break down.. and there is no perfect or best truck.
I wanted to get a new truck because I wanted at least amount of problems as possible after being a company driver in Shaker and being broke down and in the shop all the time.
After 30k miles my clutch crapped out on me and that by itself put me in the shop for a week and my $1100 flease payment doesn't stop.
I can't blame Kenworth for that as it wasn't them.. it was Eaton. Apart of the waiting was Eaton wanted Kenworth to send them all shorts of info and pictures about all the details to make sure it was an Eaton fault and not a Kenworth fault. Eventually it was made clear the failed aspect was due to Eaton and their warranty covered it.
There ain't no shame in sharing that as I have been opened with many aspects of my driving experiences.
If my Kenworth turns out to me a POS like all the Shakers I drove I'll surely blast Kenworth also.
If you had a bad experience with a Kenworth that's fine I respect that.
I had terrible experiences with Shakers during my time as a company driver.
Between two companies I was in 3 different shakers..
In each one they all leaked water when it rain. Two of them would have cabinets pop open when I'd go over bumps. Of course all of them squeaked and rattled all the time.
I've had speakers break. Had lumber support break, the seat air bag break. AC broke on me twice. I can just keep going on and on here.
When I joined Crete they made me go through training again in a Shaker with around 80k miles and during my training period that truck broke down twice. It was some kind of a DEF issue where the truck kept thinking never any any DEF. I remember one time going down the road the truck cut back power and the max speed went to 45 MPH or something ridiculous like that.
My worst experience was driving down I95 going over the George Washington Bridge and all of a sudden I got a red flashing check engine light and moments later my truck turn off on me. Literally my truck was stopped in the middle of the Bridge. I thought for sure I was doomed (gonna be an accident) and I got on me CB and everybody was cursing me out. When I'd start the truck back up it would run only a few moments before shutting down again. If anybody knows there's nowhere to pull off around there.. no shoulder or nothing man.
So what I did was I let my truck roll on the downward side of the bridge and aimed my truck to end up between the first exit and the right lane and put my 4 way flashers on.
Such scary crap ugh. What supposedly happened was sensors went bad and my shaker thought I had zero coolant so that's why it shut down on me while driving.
There soo many times I broke down and was in the shop I lost count.
Another fun story was when the Crete shop couldn't figure out how to fix my truck.. I sat for two weeks that time. They had to get Detroit Diesel guys over to work on my truck.
The OC was flooded with drivers all having their shakers broken, a couple Prostars too.
Crete didn't have any extra trucks to give to drivers and Crete HATES paying breakdown pay but they were forced to. During that time Crete came up to me and offered me extra money to go recover an abandoned truck near Buffalo. They sent me and another driver in a company van up there leaving from the Carlisle Crete OC.
The plan was to send Crete drivers all over to start getting trucks.. from recovering trucks to sending them down to other OCs for trucks because soo many were broke down and they didn't want to pay soo much breakdown pay anymore. Anyways I went to recover the truck and the shaker I went to recover crapped out on me also.
I took pictures on my phone.. I'll never forget this lol it show 9 fault codes on the dash.


There was another wonderful time I broke down during a terrible winter day in Iowa.
Here's some of my pictures of that tow job:




I won't bore you guys with anymore of my Freightshaker breakdown stories because there's more but you get the idea. It's one thing the interior is cheap and uncomfortable but being unreliable and breaking down all the time is the main reasons I can't stand shakers from all the crap they put me through.
That's a huge reason why I went with a new truck and not another Shaker.. man I was just soo done with having endless problems. If someone went through the amount of crap I went through with a Crapcadia I'm sure they wouldn't have anything nice to say about that brand of truck either.