The journey begins - purchased a truck.

So - as you can see, the 14' wide load above. This was parked in Oklahoma at a convenient spot to reassess life in general.



Above is lift off via the crane, it's a fuel tank that a generator (V12) will sit on, to power a plant for the city water works, to pump sewerage. As I said to the guy when he explained it "NO ####!" - he said - "EXACTLY!".



Limited visibility. I'll explain later, but 33" on both sides of the trailer offers no rear visibility, aside from the hastily fabbed and attached extension mirror on my drivers side.



Oil sample - bottom to top in age, and I finally changed it yesterday . . . just because. 50,000 miles on this sample.

 

Been busy . . .

Thanks to @Old Man for finding me the previously pictured 14' wide load. In fact, I'll take this moment to thank him for everything he's done for me from the time we met in OKC at the Petro when we were still running with ODFL. Take note - fellow humans, if you can help just one person along the way who is willing to be helped, then you're a good little human bean.

Loaded it in Tulsa Tuesday afternoon, drove it from the crack of dawn Wednesday, offloaded it Thursday am. @Old Man supplied me with his trusted escort, I ordered the permits the previous week, prepped the equipment, my good old machine shop took an hour out of their time to rig an extension mirror for a fisheye lens I bought for $5 at the RV parts place, and off I went.

There was a LS guy loading a much bigger piece on his RGN, Tom was his name. Very helpful. I asked him how he would secure it, and did accordingly. He helped me, I helped him chain down after I was loaded and out. He helped me back the trailer back in afterwards, off the street, according to sitting duck policy - as you can see, it's right at windshield height and black. Backing in was difficult, couldn't see much at all.

Escort arrived the next day. Professionally dressed and equipped. I'd sent him the routing already to look over and he was familiar with it. Behind me on 4 lane, to block lanes as needed, ahead on 2 lane to warn of tight bridges, shoulder obstructions, turns etc. We ran CH 19 most of the way, which came in handy as locals warned us of a bridge outage that wasn't noted on my routing. He went ahead and checked it out - sure enough, no go.

Called OK DPS and rerouted the permit. Continues on permitted route, which was 90% backroads. Met a 16' wide on a 2 lane and safely negotiated past. Missed one turn and had to find a gravel crossroad to turn around in. Aside from that, the trip went relatively smoothly, leaving at 0630 and arriving at 1500 on a 320 mile run.

100% CB communication was key. With my right steer on the fog line, the load hung on the zipper, slightly over. As the roads narrowed, there were several times I had to come to a complete stop to avoid collision. 90% of the traffic was attentive and forgiving, the other 10% could get you into serious trouble. Couldn't relax for a second - 110% attention the entire time. I found myself relatively exhausted mentally after a fairly short day.

But - I can do this.

The money wasn't the primary objective - in fact, far down the list. The experience is what I need, and the qualification jump.

I'd go back and find it, in this thread - there was a guy that said "If you need to ask questions on securement, then you shouldn't be hauling flatbed" . . . Well - how you like them apples?

Cash wise, about $5.60 TTT loaded miles. $3000 on the board less escorts and permits, left $1800 odd to me. MPG? Who cares, but 5 MPG was duly noted! And they certainly got their $5.60/mile worth of sheepskin sucking nervous professionalism that day.

 

Oil changes and sampling.

So - intrigued with the oil chemistry deal, I installed an Filtration Solutions bypass filter on the truck for about $900 when I bought it. Dogged by some mechanical issues that required a full drain, results were stunted. However, the last such event was December, 53,000 miles ago, and I've been sampling every 10,000 or so till now.

As you can see by the previously posted sample results, the oil is relatively clean. I dumped it yesterday for a refill, because I'm still a little old school and paranoid about it. Still - changing at 15,000 mile intervals, I've saved 3 oil changes this year alone.

I like the idea. The sampling alerted me to increased wear metals leading to rods and mains - and lets you know a host of other conditions should they arise. To date this truck has never seen a tow hook. Touch wood.