BD69: The Owner Operator Chronicles

When I was a youngster, one of the jobs I was doing was to clean the brass in a bar. Yep, a bar. This place would make a hooters blush. You would be surprised at what beer can do to brass. Any way, my weapon of choice was Brasso and wool buffing pads and for the really nasty bits 0000 steel wool. After the chemical clean, would use jublee kitchen wax to finish them. This stuff was not plate, it was solid.

 

Steel wool/brilo pads are great of you got smooth stiff, however they don't get rid of the pitting. Only way to solve putting is with sanding everything down. Heck even spending half a day sanding didn't get all the pits and gouges out, but those tanks are only so thick so didn't want to go to deep.
I've never used brasso. I'll have to keep that in mind for when i pull the headach rack to do it.

Also made an executive decision. Got a couple good dings in the rim, figure from tire guys over the years. Gonna head to a used truck parts yard in the near future and pick up some decent ones, shine them up at home before putting them on. The truck has steel inside ones anyway so instead of buying 4 like i planned for the inside drives, ill buy 6 and have 2 for when i get to the trailer.

 

TRP brand new from the KW dealer for $170.00 each. Trying to polish old pitted ones sux! Made in the USA forged.

 

What dealer?

 

Any Kw dealer in Illinois. They had a coupon out about a month ago for $180 each. I don’t know if it’s still a good coupon or not but like 4 times a year they mail them out. I beat the sales guy up for the extra $10. Lol

 

Have never used brasso on aluminum. Not sure what it would do. Don’t think it would cause any problems.

I miss the Old Dupont rubbing compounds.

 

With anything new you got to test it. The back side of the headache rack is a perfect test location.

 

Man, we got hit with a pretty big storm yesterday here in the PNW!

I showed up for my Friday pick and discovered they had a particular product line go down earlier in the day, my load just so happened to be for that product.

I started asking some of drivers sitting there how long they had been waiting and they said since early in the morning. There were 14 trucks ahead of me waiting for that product.

The shipping department offered me $250 to wait and load Saturday. Instead, I checked the load board and found a load posted for right there with product that wasn't effected by the down line! Plus, the broker was desperate to get someone under the load Guy paid me $2,400 to go 426 miles.

Kind of felt bad for the other broker for having to cancel his load...okay, no I didn't.

Anyways, I was loaded within 45 minutes and headed out for good old Wal-Mart DC in Hermiston. My appointment time was for 12:30 p.m. yesterday, showed up at 11:30 a.m. They docked me right away and I was out of there at 12:30 p.m.! I guess miracles are still happening LOL.

Since the load pay covered me well, I just deadheaded home. Which was really fun pulling an empty 53' dry van in that storm along the Columbia River Gorge into & through Portland yesterday.The wind gusts were pretty significant.

When I got home, I checked my shorts just to make sure, everything was clean

 

Ya the weather terrible here also. Got down to 59 last night. Had to break out the flannel pjs.

 

That storm dragged it arse across the western states.
On and off rain and sleet plus cold.