Instant O/O and Load boards

OH man, Dino... what is it with everyone's A/C's going in summer?! I really do feel your pain. You're about 46 miles away, anything I can do? Do you have a fan at least? I hope that stop has a lounge inside during the day

 

So I had a pretty terrible week with luck and repairs, but very busy with lots of decent loads. Somehow one of my best and worst all in the same week.

Monday I had that cookie dough which really sucked and the $735 repair bill for the tire, batteries, and mudflap. Also my exhaust developed a hole somewhere underneath and truck got loud. Thursday I loaded in Mulberry FL and when I hit I-4, all the air in my secondary dumped. Pulled over on the shoulder and could hear the hiss but couldn't for the life of me find it. I had to call roadside repair, and it was just after 5pm so after hours rates applied .

Well the guy came out and he had a heck of a time finding it too. Turned out to be one of the skinny ones under the cab going to the tank or so he said. $275 for the repair. I considered myself very lucky under the circumstances. I lost almost 3 hours there and drove through the night to get the load delivered ontime, or near it.

However, when I hit Fancy Gap in VA going up the first 8 miles, same thing. All my air dumped in the secondary. I kept my RPM's up and made it 3 miles to the next truck stop at least this time, but found I couldn't switch gears with the selector on the super10 as I rolled in. I was really mad, it seemed the fix had failed. Well that guy came out and found the leak, but it wasn't the same spot. He fixed it and I fired it up but the air didn't want to climb. Shut it off and heard the leak again. Went back down under the cab and it wasn't even what he had just fixed, it was the splitter line too. He had to leave twice to get a part that would splice that skinny of a line.

Well it turns out that the hole in my exhaust was blowing super hot air onto the lines and melting them. The flex pipe had split and gnarled up. Said it was a 2-person job, probably take an hour and a half and about $150 more dollars. Well I didn't even have the time at that point. He pulled the airline bundle apart and rerouted the splitter a different way and pulled the rest of the lines back. Said that should buy me a little time. Also he said my transmission seal was leaking on him when he was down there. The rear was leaking too. So great I'm paranoid now too. Anyway, that repair $145.


Then I went and delivered, went around the VA scale going north. That was a hard fought 15 miles of low bridges and hills and traffic. I'm pretty sure it was worth it though because I had fueled since loading and I was probably a couple hundred pounds over right then and probably all on some axle or another. That scale on I-81 is a money maker, pulled me in twice before. When I get to Linville (Harrisonburg area) I take a turn per the GPS a couple miles from the drop. It's steep and twisty. Well it got steeper and I lost my momentum, even downshifting didn't help. I sat on the hill and put it in first. All it did was lug and try to stall! I couldn't climb it even in first gear??!!! After 3 or so tries the smell of burning clutch was in the air. I was certain I was out of business, the tranny went or something terrible. Got out and everything at least looked ok. All I could do was coast backward down the twisty hill until it was much less steep. I really can't believe I even did it, there wasn't going to be any pull-ups if I messed it up. Trailer went fine but tractor got pretty close to the ditch at one point. I was able to gun it and build back up to 5th gear by the time I hit that same spot and just ran it from 1700 rpms and by the crest of the hill it was down to about 1100 but just squeaked over. I'm still pretty amazed that a loaded truck won't climb a hill in 1st even when starting on it, but I guess there has to be a point where it won't. I'm guessing it was about 13% grade at that spot.

Today (Saturday) I loaded coal in PA to go to NC. Trip was supposed to be 7.5 hours, I loaded by 8am and had until 5pm to deliver. The weather was all over the news that the east coast was supposed to be thunderstorms all day (no wipers ).

PA and MD were uneventful, but VA of course was wide open and pulled me in. "Driver you're 1400 over on the drives!" This scale is really humiliating because they basically yell at you from across the street. I pulled in my 5th was already as far towards the cab as you can get. My tandems don't move. I looked at the load under the tarp and sure enough they had loaded it completely toward the front of the hopper all lopsided. I tried to bump the brakes backwards hard but not a single rock moved (coal). I grabbed a box and jumped into the hopper to hand-move it back. They yelled REALLY LOUD over that speaker at me... no go.

So I do the walk of shame through the tunnel to the other side. The officer informs me that they were OUT OF TICKETS. Well instead of catching a break, they had the nerve to tell me to get comfortable, they just sent another officer over to the police station some miles away to get more!

So I lost another hour there and got an $80 ticket. After pulling out of there I was now in beltway, summer, saturday, hurricane weather traffic. Bumper to bumper for an hour, and 35 mph for yet another.

5pm came and went and I was still 50 miles away. I was sure I wasn't going to get to go home and would be sitting at the receiver until monday. The place did look pretty empty when I got there and the scalehouse was locked up. In the end another guard made some calls and I got unloaded and didn't even weigh in and out. This coal is filthy stuff and I left there in blackface.

Finally got home at 12:30am Saturday night/Sunday morning.

...but I have about $4600 in gross receipts

Would have been nice if I didn't spend $1150 in repairs last week

 

After seeing what is involved with the airline fixes, I think I could give that a shot. I need a lesson on standard sizing and how to do it, but my impression was it was a lot like fixing a sprinkler system link... cut and clamp.

I did have the truck gone over when I bought it, along with 3 others I rejected. Those things were taken care of, but now 5 months later the landscape has changed.

A red hot go lol... yeah you could say that. All I can say is I've survived another month!

 

Ok well I have an announcement. Even though the building up would have been good for 20 or 30 pages in the thread, out of respect to the other party I've kept it on the downlow, and we didn't want to queer it by talking about it either.

5Mouths2Feed is now officially leased on and left last night on his first Freight Pro run, power only taking a reefer trailer up to IL to get in position to pick up a trailer in NE.

I have to say in the end this was the easiest lease-on in the world. The man did everything on his own, has his own insurance and tags and swung fuel up there since the fuel card didn't arrive Friday like it was supposed to.

I wish him a smooth trip! I was dragging my feet on the things I needed to do to get him going so I have to play catchup tomorrow on insuring the new trailer and getting the rest of the info to Eclipse. He was bound and determined to leave out, even booked his own load. I think this is a good thing, put a little fire under my butt. Plus I could use a day off!

Freight Pro is officially 2 trucks. Got another in the works, should know more tomorrow as well.