Hopper, Dump O/O's & Drivers

Sorry i'm a tad late highside,but Mrs.Bullhaulerswife purty much nailed it. High humidity and being loaded when it's still warm will do ya in everytime,especially if it has to sit for long at all,even though sometimes the sitting on the trailer can't be avoided for one reason or the other,but,if you can, avoid letting it sit too long, especially over the weekend(did that with a load during high temp,high humidity ONCE,never again!). I will say this though,and i can speak from experience,that was the BEST $25 you've ever spent,iv'e been known to fork over a little cash myself trying to get a hand unloading that stuff,corn gluten pellets are just as bad if they are loaded hot too. You hauling out of an ethanol plant,or a distillary? I haul mostly out of whiskey distillary's and you really have to keep an eye on how much syrup they add to it. I keep an aluminum extendable threaded truck-wash brush handle with me all the time for poking holes thru the stuff so i can get it started flowing,but sometimes it just takes a good shovel and some sweat,or in your case,someone elses sweat.

 

I try as much as possible to avoid hauling ddgs in the summer, getting to old for that much work.

 

It's not an ethanol plant, but definitely not a whiskey still either. I think they produce alcohol for the production of other products.

 

Loaded in Atchison Monday night and didn't get to Texas until today. You drive slow or are you one of those 250 mile a day get to the truck stop early type of Truck Drivers?

Do you still have to wait until after 3PM or second shift before they start loading trucks? I got their the night before and was first in line only to find out they didn't start until that afternoon.

 

What, did you stop at every other truckstop or what?

 

I ran it until December of 1996 when my new Pete came in and sold it to another owner operator that was leased to the same company I was at the time. The truck used one gallon between oil changes, no leaks at all. It was a clean and well maintained truck. The whole time I had it I never messed with the pump. I sold it to this yeahoo and we met up going to California one day and he passed me like I was sitting on blocks and then out pulled me going up a hill out in New Mexico the whole time telling me on the radio how good it run and he could run with the big dogs. He blew the engine about three months after he bought it from me and he was out of the owner operator business. Last I heard the truck was repowered and made into a dump truck and he was driving a cement truck around Wichita, but that was 14 years ago.

To begin with I pulled about a 84" High sided Wilson Hopper with it so I took the fiberglass air scoop and cut it down so it was even with the top of the trailer, got pretty good fuel mileage with it. When I went pulling a flatbed later on the air scoop became a dog house.

 

That DDG sounds as bad as Calcium. I use to haul that stuff out of Cleburne, TX and from a place just outside of Sallisaw, OK. By the time I got it to Purina in Guymon, OK it had set up like cement in an old ribbed sided Wilson hopper. Every time I had to get in the trailer and dig, dig and dig. The vibrators back then wasn't much help and when I got done I looked liked Casper the ghost. I will never ever again in my life haul that nasty stuff.

 

Anyone know anything about pelletized switch grass. Had a load offered to me today.

 

BigMike,they are probably gona be closely comparable to alfalfa pellets but they more than likely are gona be a tad lighter,but thats just a guess,never hauled 'em myself. A while back, I missed getting a dedicated gig hauling them that would have been based 9 miles from my house but the plant foreman that was trying to help me get it said their gov. funding fell thru,imagine that. They were actually going to be selling 'em to an electric company to use for alternate fuel, said they were planning on burning them in a furnace.