The adventures of 'Team Klingon'

Can't kill a jeep! There's a reason they aren't cheap anymore. Re-sale on them is incredible too! I sold a 78' I completely rebuilt for $15,000 though it had a lot of motor work and custom stuff added it wasn't necessarily "decked out". I have seen some of the more fancy ones go for much, much more!

Back to breakdowns, you guys are probably pretty familiar in which way you must approach Central and in what order. Our approach was to always stay very positive with them and always remain professional. It didn't happen over night and we had to attend several meetings up the chain of command but eventually sat at Jon Issacson's desk and got stuff taken care of.

Not only did we document everything but my wife put all of it together in a 5 page short story or report for everyone to read. Copies went out to every level and desk at Central along with as many mailboxes we could obtain at Volvo. We also made it a point to put in our story how much money Central was actually loosing having a husband/wife TEAM out of commission. Numbers talk!

Good luck guys...

 

Well here's our tale of brokedown woes;
My husband is a lease operator for a company, no breakdown pay is included. He has a 2012 International just leased this January so it is not old. He just spent from 8/15 to 9/4 broke down at 2 different International dealers. He took a swapped out load and finished the 100 miles on it, p/u mty at yard and on way to shipper it broke down the second time, he went ahead and p/u that load and took it to the yard and then went to the 2nd International. He is a lease operator, the work was under warranty, he and his student stayed in the truck maybe one day the 1st time and 2 on the second, all the other days they spent at our expense at a hotel. First trip was the turbo, the second was the fuel pump, which on the fuel pump they started to look at it on Friday and it wasn't out of the shop till the next Saturday a week later. Every little cheap nit, picky part they could replace was done and the pump by the next Friday, as it ended up having to be replaced after all, was not even started to be put on. The On Guard system also had to be looked at because it keeps going off at every pillar, beam, white line, merging car, etc that it can find. They didn't even know that that had been added to the work order on Wed and if husband had not called and talked once again to the service tech, it most likely would not have been worked on at all for another week.

His paychecks were in negative numbers, they forgave one weeks payment on lease but it was being added back to the paydays at $103.00 a week, so even that is not really given away free; one week they didn't even post a pay stub, then the next week they had all the tallied up weeks negatives added up. This week still in the hole and it will most likely be the same next week; hopefully maybe in a couple of more weeks he will get paid.

All the extra money to replace missing weeks of pay and hotel expenses came from money we had for a roof to be put on and the a/c replaced this month. I don't know what we would have done otherwise if we didn't have this extra money ahead, let him stay on the street corner I guess.

He was not pleased with the dealers at all. He saw at the 2nd place where they took 2 different trucks ahead of him after his already being there 3 days waiting his turn. He felt that this was because his work was warranty work and the others were having to pay for repairs out of their pockets. He has raised more cain and able with International and his leasing company. All I can say is they replaced small items so I hope they last a longtime. The On Guard system is a total joke, they can't even calibrate it to do right, it was worked on the 1st time in February and had to be done by hand, drive down road goes off reset it some more.

I may start a line on this later after all the feathers are settled some.

He had a Volvo in the past he drove as a company driver that when broke down we found a couple of good dealers to work on, it sure didn't take more than 3 days at the most to get fixed. Only on one occasion did we stay in a motel in WI; the rest of the time it was our choice to stay on the truck, they were accommodating in getting it out of the shop at night where we could sleep in it. But I guess all trucks have their tales of woe; it's just the dealers that you have to deal with that makes it worse.

 

I sure hate that you are down again. I don't have a clue what we would do really, hehas thought about throwing in the towel too.
I hope you get repaired fast but once again it is the weekend and it sounds like a lot is wrong. I will keep you in my prayers. What state are you in now¿

 

Yup know how you
feel. I just can't believe how long it takes to get work done now in shops. They have to run diagnostics. First and wait to be told what to do to fix it.
he would've gotten a loaner but didn't expect it to break down twice that would have helped just don't? Know what ropes to jump thru to get that done
the motel will at least have a shower and tv. When he was down his trainee would walk all over the place so they were getting some exercise at least and some shopping done.

 

Hey that is great, hope you can keep it going and get it into SLC, I don't blame you for not wanting to get into another 3yr deal. Just hope there are no more problems.

No it isn't cold yet but it is soon on it's way, hubby said he put on long pants the other morning, I think IA. We have the heating blankets that plug in the cig lighters we did use in his volvo, they were pretty warm with another blanket on and it saved on idling then. The only thing it would drain the batteries down low and you'd have to get up in the wee hours and turn truck back on for a little while. He has the bunk heaters now.

Here's keeping fingers crossed and prayers that all goes well and maybe by November everyone will be out of the pits.

 

THANKS for keeping the tread up-to-date. I don’t like most of what your saying, but I do hope at each post your going to say “everything is working perfect”


This thread is so ‘real world’ and how it’s going to be sometimes (by sometimes I mean less often), it’s the kinda thing us researchers need to know.

THANKS AGAIN