Van Wyk Inc.

Some weeks are good...others well not so much...and then every now and then you can get on a sweet setup...I once ran for about 3 months doing nothing but NW loads to Seattle...nice out and back trips....I generally don't blame dispatch for my trip out ( I got mine out of sheldon and picked from a list generally) my trip back...well If I was being loaded out of waynesboro there were somedays I wanted to choke cory and josh.....If I got dispatched out of sheldon for my return trip MOST of the time it was a decent load...but sometimes I got just crappy low paying freight...going coming back from the NW I generally had half way decent stuff...and didn't have a lot of time wasting deadheading to play fetch (well unless it was produce season then you get to go to the apple orchards and that can be really time consuming picking up at 3 different places...)...I was generally happy when I was full time.....but I went out of my way to be available when my 34 was up, and generally took what was offered (dale knew what I liked and how I operated)...and it probably helped a ton that I was only 9 miles from sheldon and would pop into the shop to see what was available...
Now I am part time...but drive a textbook full time at ISU in Ames...Tim, Mike and I all agreed part time would work as long as it was only when I was available and on my schedual...so to me that means quite a bit of playing fetch or running to chicago... but it will pay better than any other part time job...

 

Ah I see, so the shine wore off...

What type of equipement is giving you guys so much trouble? I'm looking around to see what can see.

 

Usually it's the cummins motors..plus sometimes when getting PMs done at an outside contract shop like valley fleet or eddies its a nightmare trying to get Doug or Andy to pick up the phone and approving something like tires. My truck has 6 drive tires that are soon in need of replacing, and the remaining 2 are spares....so maybe I will get to Sheldon some time in this century to get that taken care of.

 

I'm having trouble with my clutch in this 2013 Volvo, or I should say it's an easy fix but the dealer in Omaha is a dullard. I had a new one installed at this dealer at about 42,000 miles and all seamed ok for a couple of months then all of a sudden my clutch brake was nonexistent and I sounded like an England rookie trying to get it into gear from a dead stop. I talked to Dean and he said it should adjust itself since it's a hydraulic clutch. Well about 2 weeks ago I was in for an oil change in Sheldon and I finally made a big enough stink that they pulled the inspection plate only to find that they put in the wrong clutch. Jim & Dave worked for about an hour to get it adjusted so I could get going to Seattle. All was well and good until about 30 miles from Rapid City then it started slipping something fierce so I stopped into the Volvo in Rapid where Tom took great care of me to get rolling again. I talked to Andy the next day and got it setup to put it in to Volvo in Omaha while I was on vacation for 10 days. Well I picked it up Thursday about noon and it ran fine up to Dakota City & back down to 680 in Iowa. But once I started pulling hills it was still slipping so back to Omaha I go. Well come to find out the never replaced it like we told them, they only bled the system & readjusted it. So I was down Thursday night and when I picked it up Friday I was told they replaced this clutch with they very original one the removed earlier. They assured my they "repaired" it and it would be fine but pulling the hill on 64 east of Saint Louis it started slipping AGAIN so Andy told me to get back to Sioux Falls once I'm done in VA so they can take a crack at it. Also found out on Friday that the slave & master cylinder were toast as well so they replaced those too. These motors are also getting a turbo fault code which requires a software update package, and if it still throws a code after that the turbo needs to be replaced. I had the update done last week so we'll just wait and see how she holds up. If it turds out I hope it's before I get to Sioux Falls so we can kill two birds with one stone.

 

So...how many of the members on this forum have had the pleasure of picking up a load at Niagara Water in Allentown? I ask because I've been seeing a lot of Van Wyk's in there when I'm delivering the spring water tanker loads.

 

I usually do fairly well...last week I went to Storm Lake and fetched one going to Concordia, then bounced to Springdale, AR, got a frozen load to Front Royal, loaded right out of there for Plympton, then got a back haul out of Franklin, MA to Leavenworth. Was home for 22 hours before I went to Leavenworth. Emptied in Leavenworth and went right down to Olathe picked up headed to Front Royal again. So I'm nursing along on recap, I called Cory and told him I need to go straight back to Iowa this week, I've got to be home about 3 days this weekend, I'm shot. Once in awhile I get a stinker of a week. That's trucking though. In July I saw my house once when I had THE restart. I'd like to get back to being home a little more, I hardly recognize my wife lately.

 

Sure quiet on here anymore

 

Shhhhh..........we're napping!