Running with JCT, Part Deux

I know what cali has to do with his commentary. 40 ft kingpin to centerline of rear axle. If any other state has a shorter limit for a tandem trailer I'm not aware of it.

 

Sometimes I almost feel sorry for the Army, almost. Even the Coast Guard makes jokes about the Army.

 

Well besides GA, Cali is the only state that really messes with you on length. Or at least that has been in my experience anyways. But shouldn't have to worry much about it and it is the weekend and the way I am headed the scales are normally closed.

 

^ True.

Bridge law by state.

 

None are shorter, but many are as short & he may well be illegal in states that allow more length as well.

Just because Cali is the shortest doesn't mean it's the only state with a law on the books.

 

Iced tea through the nose hurts. You almost owed me a new laptop keyboard with that crack.

 

Try driving through a Tennessee scale with your tandems at 42'. They treat you like you kidnapped the governor's daughter while carrying 40k of meth.

 

Well get ready to laugh at the rookie driver here...

I ran out of fuel Wednesday night. 13 miles from my receiver. My fuel gauge is beyond helpful, usually setting on E after 400 miles or so. The dashboard display indicated I was getting 7.7 mpg, which I stupidly followed. At the time I ran out of fuel I estimated I should've had 35 gallons left in both tanks... Again rookie mistake.

So I run out of fuel. Get her pulled over to the side of the road, throw out the triangles and send in a breakdown message. In the meantime I went on the hunt at a local Kroger and Walgreens for a container to put diesel in as I came to a stop about 500 feet from a gas station that sold diesel. Unfortunately none of the stores had a suitable container.

Breakdown calls, wants to know if they need to dispatch out a wrecker with fuel. I agree. I was planning on being about an hour early, so if I can get some fuel in the tanks I might be able to squeak into my receiver 30 mins late max.

Wrecker shows up. He has about 20 gallons of "fuel" to get me started. After dropping some fuel in the tanks we fill the fuel filter, and after turning her over it fires right up. While I'm getting the info to fill out his EFS check the truck shuts down... and never starts again.

---

Long story short. I get towed to the Kenworth dealer in [Redacted] at 3AM. Sat for the next day and then they finally came to look at it. After being towed into the shop they discover I have a #### ton, and I mean a #### ton of water in my fuel tanks. We finally calculated I had about 17 gallons worth of water in my fuel tanks.

So they siphoned the tanks, flushed the system and threw me 30 gallons of fuel to get her primed and started. Get whisked away from the stealership with a hefty EFS check receipt in tow.

As the late evening wore on to early morning it became more apparent that while yes I did run out of fuel, the replacement fuel that was brought to me by the wrecker consisted of mostly water. At least that is the conclusion I and the mechanics working on my truck came to.

Now I'm not one to point fingers. In fact it is completely my fault I ran out of fuel in the first place and put myself in a position to rely on a wrecker to get me fired back up. However, I think it is perfectly reasonable to expect a roadside assistance crew to bring you legit fuel to get you rolling.

The guys at the shop said its worst case of water in fuel they have ever seen (which I'm sure is salesmen speak for we gonna stick it in your butt without lube nonetheless).

That said. The truck is running again, now with a working fuel gauge. The final bill at KW was around 15XX.

Now I'm not posting this for sympathy. I figure everyone will probably get a good laugh out of my rookie mistake, but since everyone is posting what they are up to, I figured I might as well share this mistake I'm never gonna forget.

In other news... Waiting on a tyson load and heading west with her. Big miles, which is great because lord knows my maintenance account is crying right now.

unloader

 

If it makes you feel any better, I wasted 6 hours (eternity of downtime for a team) and paid $150 for a Thermo King tech to show me how to use the reset button (under the bunk) for my TriPack. This was after a month of not having use of the APU. Yeah.

Edit: Here's a better one... my 2nd seat pulled into what appeared to be a snow covered parking lot with tire tracks to turn around, but was actually somebody's back yard. That resulted in a tow bill of $225 that we had to pay out of pocket because we didn't want to wait for a "network provider" since breakdown couldn't give us an ETA & the police were there breathing down my neck to get the truck out of the yard.

 

Between unloaded and stiles wow. Glad you are up and running. Give me my uneventful week any day lol.