Hypothetical Question

You would have to repower the load.

HOPEFULLY,you could find somebody that would not take advantage of the situation.

You should always have a back up plan for these kind of situations.

 

it depends on which hose breaks. if it your truck and you are running on your own. then you might be screwed. shop might be lying about the part too. maybe to try and score a big pay day off you.. on the load. you will most likely have to pay for it out of pocket. I don't see the insurance paying it. unless you have good cargo insurance that covers anything that happens like break downs...

 

My game plan in the event of catastrophic failure is to find the nearest Ryder or Penske with heavy duty trucks, rent one, and finish out the load. But first would have to deal with my own broken down tractor before getting a rental. The two options there are - can it be limped to the Penske, Ryder yard and parked while I finish the load? If so, that's what I'd do. If it needs to go on a hook it gets towed all the way back home, not going to risk being at the mercy of an unknown, untrusted shop. After recovering the load with a rental and finishing it out there will be lots more decisions to make, keep trucking with the rental or turn it back in. When my motor went down almost two years ago I ended up renting a Penske and finishing out a time sensitive expedited load that had to deliver ASAP. I ended up only 3 hours behind my original schedule had things not gone south. I parked my tractor at the Penske location. I was under a round trip load from TN. Finished up offload and reload then back to TN for final delivery. Dragged my empty trailer back to the house and dropped it then bobtailed the Penske all the way back to NC to pick up my tractor and turn in the rental. Bobtailed it back home sweating bullets over the coolant getting into the oil but I made it without using a hook. All of this over the course of 3 days. It sucks when something like this goes down and costs a lot of money but if you have a general game plan, follow through that, it's not the end of the world. The idea is to keep the losses from going out of control. If you do the rental there is also the option of keeping it and running to make money but at the time mine when down, things were cooling off freight wise, and rentals are much more expensive than buying brand new. I didn't want to find myself rolling for the sake of making Penske money but none for myself. My truck was down for about 3 weeks being inframed I chose to stay at home.

 

like rollincoal said, Penske. I have an account set up with them ready to go all I have to do is call and go pick up the truck. Its costly but not as costly as loosing a customer.

 

This can save your bacon. It pays to network and know a few people. There's a short list of folks I deal with from time to time that I would make a truck available to in an emergency and not try to get rich with it. I've never had to depend on my network to bail me out, but surely that day will come sooner or later.

One thing I have in my favor is two trucks. I have had to cover breakdown loads with my good truck at least twice that I can think of. The good news is that, since we run mainly regional, that usually involves less than a full day to get to the breakdown site with the good truck.

 

Having an account already set up with Penske is very wise. If its an ugly breakdown that will leave you out for awhile it may be possible to have the towing company bring you the rental right on the spot. Around here they get around $105 an hour from the minute they leave there shop. If its possible you might as well have him bring the rental if there is one on his way he can pick up. Luckly I never had to do this. One can greatly reduce his chances of this happening with a simple PM routine and some spare parts and tools but yes there is always Murphys law.

 

Defintely one of those things you dont like to think about. Having a solid backup plan just in case greatly reduces the stress when it does happen. Speed bumps happen in any business, stressing over it when they do solves nothing. If your running the same lanes often its good to have some contact numbers.