Adventures in Trucking

Some of you may have been following my story.

I've been driving for a couple weeks now. I work for a small company in Indiana. We make runs up and back from Chicago picking up motorcycles, atv's etc and then deliver them to bike shops.

Usually our runs are smooth. We drop off some merchandise, we make a run for Chicago, sleep there, pick up in the morning and then back to Indiana. We drive on hwy's, through small towns and down a few state roads.

This week started out normal enough. After making three stops (about 300 miles) we made our way towards Chicago. While transitioning from the 465n to 65 N on ramp, something interesting happened.

While I was making the smooth turn around the on ramp, the truck started shaking and it felt like my front tire blew. We were going 25, maybe 30 and I pulled over to the left as soon as I could. After getting stopped, I turned to my trainer and asked if he thought it was a blown tire, he said "probably, go look."

And look I did. I got out of the truck and wow was it cold. To my left was a cement guard rail and on the other side of that, a 50 foot drop. /shudder. Back to the task at hand, On the driver side, I saw no problems with the tires....hmm ok. I checked the driver side, no problems.... that's odd. No blown drive tires either. Then I leaned down to my left and peaked under the truck and there laying on the ground was my tie rod, broke clean off.

My trainer called the wrecker and the he came and towed us off to the shop. We spent the next two days at Stoops. They sure take their time. I never did get to make that run to Chicago. The owner ended up making that double run. Darn, I thought I was going to make good money this week.

The upside, I met some interesting truckers. They all had stories. Most of them came in with DEF problems. DEF, what a waste of money.

I also learned from my fellow truckers and the stoops mechanics, that, had I been going 60-70 while the tie rod broke, it could of been 'bad'. "How bad?", I asked. "Dead or in the hospital."

Dodged a bullet.

 

Yeah, I did a pretrip. I didn't notice anything out of the ordinary.
If I had stared at the spot long enough, I don't even know if I would of seen anything.

 

What does a binding sound, sound like?

like a strain?

Nothing was different and I don't know if I would of heard anything over the noise of that freightliner.

 

for anyone wondering, that was a $1200 bill total.

 

Yep. One guy in there had some trouble with his clutch and trans, 8k....