Missing a Gear: Pulling the Hills of Western PA

What @mickeyrat said. I started orientation February 2 and started the account three weeks later. Plenty of freight. It does get heavier around holidays- Memorial Day, July 4, Labor Day, and now headed to Thanksgiving & Christmas- which usually includes a week of "mandatory 34's", meaning you take a restart instead of your regular two days off; essentially an extra day. But at the same time, extra drivers are also brought in to help cover, so regular drivers aren't necessarily busier. I look forward to getting past these holidays so that things settle down and go back to normal.

But yeah, the Walmart accounts are grocery, and people eat regardless of season. With some variation: a lot of hot dogs went out before July 4, and we're doing a lot of turkey runs right now....

 

Hey @mickeyrat - You still looking to go LTL, or did you already make the jump from SNI? Haven't been keeping up here lately...!

 

So I've had a problem with my OnGuard malfunctioning and giving me the "service vehicle" screen lately. Not always, but occasionally I was spending a chunk of each day without it, and then it would start working again. I had stopped by the shop twice, because it was throwing two diagnostic codes each time it happened. But, both times I had a mechanic take a look, they started the ignition and everything was fine. The second time, the mechanic suggested that I write down the codes so that even if it corrected itself, they could check it later. I wasn't concerned, because I knew it wasn't anything wrong with the truck - and obviously, there's no problem driving without the radar. I know a lot of drivers would love to lose the OnGuard, and while I have my moments of wishing the same thing - I'm not fond of it slamming on the brakes because a car cuts in front of me, or when a car slows down quickly before turning onto a side road - I've become used to the adaptive cruise control, and I like being able to see the speed of the vehicle in front of me and the distance between us. Also, even if it doesn't affect the truck, it just bugs me when something is broken.

Anyway, once it had happened again, I pulled the codes and went to the shop to ask about it. This time, the mechanic said that since it doesn't affect the truck and isn't a safety issue, they wouldn't look at it until the next PM. Since I just had a PM done last month, that could be a while. Fair enough, but it still bugged me. So I went online and googled the codes myself. And guess what? You know how they tell you to turn the key and let the gauges sweep before actually starting the engine? Well, that actually matters. It turns out that my problem can be fixed simply by letting the gauges sweep the way they're supposed to. I always knew it had something to do with letting the computers set up before the engine starts, which makes sense to me, and I always do it, but until recently, on the rare occasions when I didn't, it didn't seem to make any difference.

Having said that, I'm still not sure exactly what causes the OnGuard to malfunction, because sometimes it seems to happen even when I'm careful to start everything up the right way, and because it just recently started happening when it never did before. So I do think there's some sort of glitch happening somewhere - but it also seems that the likelihood of figuring it out is probably pretty slim, and it's hardly worth the time to bother with it. But having armed myself with knowledge from a Google search (which incidentally, sent me to a post on this forum - good job, TruckersReport!), I now know that when the OnGuard malfunctions, I can easily fix it by shutting the engine off and going through the start process of turning the key, letting the gauges sweep (and giving an extra couple seconds until the OnGuard sets up), and then starting the engine.

Anyone else have this issue?

And, I happen to have time to update you all with this trivial information because I'm on an outside load today - picked up at an outlet store this morning (two hour live load) with a load being returned to the warehouse. And when I got the warehouse, hoping to get unloaded in an hour or so? They've got one trailer from an outlet store that's closing that looks like the employees just took everything in the store and threw it in the trailer - so it's a slow process to even figure out what's there as they unload it. And then there are two other trucks ahead of me, so I may be here all day by the time it's done. My DBL wanted me to ask if I could just drop the trailer because he's tight on drivers today, which would be fine with me because if this one load is all I get done today - with its 9 loaded miles. That's right: 9 - it's going to make for a lousy day.

But no dice. The warehouse is sympathetic and working as fast as they can, but they're renters on the property and can't allow any dropped trailers. So...

If I think of any good jokes, maybe I'll post them...

 

@Pintlehook Interesting; that's something I've never heard. I'd be interested to know exactly what's happening when the gauges sweep, if anyone knows...

 

Wow. It's been a while... I may need to post a little more often, if for no other reason than it'll make it easier to find this thread when I do manage to show up here...!

Anyway, an update on my indicator lights and OnGuard malfunctioning. I finally got it fixed a couple of weeks ago, and no problems since. It turns out that it wasn't a problem with not letting the gauges sweep, like I had thought (for a while, anyway); in fact, it wasn't anything I was doing at all.

I finally dropped my truck at the shop when I went home one week, armed with a list of diagnostic codes that kept popping up and a description of what was happening. Essentially, sometimes everything would be fine, but other times my ABS light and that red triangle with the "!" inside of it (still not sure what that's for... ATC? PVC? SNI? AWOL? KP?...) would stay on, sometimes for a few extra minutes, and sometimes as long as the engine kept running. Either way, the OnGuard would malfunction and I'd just use the regular cruise control. Which was fine, but the problem kept getting worse, happening more often, and even though the truck was running fine and everything seemed to be in order mechanically, I was starting to wonder if something else was going on that would eventually strand me somewhere. So I explained everything to a mechanic, went home, and when I came back a couple days later, the truck was fixed. No more problems.

After a day or two, I finally had a few minutes to stop in the shop and ask what they had found. The mechanic on duty (the same guy to whom I had explained everything when I brought the truck in) pulled up the work order and said, "Oh yeah - that was a pain. I kept driving it around the yard, and the indicator lights would come on, but then they wouldn't, and we couldn't isolate what was happening. Then your DEF indicator started showing no DEF, which we knew wasn't right, and the computer was trying to shut everything down."

At this point I stopped him: "Wait. What? I wasn't having that problem." And he continued, "Oh, yeah, it started doing all kinds of crazy stuff. It turns out the ECM (Electronic Control Module) was bad, and once we replaced that, it's all good."

And it has been - no problems since I got it back. But glad I took it in and insisted that they look at it when I did. No idea what the ECM is, or exactly what it does, though... This may be why I'm just a steering-wheel-holding company driver...

And that reminds me of a story: It's really nice having a shop on-site, because anytime I've got a problem or even a question about my truck, I can just stop in and ask. And if something needs taken care of, I drop it off before I go home, and it's ready to go when I come back in. So anyway, I was walking through the shop a while back on my way out to start an assignment, and one of the mechanics was lying on the floor in front of a tractor; looked like he was taking a nap. Curious, I asked what he was doing. "Just getting a look under here," he answered. I crouched down to look myself, and saw some damage on the front end.

"Looks like the truck hit something," I said.

"Yeah. The driver says he hit a 'deer'," he said, making air quotes with his fingers as he said "deer."

"You don't think that's true?" I asked.

"Well," he started, "Maybe one of those yellow deer."

"Yellow deer?"

"You know - the pole shaped ones."

"Ah," I answered, finally getting it. And as I walked out, I heard him mutter, "Heck, I don't know. Might have even been one of those car-shaped deer..."