What if it Snows?

Hey now you best be careful throwing words like that around Willy-nilly. Thems could imply work!

 

The c word is all too familiar in my world. If I don't get to put the jewelry ( what I call the C word) on at least 100 times a year I wonder why not.

 

Of it snows, improvise.

 

I envy that Fox, hear that mouse way under that snow. It's too bad Im not there to yell "BOOOO!!!" when it's in pre-jump mode.

My favorite snow weather strategy is to run really hard end of Feb through to first week Nov at the latest. Piles of money in the bank.

Go home while some other poor driver takes on all that horrible snow. Keeps the truck nicer too.

 

Other priorities. November may be a good month to get back at it for a bit to take some time away from the property.

 

Mud sucks. I WANT it to snow.

I came real close to making the dreaded phone call to a bulldozer operator this morning. A tow truck wouldn't have stood a chance to get me out.

I had a "power only", bobtailing in to a wind farm to hook to a customer's trailer and pull it to their yard. I did two trailers yesterday as rain started to set into Oklahoma. Challenging, but not too bad.

This morning was different. The overnight rain turned the red soil into a Vaseline mud. I arrived without a soul in sight at daybreak.

I used the "mud room" in my truck (the passenger seat) to don my steel toed rubber boots. Got out and surveyed the approach to the trailer I needed to hook. It had already been a 10 minute struggle to get my tractor turned around. From where I parked after the turn around I had to back up 80 yards in the Vaseline, then hit a wooden crane pad that was 8" tall. The trailer I needed to hooked was far enough on the pad I had to get my steer tires on the wooden crane deck about three feet to make contact with the kingpin.

I tried backing, but it quickly got squirrelly. Forward and backwards, sliding sideways. After about 10 minutes trying to back that 80 yards with about half the job done, I stopped and set it in high range reverse, then poured on the throttle at about 1800 rpm's. My rear drives hit the crane pad and my front drives simply bounced in the air and came spinning to the deck bay bhe time my steers hit the deck. I timed the release of the throttle and engaging the clutch perfectly. I came to rest, aligned with the kingpin, with another foot to go.

After hooking up to the trailer and securing the load, that's when it got difficult. All the heavy weight was on the trailer tandems. Hardly any weight on the drives.

I thought running forward in second at 1800 rpm's would get me through. Not a chance. Sure, the trailer tires cleared the crane pad by 20', but I got stuck.

I worked hard for another 30 minutes, going backwards and forwards to try and work my tractor drives onto higher ground. My theory was that if I had my drives on relatively level ground I could power the heavy trailer axles up the slope.

Nope.

Backwards and forwards I went for the next 30 minutes, debating whether to call "Mr. Bulldozer" to save my ### (at $3000). I WAS making progress. Each time I spun forward my tractor was enticingly closer to the level surface of the Vaseline.

Finally I backed up as far as I could. Then put it in 5th and roared it up to 1800 rpm's with my steers turned hard to the left. Slowly my steers topped to the "road" surface. My spinning drives made it, then about 15 seconds later the spread axle trailer tandems made it. I kept it in the same gear at 1800 rpm's until I made it to the dirt county road that had plenty of gravel on top.

That's when it occurred to me...

...bring on the ####ing snow already!

 

3000 bucks for a Cat? Would they have to haul it a long way?
We have some 6s, 7s, and 9s...maybe I better revise my price list?

 

That's the base price. They haul the Cat to location, charging a really tall number for the miles, then charge for offloading, pulling your ### out of the soup, then of course reloading and securing the dozer and miles back to the yard.

I haven't been stuck to the point of making that dreaded call, but last year eight of our drive away drivers got stuck in axle deep Vaseline. The dozer made BANK.

Why did they all get stuck? Because the oil company had precise turn by turn directions out of the frack site. Major penalties if you go off route. The obvious best choice wasn't an option, so down in the soup eight trucks go. Every driver got detention pay. The customer was also paid all the towing fees. Now IF a driver had two brain cells and one functioning synapse, they would NEVER go down into that swampy stretch of Vaseline. BUT if they had used their noggin and got stuck "out of route", that comes out of their pocket.

In my case I would have had to pay. It's my truck.

 

Wow, that's a whole different kind of deal than I'm used to. Totally different kind of hauling too.
I can see where we're making our mistake...we just charge for hauling the Cat and the time it spends on the job. If it's a good customer, not too far out, and it's a long enough job we might cut some slack on the hauling.
But to charge to take it off the lowboy and to put it back on? Man, if we did that you'd be able to hear the customer screaming in the next county over.
LOL...I guess we're old fashioned. We figure loading and unloading is part of the deal.