Taking the plunge. My journey as an O/O.

The invoice cost of the warranty was 5750. They covered 11,136 dollars of a complete engine rebuild and EGR cooler replacement. Strictly invoice-wise, that looks like a financial win.

However, in real dollars, the savings were not there. I estimate that I lost about two and a half weeks of time (above and beyond a two week reasonable timeframe for the work that was done) due to delays directly related to TruNorth. That's 7.5k+ miles based on my driving averages. While 7.5k miles does not lead to 5k net, it's not that far off either.

I also spent a lot of time in a hotel, because I had no idea how long it would take to fight through TruNorth's administrative process. I thought we were 'almost done' about five times over the last three weeks of hotel stay. That's on me, mostly, but if it weren't for the delays from TruNorth, that hotel stay would have been much cheaper.

If I have a transmission or differential problem, I will use the TruNorth policy again, and it might be worth having, if that service isn't drawn out too long.

But so far? I am very much NOT impressed, and will not be buying a aftermarket warranty again.

 

Nice. Are you planning on selling it and getting a new truck before the factory warranty dries up, or will you run it until those maintenance numbers start looking a lot worse?

 

Well, dropped off the last of my tax and patent documents at the new storage unit. As I move stuff from Atlanta to Columbia, the Atlanta unit will get downsized, and this unit will get upsized.

Right now, all this unit has in it is all my truck documents, and some of my patent documents. Next home time I may rent a small uhaul van and move a bunch more stuff.

 

I'm not toting them around. I have them in storage

Yes, it's a bit annoying when I do have to move them, but I'm happy with paper for now. Maybe a future upgrade I might go more digital.

 

Update.

Finally got an answer about where my 13k+ tax deduction went for last December.

Because it was paid by Crete out of my maintenance account, they chose to float the bill and paid it in late January.

So. I have over a month of lost income in the 4th quarter of 2019, and the deduction will be a part of the 2020 tax year.

Because I had 301 days of full perdiem and 16 days of partial perdiem, as well as a month of lost income, and the hotel stay was counted as a deduction in 2019, it might well be that it will be a tax benefit to me overall, as the 13k+ tax write-off might have been overkill for the 2019 tax year.

The accountant's back-of-napkin estimate over the phone was that I should be getting back a substantial part of what I paid in quarterly updates, even though I paid nothing in the fourth quarter, due to the expectation of a 13k+ $$ deduction on top of lost time.

We shall see.

 

Another Update, This one on the truck.

Went to go get the truck back from the shop this afternoon. Everything looked good, I drove it back to the terminal and parked it, then set Opti-idle to...

And set Opti-idle to...

And set Opti-idle to...

<sigh> Opti-idle cannot be activated.

I asked Freightliner to change the idle-off timer to 10 minutes for non-opti-idle operations so I could do a decent trailer PTI with the truck running. They warned me that Opti-idle might not work right if they adjusted the idle-off timer, and I told them that if that ended up being the case, return it to what it was.

Clearly they either flubbed, or were not listening.

At this point though, the truck no longer has an idle-off timer at all, so I have reliable bunk heat and cooling for tonight, though I had to get fiddly with the bunk temperature controls. Hell on fuel economy though, and I strongly suspect that the DEF system is going to be complaining by morning time.

Going to have the Freightliner tech in the Marietta Yard shop look at it tomorrow morning while I do office crap and make sure my permits are up to date. I hope it's simply a setting.

 

No, I definitely didn't lose money, I simply have to take the deduction for the engine rebuild in my 2020 taxes, rather than my 2019 taxes.

I do not know what I made yet, but SWAGGING it, I'm guessing the number will be around 40-50k. However, I did finish sending the accountant all of the documents they requested.

I hesitate to be firm about earnings numbers because I really do not understand business taxes.