Abilene Motor Express....A New Place To Call Home

Dang, just missed the cutoff.

 

Dealing with Knight Breakdown is a fustercluck.

Driving through Arizona with a VERY time-critical load. Suddenly, my dashboard starts dinging at me. Little red STOP sign alert with an engine block in it. No other warnings.

I pull over, check fluids, everything's fine. Turn key off to let truck think about what it has done. 10 minutes later, turn truck back on, hit the road, alert comes back.

I have some very firm opinions about driving a $250k vehicle when it is telling me to STOP. I dunno what's wrong with it and I don't want to make it worse. After all, I live here. So I pulled off on an off-ramp and called breakdown.

And let me tell you this dude was SUPER unhelpful. Absolutely refused to send a truck out. "We can't send a truck out unless we know what's wrong with it." Which seems kinda bass-ackwards to me. Wanted me to crawl around with the hood up and tell him what was wrong with it. And I know it's unfashionable of me, but I ain't qualified to fix this thing. I can drive it well enough, but anything more complicated than putting coolant in the reservoir or checking the oil and you're gonna need to hire a professional who knows what they're doing.

After 45 minutes on the phone, he finally told me to drive 40 miles to the Loves in Williams, AZ. Told me I'd be sitting there until Monday at the earliest, when they would either get Loves to look at it or have it towed to the closest KW dealer in St. George, Utah. Asked him why he couldn't send a truck out and he told me that he could get in trouble for sending a truck out just to do a diagnostic. Asked him why we couldn't get someone at Loves to look at it once I got there, and was told that Loves doesn't have mechanics on-duty on the weekend. Just tire techs. I think that sounds super questionable, but he assures me that he tried to send a driver to this Loves two weeks ago for a weekend repair and they didn't have a mechanic on the weekends. Guess I'll find out once I get there.

Called HQ and explained the situation. Only way this load is gonna arrive on time now is for a team op to grab it. Presumably they're arranging a rescue for this load, but I've been wrong before.

 

Driving through louisiana on I10 today and eventually this really huge oversize starts getting on the hwy with a bunch of escorts and three state troopers running ahead to block the on ramps until the oversize rolls by them so nobody can get on and I guarantee cars would be stupid enough to cut the oversize off trying to get ahead if they weren't stopping them from getting on. Guess they were in a big hurry to get it down the hwy cuz it was on my behind the whole time. At one point a trooper rode next to me hit the siren to get my attention and motioned for me to go faster. Well, I was already going 71 as fast I could go, I shrugged my shoulders at him and told him I couldn't go any faster, lol!

 

Snap!!!.

Sitting until Monday too.

 

I got a replacement DPF 2K miles ago. I'm thinking that might have been a hail Mary.

 

This bucket is usually pretty good about telling me when the soot level is high.

 

{shivers}