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

In 1976, driving a million dollar motor coach for the President of a large trucking company in Charlotte NC, we broke down in Quebec Canada. He jumped me and my reply, "I ain't a fu5king mechanic", I won the battle but lost the war. After the cuss fight was over, I did not have a job.

 

They left the load on me. Apparently they would rather piss off a broker than piss off one of our actual customers like Boar's Head or Hill-Phoenix.

So it's gonna be a little late.

 

Seems crazy to have a 7 day operation and 5 day shop

 

I can just imagine JB dropping off that big green Volvo at the HQ… with a note of “engine light is on”

 

Whenever that stop engine light comes on in my truck breakdown sends me straight to the dealership no matter where I'm at. It's happened 5 times in the past 6 months all over the country. In fact they even had me towed there the first couple times.

Apparently Knight has a lot more faith in the loves shop than they should because you are almost certainly going to the closest dealer.

 

Still waiting on a diagnostic from Loves. Called Knight Breakdown this morning to set it up. Dude on the other end of the phone was a different dude than the last time, so he started asking me the same questions the other dude did. Told him to look up the ticket from Saturday. There was silence on the phone for a bit and then he said "I show one here from the 15th."

Yes, my dude, that was Saturday.

Apparently a huge chunk of the problem is that the Knight and Swift trucks have computer doo-dads that allow the phone techs to read the diagnostic codes. But Abilene does not have that feature, so they are left completely bereft of any information which would allow them to make a decision that won't get them in trouble. So they just default to "tow to dealer" for Abilene problems they can't identify.

Dude was positively trembling with the desire to tow me to Utah, because his system says that St. George, UT is the closest KW dealer.




The 2nd closest KW dealer is in Tolleson, AZ.



But he didn't wanna send me there because its "further away".

I managed to talk him off the ledge and at least have Loves run a diagnostic before he set up the tow. And I think I convinced him to have me towed to Tolleson instead of St. George if it comes to that. But his resolve seemed shaky, and I'm not convinced that my explanation of "air miles" vs. "road miles" landed in fertile soil. We'll see how it goes.

DM called earlier and asked if I could give him a rough ETA for when I thought I might be at the receiver. I told him "August".

 

Back in my Navistar days I was driving a show truck to Salt Lake City from Southern Texas. It blew the radiator in Albuquerque. No parts at the local dealer so they had me have it towed to SLC. This was quite a while ago but it was $10,000.00. Put it on my company issued Platinum American Express card.

 

I would have been pushing for a tow to a dealer first. Love's don't do diagnostics, at least that's what my company breakdown says. If it's something minor like a forced Regen, TA/Petro can handle that, but anything more complex and we go straight to the dealer.

Only time we use loves is for tires and mudflaps etc.

 

No better feeling than whipping out that company card and spending stupid amounts of money!!!!