An old man's career goes flat, Snackbar moves to open deck

Got an easy peasy, lemon squeezy load out of Brunswick.





Delivers 1st thing Monday in Clute, TX, and I have time to get just outside town and get a 34 before delivering.

 

I honestly think our shop is taking lessons from former Poly mechanics. While giving my truck the once over yesterday before taking the wife out to our favorite restaurant, I noticed 2 bolts missing on my APU case, on the lower piece...there is only 4 holding it on...I had noticed that it was rattling a lot louder since they did the service, now I know why. Bought 2 new bolts and washers for it while I was in town and put it back together. Then this morning, went to leave to pick this load up and NONE of my trailer lights would work, not even the brake lights or 4 - ways. Spread the ground pin, nothing. Took the test light to my pigtail, everything worked there. Pulled the front cover off (it has the gladhands and socket mounted to it-the pigtail socket bolts wouldn't back out - because they're a nut and bolt thru the cover plate.). Checked the back side of the socket, and it had power to all wires. Undid the connector that is wired to the socket, it had power just before I was about to call for road service (it was 0-dark-30) and all the lights came on. The whole time they were out I had a "check" idiot light, and it was still on when everything started working. Shut the truck off, waited 30 seconds and restarted and the "check" light was out...until I hit the 1st big bump, then the "check" light came on, but my lights were still working. After getting loaded, I was gonna take it to the Love's or T/A in Brunswick, but whatever was amiss fixed itself because it hasn't had an issue since I pulled out of the shipper. This is a Pratt trailer, so who knows where the problem is. If it were a Manac, I would suspect the main junction connector (Manac uses copper wire but aluminum connectors and they corrode bad)

 

I saw it listed on the truckerpath app, haven't been to that one...will shoot for it if I can get there early enough.

Clute sounds familiar. Is that one of the places we used to pick up bananas for Shaffer?

 

Our new trucks have the TK. All the older trucks like mine have Carriers. When Moore bought those Anthems, they had TKs, and those did the same thing yours did. That and the little spring latch broke within the 1st year on a bunch of them. I had a TK on my last Mack at Moore, any time I saw a loose bolt, I put some silicone sealer on the threads before screwing them back in. Seemed to help keep them from vibrating out. I was gonna try thread lock but was afraid it would make them too tough to get out when it came time for a service or a repair.

 

Got empty 1st thing Monday then back to the Angleton Love's for a little while. A little after noon they sent me a load that picked up in Houston going to The Dalles in Oregon. They wanted it there by Thursday, but with a 3+ hour wait for a load, then a 4 1/2 hour wait to be loaded, it made that delivery date impossible. I have some sort of electrical rack that was pre-tarped by the shipper (in a real flatbed tarp, not a blue utility tarp). The shipper specifically said no straps!!!! Only chains, and you can only chain thru the forklift tubes on the shipping base it is mounted to. It is roughly 7' tall and they forbid any straps going over the load to keep the tarp from ballooning out. All they let you do is bungee the sides of the tarp down to the trailer. The front and back of the tarp is tied together with a thick white plastic banding strap. The place I picked up is a new facility, but they had a serious issue with forklift availability. They said they only have 2 working forklifts for the entire facility that can pick these units up and the other departments they have to share lifts with had them tied up for hours. After they finally got access to one, they had 6 or 7 trucks loaded in just over an hour.