Breakdowns

One advantage to us staying regional is that we are rarely more than a days drive away from the home shop.

Get to a safe place where I can try to figure out what is wrong. Maybe I can patch it up to get me home or to a garage.

99.9% of blown tires are a caused from a poor pre and post trip. Honestly, if you just change your own oil, grease your own truck and pay attention to your gauges you will probably never need a tow more than once every 15 years if that.

I can think if only a few mechanical breakdowns that I've had personally:
1) broken wire at an electrical connection in the engine bay. I hit a pot hole and the corroded connection finally let go and stranded me on the highway without any electrical at all. That could have been prevented if I had sent more time with the hood up on my 34 hr resets.
2) Blew a turbo boot off. Always carry spare clamps and boots so that was easy.
3) Blew and exhaust manifold gasket caused by nuts that loosened off. Made it to the KW dealer and bought some. Put them on in the parking lot.
4) Blew a head gasket. Mechanic said it was leaking for a while. if I had paid better attention to the black mark on the side of the cylinder head I would have caught that too. One of our other trucks delivered my load and a third came with an RGN to float me home. Tip: KW trucks without that silly aero cone on the bunk are legal an a DD.

Another of our drivers lost all the oil from his pan. he new it was leaking but didn't get it fixed. A wash at the Blue Beacon finished that pan off. All the oil leaked out and he had to get a tow to teh Cummins dealer. Cummins air freighted a new pan in from Memphis and he lost a day and a half plus hotel.

Another fella blew an alternator belt and lost electrical. Simple pre trips and/or a spare belt would have prevented that.

Another fella had a VVA housing let go on his C15. That one cost us $13,000. Prolly not much the driver could have done about that but in hindsight I should have checked all TSB's on that truck when we bought it. There was a TSB that would have prevented the $13,000 repair.

 

I am not an o/o but my gps shows all nearby truck shops and tows. Sometimes my company asks if anything is nearby so I got in the habit of locating places near me. The past year my only mechanic breakdown was my alternator died so my batteries were losing juice as I drove. But I blow a tire every three months.

 

When I pulled trailers for a company I was leased to I probably blew out about 4 trailer tires in the course of a year's time. I swore that if I ever got my own trailer I would never ignore air pressure and cause myself those problems. So far 2.5 years with mine and nary a blowout knock on wood. Now it could happen tomorrow but that's still good. And I use caps on the trailer too. So that's the good news for you on tires. The bad news they are expensive!! So take care of them and they will take care of you.