Choice program on the West Coast - from company driver to IC

I see .. Thanks..

 

https://www.ooida.com/BenefitsServices/Services/MedicalBenefits/

 

Get the best health ins you can get... As an O/O it is a deductible expense .

 

Thanks Moosc, Is it just me.. Can't seem to get that link to load?

 

It loaded for me

 

Update.......

Finished up training on Thursday. Truck was still leaking air badly. Shop here at GB could do nothing else for me. So I decided I would take the truck back down to Dedicated Fleet Services (DFS) on Friday morning and have them look at it. They are the shop in Appleton that gets all of SNI Finance's trucks 'up to snuff' before they are leased. They had done $12,000 worth of repairs to this truck before I got it. Since I had to go 210 miles West to pick up my first empty and they were forecasting 14" of snow over there, I decided to spend another night in the hotel.
When I drove the truck from Schneider to the hotel I decided to go fuel up and get my free tire alignment. While driving over to get fuel the truck was having a really hard time going from 4th gear to 5th. On my 13 speed 4th is in low range and 5th is in high range, so you have to flip the range selector switch. Troubleshot with dfo (thanks again!) and he believed it was something with the range selector switch. Instead of making the 'clunking' sound as soon as you flipped the switch, it would take between 5 to 20 seconds. So now I had another thing to talk to DFS about on Friday.
Managed to spend $925 filling my twin 140 gallon tanks up! Holy cow, and I haven't made one dime of revenue yet,yikes! While doing this I proceeded to drop my driver side fuel tank cap down between the tank and my fairing. I was so used to just taking the cap off and letting it go, the chain would catch it and hold it right there. WHOOPS, NO CHAIN. So the fuel cap just slid right down the tank and got lodged at the bottom between the tank and pavement. Mother of God! It's about 32 degrees and the wind is blowing 35 miles to freezing ### cold. Had to drive the truck over to a parking spot, take out my tools, and take my fairing off to get my gas cap back. Welcome to the wonderful world of I/C, right?
After this I managed to grind gears over to the tire shop and got my alignment check, perfecto. Thank goodness one thing is ok on this truck. Ground gears back to the hotel and called it a night.
Got up Friday morning to get the truck down to DFS at 7 am. Truck shifted perfectly when I left GB but upon arrival at DFS was griniding again. The blizzard had missed GB to the west so the roads were perfect. Got to DFS at 6:45 am and turned my truck in. AND THEN I SAT IN THE DRIVER'S LOUNGE FOR THE NEXT 14 HOURS!!!!! They work on my truck from 7 am until 9 pm. They repaired most of the air leaks, still leaks out but very slowly now. They rebuilt my range selector valve (slave valve?) and got that working perfectly. But after that they discovered that my splitter switch on the side of my shift knob was not working correctly. On a 13 speed you can split from L to H (or direct to OD or vice versa, I can't remember which) on gears 5 through 8. The splitter would go from L to H good but was taking too long on H to L. So they rebuilt that valve or some such do-hickey also. When they gave me the keys back at 9 pm Get in the truck and notice all the test drives they did during the day kicked me over to the drive line and then on-duty on the Qualcomm. Call regulatory and they fix that for me. I decided to drive back up to Schneider GB. Was going to be 5 degrees with wind sustained at 20 mph. I did not want to idle my truck all night so I thought I would go back to GB and plug my truck in. Drove back to GB and the truck shifted perfectly (knock on every piece of wood in a 240 mile radius I can find!) I get to GB and plug my truck in. Then I think to myself, ok Daniel, you have this nice Tripac diesel APU that you just tested out and ran on Wednesday, let's fire that bad boy up!! Turn everything on, select heat for 65 degrees and anxiously wait for the tripac's engine to kick in. It kicks over turns on, sputters for about 5 seconds and just dies a slow miserable death!!!! WTF!!! Now my APU doesn't work?!?! So I pull out my trusty phone and look up the ENG fault code I got on the control panel. It tells me low oil pressure, tripped something or other and something else unknown to me. So I figured out how to reset the control panel and the 'brain box' under the bunk. This allowed me to turn the engine on another million or so tries, but every time the engine just sputters and dies. I checked the oil, looks good. This APU just had over $800 bucks put into it by DFS and now it won't even turn on. So after playing around with that for an hour and finally getting my truck interior living space set-up to a decent level, I decided to get on the load board and pick my first load...drum roll please!!!!
I knew I had to change my NAT on work flow so I did that and found a nice load going from Menomonie WI to Bentonville AR. Nice easy 680 mile run pulling around 10K pounds. Paid ok at $1.49 for mile for a total revenue to the truck of $1026.95. Hey, there's my fuel paid off right there! Drop and hook on both ends with wide open windows. So my plan is to pick up from Menomonie today and drop it at Bentonville on Sunday, then pick a load from there that delivers on Monday and maybe actually turn a profit for the 3 day week! Awesome. I don't owe a truck payment for another three weeks, so I want to make some healthy revenue while I can, right?
So I go to assign the load and it comes up and says NO FEASIBLE SOLUTION. Which is the computers way of telling me my NAT did not get changed and it thinks I can't pull this load off. I never got a message back from workflow saying my NAT change had gone through, so I placed my first call to IC support shift! Woohoo, a night of all kinds of firsts! Manage to get through pretty quickly. Guy changes my NAT for me, I go back on the load board and voila, I have my first load. Picking up at a Wal-Mart DC going to a Wal-Mart DC. Get all my times set-up in workflow, accept and make the assignment active and I am done! Navigation loads the dispatch in correctly and I am done. Finally get to bed around 1:30 am planning to get up at 6:30 am because if I wait until 7 am (5 am PST) I will actually do a 34 hr reset and start off with a fresh 70. All of the driving I did on Friday was on line 5, off-duty driving.
So now here I am, typing away on this thing while I wait for 7 am to roll around. Managed to sleep until 5 am, but got up because the truck was running and it was way too toasty in here! So I am ready to roll over to Menomonie and grab my load. Since they were sending me to Wal-Mart to grab an empty anyway, my workflow now says to bobtail into Wal-Mart and just grab my load. Score one for the team!!!
Hoping against hope the truck does well and things go smoothly for a while. Gotta figure out the APU thing, anybody got some ideas???
That's way more than enough for now, probably TMI right?!?!

Stay frosty.....

 

Good read! lol.. all sounds about right. On the APU your best bet is to get it to DFS. But I know how that is you got to get moving.. Not sure if you have warranty on it but mine didn't work either (I have tri-pac E) right out the gate and eventually got it fixed at Thermo-King no cost. I will ask a bud of mine he has DP APU I know there is a reset switch he talks about on it.. sounds like you tried that already tho. But I'll see what he says.

 

Hey sadwar does the APU throw codes on the control panel every time it dies? How long does it run for before it cuts off? Let me know what all the codes are and I'll do some poking around. Check the oil level again after the APU has sat and the truck hasn't moved for a while, sometimes all the movement and oil getting splashed around when the engine is running can make the oil level appear higher than it really is. Doubt its actually low oil, but its a possibility. Good chance its a sensor, but let see what all the codes are first.

Also, with the APU make sure you carry an adjustable wrench. I'll find the documentation or make a video on how to adjust the belt tension on it, you will have to adjust it yourself from time to time. Nothing like pulling into that spot at the truck stop and firing up the APU only to hear "squee squee sqque SQQUUEEEE SQUEEEEEEE SUQEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE" when the belt starts slipping, only to have to shut it off so you don't piss off everyone in the truck stop trying to sleep.

Oh and the no feasible solution thing, yeah it can be a real PITA sometimes. But like you found it, it just has to do with your NAT, sometimes you gotta wait a bit and eventually it will let you put the load on there, but if you really want the load and don't want to miss out, making a call is your best bet... although sometimes by the time you get through to SS the thing updates beforehand anyway LOL.

 

Sometimes I wish I had an APU. I don't idle my truck much. I only idle if the temps are in the teens. I don't have a micro, tv, or a fridge.

 

Looong day today. Did 560 miles from Green Bay WI to 35 miles north of the MO line on I-35. All kinds of snow up in Western WI and the entire state of MN. Thinned out as I drove further south in Iowa and now there is none!!!!! Had the cruise on 60 where I could. Lots of slowing down for snow packed roads.
Headed down to Bentonville AR for a drop and hook tomorrow. Then over to Jenks OK to pick up a 12,000 lb paper load (drop and hook) to take down to South Dallas for another drop and hook on Monday. Hope to find a short load Monday afternoon to finish off the day. Should end my 3 day work week with $2000+ in revenue - $925 in fuel. So maybe I clear $1000 for three days work? Eh, we'll see...
Bedtime.....

Stay frosty..................