Hauled my first load today

I'm basically a farm hand working for my brother. We recently purchased a 99 Freightliner day cab and 38 foot Dakota ag hopper grain trailer to haul grain to town with.

I hauled my first load today. I didn't hit anybody and I didn't take out any stop signs or mailboxes so I guess I did OK. Getting out of the grain elevator in town is interesting. You have to pull out on Main street, blocking both lanes of traffic. Turn right onto another street, blocking both lanes of traffic. Then pull way into the left lane so that you can turn short enough to get back on the weigh scale. They dump hundreds of trucks a day there so everybody in that town is used to this and they stay out of your way. The truck rides rougher then I expected. But, it's a short wheel base truck so that could be why. It has a sliding 5th wheel. We are not absolutely sure where to put it. We just left it where it was. It's about 8 to 10 inches behind the front rear axel. Didn't have the truck full enough on the first load. Only 74980. Better then being over loaded. We'll learn how much grain to put in after while.


Seems like the truck will work out though. It has a M-11 with 3.08 gears and a non OD 10 speed. Once I got to the top of the first hill I was able to get it into 10th. I wanted to only drive 50 (Being this was my first load) But, you have to go 55 in 10th so that you can keep your RPM's and speed up. That way you have enough momentum to roll over the tops of hills. I went down to 9th a couple of times. You can do 50 in ninth but, 47-48 seems to feel the best. For the few miles we go that will be fine. Maybe after time I will push it more.

On the way home I noticed a little vibration noise. By pushing the clutch just a little I could get it to go away. The truck is suppose to have a automatic greaser on it that does the throw out bearing. But how do you know it's working? The truck has 380000 on it. The bearing should not be going out already, should it? It could just be a linkage vibrating or something. The only other problem I see with it is that the trip odometer and mileage thing does not work because the reset button is broken. No big deal there. I will fix that next summer when I have more time.

So anyway, a successful first 15 mile trip for me. 10 more to go this week.

 

Yes. I also asked about licensing and log books a while back.

 

I take it slow. My dad taught all us kids stuff like that. Cheaper to take a little more time driving then the amount of time it takes to get in a wreck.

Were going to be a little short on the trucks bridge. We will not be able to haul a full 80000. A shorter truck is a lot easier to get in and out of our farm yards though. These old farm sites were built 100 years ago and they never even imagined something a long as a truck driving through the yard.