Hopper, Dump O/O's & Drivers

Yes, wheat is down. Been hauling a little to feed lots. Doesn't pay real well so may not continue. The elevator I have been hauling from is having quality problems. They just about rejected my last load.

 

Yep - the biggest problem I have right now is the weak 660 or 750cca batteries the dealer put in last year. I can leave it sitting for 1 day and the fridge will kill them down enough to trip the low batt volts switch and shut the sleeper off. Any more than a day and I'm doing good to get it started in cold weather. It's supposed to have 4 950cca batts in it, and I have 4 750's (I think) - I'm short almost a whole battery - what geniuses. That's okay - what's fuel now - 3.15 a gallon in alot of places?!? No big deal, I'll just idle when I find the time to rest, thanks.

One of my switch blanks flew out of my dash on I40 one night. I hit a bunch of rough stuff, and felt something hit my leg. When I found it on the floor later, I looked up at the dash to find the hole. One of the tabs was broken off so there was no putting it back.

Well, this has been interesting so far. With all the deadhead and the 2 no-loads (no pay for those, or word about it yet), I'm not even squeaking by. The money I've had to pull out of the house can't be put back, and now I get to try and defer our car payments this month - after I just deferred them in December to get my authority paid for. That is, if I want to pay my cargo insurance again and continue running - which was debated tonight also. Let's face it, if the trucks parked in the driveway, and I'm home - at least I won't be spending money on tolls, washouts and servicing. I haven't been able to afford to wash my truck in 3 months, and if I so much as blew a tire right now I'd be stranded. If I actually broke down somewhere I'd be done for.

I ran my numbers tonight after all this, and my cut of the average rate is $1.20 a loaded mile, with 22% deadhead not figured in. So this month, I've brought in a whopping $3,000 - roughly - and $1,000 went to trailer deposit. Now don't get excited yet, because I've spent about $400 on washouts and tolls, another $50 for out of network fuel, and $500 on having the truck serviced and fuel filters. I guess we could go ahead and toss in the bobtail fuel (1,000 miles worth) to pick up the trailer - and I'd say I worked the entire month - drove over 10,000 miles for absolutely nothing but something to do. I really didn't need something to do that badly.

I'm in a slump for just starting a new week, but I'm just aggravated and beyond broke. Ran all over town today in between loads to find a FedEx shop to send my paperwork forward, dropped another $28 on that fine gem - just so I can collect already spent money in a few days. This really takes the cake - the company makes money for doing basically nothing, and I do mean that verbatim - nothing. While looking over my load assignments - I found a few of them that only had a company name, phone#, and a load number. No city, no state, no address, no contact info, no loading/unloading hours, no directions.For that matter - alot of the time the company name is wrong, and the phone numbers are to the sales agent, not loading/ unloading contacts. One of them was disconnected, and a few of the numbers have just been wrong.

Most of the time I have to play with google maps just to figure out which route they're trying to pay me for - because their miles are always 10% shorter than any route I can find. One actually matched up - when you locked out interstates. It would've taken me 3 days to drive all those towns and lights, and of course they told the customer I'd be there the next day before I ever saw the "trip info". I wound up driving 1200 miles for the price of 980 to get it there the day after planned.

Hoppers are still the only thing I'd ever pull - vans and reefers blew it for me years ago - and a skateboard would drive me insane with the freight I signed for exposed and unlocked. I've been looking at other options - brokers and factors, and I may just have to tell these folks I can't afford to haul their freight and do their legwork. The other night my wife called to tell me she found the load I was assigned on a free loadboard - wow, must be the company working hard as ever - double or triple brokered loads - no wonder I'm broke.

I parked the truck for dinner after spending most of the day spinning my wheels - 4 hours to unload - 3.5 hours to reload - with 75 miles deadhead in between. To top it off, I found the weirdest scale I've seen yet - I fought the load for awhile before I finally just assumed it was effed and gave up. In the process I had tried dumping 1,200 from the front hopper, then a ton from the rear - and yet my steer axle was still reading heavy. I finally dumped the front hopper completely - to find the rear hopper was a ton heavy to start with. We reloaded the front hopper to the pound and the scale readings were still screwed up on everything but gross weight. When I roll out tomorrow I get to drop $9 and buy a scale ticket before I leave the state.

Haven't gone anywhere since 8pm - I've been sitting here for over 6 hours doing nothing but working figures trying to find the problems in this. Maybe if I wasn't feeding half a dozen other people that I'm not related to - I could afford to work.....

Hope y'all are doing better than me out here - if you did worse you probably couldn't post it here anyway...... without power or internet service!

 

dont hold your breath heres millions we pay for,might take a while

 

Whoever ordered the truck tried to save money wherever they could so I've only got 3 batteries total. Much as I hate walmart, I can go down there and get 1000cca batteries for around $50 that work just fine. That's what I should have done, or gone to the auto parts store and done it myself. Every time I go to Kenworth I get junk. They can't even get me a decent set of windshield wipers. I had new ones put on and they left black smears of crap all over my windshield for weeks before hardening up to the point of near uselessness. Still not as bad as Freightliner, I guess.

Now I'm waiting on the boss to figure out where to get a tire. I got a new used rim for $50 and had the guy air the tire back up but the sidewall blew out on the way up here so I'm stuck again.

 

OK, I am gonna quit my whining for a while. Maybe I don't have it half as bad as I think I do.

All four of my batteries are 950cca, and new. It takes all four of them to spin the truck when its 5 below.

 

I usually buy my wipers at Wally World 2 pairs at a time - even the Michelin wipers are cheaper than junk at a truck shop. There's always a spare set in the truck, and I only change the drivers side unless they're trashed.

As far as the batteries go, I'm planning on getting 4 AGM (absorbed glass mat) or gel batteries as soon as I can afford to. I figure the longer I can go without idling (when weathers decent), the further I am from buying an APU. AGM and gel also recharge faster and easier (less internal resistance), so I should have to idle it less when I'm stopped. Now all I have to do is come up with about a grand for batteries and hardware - and some way of locking down the batteries.

With a 3 battery setup, I think you'd just need to buy some bus bars - maybe a longer bracket and you'd be good to go. The more the better IMO, this thing has failed to start before and it wasn't a fun feeling. One morning at the house it wouldn't crank over without the block heater run for an hour. It had dropped into the 20's that night, the fridge was turned off, and it had run the previous day! That was before I cleaned and reinstalled all the hardware, and trickle charged all the batteries back up.

There was a big wreck on the I95N today in Georgia - I heard a warning on the radio, and got off on a side route just in time to miss 30 miles of gridlock. Come to find out some brain surgeon rear-ended a dump truck that was headed for the median in a construction zone. All I know is, there was a Volvo powered RV that had passed me about a mile before the exit at Brunswick, and I watched him stop up ahead in traffic as I got off. When I came back on the 95 about 40 miles later all was clear - and he came up and passed me again about 30 minutes after. Looks like I missed some gear shifting - traffic always seems to idle along at the exact speed between high and low range.

 

I agree with Kansas. I was going to gripe and moan but after listening to hwy and kajidono my day wasn't bad at all. I've got a year on my batteries, 4-950 cca... I usually change them every three years.

 

Well the mech. said our doggy Merc Series 55 Detroit had a broken exhaust manifold bracket causing restriction. I had noticed an oil leak there and checked the valve cover but it was tight. I hope he's right and that truck will pull the highside normal again. At least what's normal for it.

 

Hey Ben, welcome aboard.

I am preparing for a slow end of the week. Cargil Wichita is gonna close the bean line Thurs and Fri. Ill just beat ya the wheat line is gonna be miserable long. Gotta get all the beans I can tomorrow before all heck breaks loose on Thursday!

 

BTW, is Arrow back in business? I seen a Arrow flatbed truck going down the road today. Arrow lettering DOT numbers and all pulling a DTG trailer today. He was empty and rolling south.