Hopper, Dump O/O's & Drivers

No, they are trying to round up all the equipment for the big auction they are having in Tulsa Thursday.

 

Hey Kansas Crew. What was the big wreck south of Wichita monday morning on the turnpike? All the news crews were their and a CR England truck on it side. CB chatter said a car going the wrong way on the turnpike hit another and the England truck hit the cars. It looked bad.

 

Wheathauler, still hauling to feedlot? My son has been busy the past several weeks hauling wheat from around the Anthony area to Enid. Hauled a couple loads yesterday, then said they were caught up for awhile. Hooked onto a cattle pot this evening and hauled a load of cattle to a feedlot out at Ulysses. Glad its him and not me, I couldnt stay awake for those nightime hauls, get way too sleepy!(lol)

 

I really don't have much of a problem with mine. It turns over a little slow when it's cold or been sitting a couple days but it will start. It's just if I leave anything on in the truck that they'll run down.

I was talking to the guys at Kenworth about it and they said they'd be happy to put in a forth one with the longer tray for it, there's room for it in the box. I'm sure they would at $90 an hour or whatever they charge now. The guy did mention that they could put 8 in if that's what I wanted. Figure they'd switch out the toolbox in the step on the other side for another box. That's probably what I'd do if I owned it. Myself, wouldn't pay them to.

I've never seen these #### T800 wipers stocked anywhere. I'll have to go look.

 

These batteries are dogs, and I think one might be going bad - didn't have a way to get them load tested when I had them out. Since I'm minus a pickup truck these days, I couldn't bring myself to load them in the car and take them down to the shop.

Adding 4 more batteries would also add about 350 pounds to the truck, and I sure don't have the room to do that - if you do, I'd go for it. Personally, I'd never pay the shop to work on batteries - you should've seen the mess the dealer made when they swapped in these new ones before I bought the truck last year. When I pulled them out they hadn't cleaned any of 5 years of rust out of the battery tray, or greased the battery terminals. I also noticed some goofball wire brushed all the lead coating off the contacts on my busbars. I'll be replacing most of it when I switch out batteries here in the next few months, including the bars and the nuts that hold them down. Volvo's got these nylon battery nuts with brass inserts that just don't fit the bill IMO. I'll take my chances shorting a battery for some mechanical strength, there's s/s nuts and washers on them now, and I found a few sources for actual s/s battery terminal nuts since nobody stocks them in parts houses anymore.

BTW you can go all the way up to at least 1150cca per battery - and 4 of those guys would be 4,600cca with a ton of reserve compared to standard. There are also battery minders that install on the truck that supposedly help keep their resistance low - still trying to figure out if those would work enough to be worth buying.

Last night the rest of the I95N was like a circus. After the dump truck kamikaze earlier in the day, there was a grocery store wiggle wagon down off the shoulder into the trees just before a repaving crew. It looked like he couldn't get stopped because there were nothing but straight tracks cut in the mud before he left road level. After that there were 2 trucks side by side with jumper cables out in the traffic lane, followed by more repaving crews and more broken trucks on the shoulder than I've ever seen in a weeks time. Can't say it wasn't interesting, and I managed to squeak out a 7.4mpg average yesterday at 78,000lbs, in spite of all the slow-downs and traffic.

 

Oh yeah, I keep forgetting about weight. 4 bigger ones would probably work just fine. My truck is heavy anyway, cat engine, steel wheels, weighs around 31,700 empty depending on how full the tanks are. Those dealers are getting lazy as hell. They'll skip half the things written on the ticket if you don't stay on them.

 

They are an unsual size or something. When we first got ours, NAPA couldn't get refills so we switched the whole assembly.

That place must be fairly new, I don't remember one there in 96-97?

3 townships in our county have posted 8 ton weight limits on their roads. I got our drop deck out of here early Tuesday morning for a load of lumber, but its gotten worse in the last 2 days, I'm not sure you could get it to the blacktop the way the road is tonight. Its starting to dry out on top, but underneath is still like jelly. For the roads to get soft during the spring thaw is common, but I've never seen it like this.