Hopper, Dump O/O's & Drivers

HI. New guy here. Wheat hauler. I was out on harvest for three years with a guy from inman. Company name was Pauls n Ediger. They run blue T800 straight trucks. We hauled into all the elevators in hutch. Hows the crops this year? Are the yields good? Thanks!

 

You'll definitely do well with a 43x102x78 trailer, that's the size of mine and it works out great. Tougher to manuever, and you'll get used to giving lots of room for turns (like a 53 without the tail swing). It'll also surprise you how wide they really are - I think they stretched the 102" myself (keep meaning to measure mine). I backed into a bay twice on the last run (condo roof height) that was about 18" wider than the trailer with equipment hanging down all over the place. Have yet to go to a place I couldn't get into.

So far I've seen 49k of midds without turning it into a brick (probably hit 51k if you could balance and carry it). Hi-process cotton seed was 55k not quite full (whoops), and flowed out the larger doors pretty well.

A new trailer is great for clean (stable) products like grain, rice, midds, etc. Not so great for the variety I haul as I found out, like diammonium sulfate that turned all the bolts orange inside the hoppers within 2 days. And the cost.... well the rates aren't worth it on my end - but congrats and have fun with it!

 

Welcome aboard shiftin'shell!

Everyone have a good week I have to go trucking and my laptop is broke so we will talk to you next weekend, Heading to Little Rock.

 

Hey there friends, hope things have been going well out there!

After the lousy trip at the beginning of the month, it's been hard to check the tires this trip because I couldn't get out of the drivers seat!

I'd been held up leaving out on the last trip by 3 days due to low rates, and then rolled out and had an electrical problem. The 14 hours I was down for repairs cost me time and my reload for the holiday weekend, so I wound up on a 355 mile run from Friday to Tuesday....... Ran it through and wound up sitting the next weekend for 2 days waiting to load. I can only say that it comes in handy to have a large sleeper when you're stuck in it for days on end out on the road.

So after 10 days on the road, I was trying to pick up the pace, and I wind up walking under a steel beam sticking out of a grain mills wall..... I was watching my feet at the time, there was a wet slimy wheat midd mess on the ground with a thousand flies having lunch, and I bumped my head on something - no big deal. Then I realize I'm bleeding a bunch from my forehead, and sure enough I split it nearly wide open. I haven't seen a hard hat since I pulled into the place, and that beam was a nasty trick!

So after I find someone who has some first aid skills and a kit (bigger than the one I carry in the truck), I come back down to my truck to find the 2 guys that run the pit hard at work on my trailer. The front hoppers empty, so I pull forward, and then climb out and explain what happened to the guy that patched up my head so he can take a report. The 2 guys come back around and open the door, and then drag up a railcar vibrator.....

At this point I take a closer look at the sides of the front hopper to find they're pushed in about 3 inches on each side, and bowed away from one of the knock rails. I pointed all this out to the guy taking the report, and told him there would be a quiz later! A minute after that I hear banging on the opposite side of the trailer, and it's the other guy swinging an 8 pound sledge at the hopper slopes..... sometimes you just have a very bad day.

So they get done with the damage (no point in stopping them after it's half done in front of a company witness), I'm empty, and I pull off to the side to size things up and rest awhile to make sure I'm alright to drive. I find a VA hospital about 90 miles away, and I'm 12 miles from my reload. Call that customer, give them some notes, and they're glad to store my trailer overnight. So I head over (no pun intended), drop the trailer, and drive to the VA to get my head sealed back up (tetanus shot and antibiotics to be safe). The next morning I'm back at my trailer and reloading to get closer to home.

I call in to give a status to the agent, and he wants to know if I want a reload going 700 miles the opposite way from my house - after I explained to him the deal with me being injured..... Told him no thanks, I'm headed to the house and I should be ready next Monday to roll out. I'd also noticed on a rough stretch of road that I have a slight concussion, and barely made it through that load. As it turned out, that customer was in the middle of a 40 mile stretch of 19' wide asphalt going 55mph in both directions. Most of the miles close to them was me driving on both lines with opposing traffic and a dirt shoulder.

After closing out 500 miles, a reload and unload within 24 hours of splitting my head open, I make it to the house. And the next day I get a call about a good rate leaving out in 2 days...... I've got no choice thanks to the last 2 weeks of lousy rates, repairs and delays.

So I load up and head back out after being home about 48 hours, and it's been a better trip so far. I loaded in AR headed for MA, MA to OH, MI to TX (yep 400 miles d/h and well worth it). And the loading in MI was something new - frak sand and couldn't be dumped off to balance. With my tractor air gauges I can't tell within about 3k pounds no matter what I do. I stop it short, and still wound up at 81k...... No worries, not my first rodeo! I sized up the atlas and replanned a route, caught some sleep until traffic cleared and left out in the middle of the night.

My plan was to drive the path of least resistance until I'd burned fuel and got legal again (I had about 240 gallons of fuel on). So for the next 14 hours (breaks, etc) I drive state highways from MI to MO, and come back out of the woods where I planned. I pull in, scale the truck, and then head for a great parking spot in an empty lot - all the air gauges look good and I'm just above the low fuel warning. Wander in and get the scale ticket - 500 pounds over on the tandems...... grrrr. It's 100 degrees outside and I'm not moving 2k forward to maybe adjust 500, so it's what it is. I'm sitting in TX now, and I never saw a weigh station from MI to TX!

I don't plan on ever doing that again (or in the first place) - I like interstates and mpg, and extra freight always costs more than it's worth in time, effort (maybe fines), and fuel. But at least it worked out when I needed it, and I know quite a few back highways that I didn't before. It's the reason I carry an atlas in the truck at all times, no substitute for it.

From the short line travelled (no proof otherwise) I covered about 3,800 miles this week - about 700 miles d/h. With all the OOR mileage it's been a busy week, but all is well and pulling a reset now down here in TX bound for upstate IN next week. Stay safe out there, and I hope you're all having a great weekend!

 

Yeah, if there's anyone that is due for some easy loads, its Hwy. I probably would have had a heart attack if I caught someone beating on my trailer with a sledge. That place should be paying for that, that's just stupidity. Although I don't know what you'd do to fix it?

 

Put it this way if you backed into something and trashed a loadout chute or something who would be paying for their chute

 

I've been debating the repairs since it happened - lots of time to think on the road!

This trailer has it's good points and bad, and it's been hard to decide if I'll even keep it for long (or keep hauling hoppers for that matter). Every time I think I've made up my mind, another friend tells me about a place that's looking for O/O's, and I ran across another good lead earlier this week.

Right now it's like trying to sweep out a staircase, and it really stinks. I've had to patch it with tape in a few places where they actually bent the slope away from the knock rail enough to rip the bolts through the slope. I was bleeding at the time, so I didn't bother telling non-English speaking mill workers to stop beating on my trailer - I was shocked they'd even try it. Besides, they'd already trashed the front hopper - might as well finish the job LOL - yet another reason I would never waste a new trailer on this game.

If I decide to keep the trailer, I'll have the slopes replaced, and the doors rebuilt at the same time (heavy products are a nightmare right now). For the money I've seen lately, I'm not sure it's even worth renting a trailer, much less buying one. For all the people I've known and met that are (were) doing this - very few still are. One lost his truck to the bank, another has his truck up for sale, and a third is doing much better pulling vans and actually seeing the house alot more. I wouldn't recommend for one second getting into this business even to an enemy.

As far as the mill goes, they'll be paying for a few things - and I've already talked to the operations manager at the mill about it (large place). I'm sending my bill from the VA hospital forward (to get them paid back so another vet can use it if he needs to), the bill from the local ER for the follow-up after I got home, a damage estimate on the trailer, and a claim for scar removal on my forehead once we can tell how bad it's going to be. They've been told to look for these, and they'd better pay them or I'll hire an attorney, triple the amounts, and get mean if I have to.

When I talked to the ops manager, I was very clear that their people should know how to handle hopper trailers since they see 50 or more a day. Anyone with sense should know better than to use railcar equipment on an aluminum trailer - but then again who are we talking about here? Hitting the belly of a hopper with a sledge just doesn't make any sense, and apparently it doesn't work very well from the number of strikes showing on my trailer. I'll get them straightened out as much as I can - and there's another on my "no fly" list for the future.

The next time I talk to them, I'm going to suggest something as plain as the nose on their face..... an air wand in the unloading bay. They take in midds all day long, and lack the equipment to speed things up. I guess they're just so used to seeing 6 trucks waiting that it doesn't matter.... You can beat on a trailer with vibrators and hammers for days - and what does that really do? It knocks a small amount out the door, and packs everything above it even tighter. A little air blown into it a foot above the bridged product does the trick, or you can use the wand to "air drill" up into it. I've unloaded midds and meal almost as fast as rice before, you just need the right equipment. It's one of the many things I need to have added to this trailer if I keep running this game.