Indian River

Everything is going good on my end. I’m picking up in Washington state to deliver 3,094 miles away in Miami, FL. I hope everyone on here has dodged the blizzard in Nebraska and Kansas. I heard on the news that they were getting hammered.

 

I got caught in the blizzard that hit Colorado a few days ago on my way up here to the Pacific Northwest. Everything was clear as day that afternoon as I traveled up I-25. It was just windy with a lot of trucks and campers blown over in the ditch around Pueblo.

When I got to Colorado Springs, the snow started falling pretty heavy. I took the exit for the weigh station near Monument Hill to brew a cup of coffee and let my defrost catch up with the wipers. By the time I sat down to leave, all I could see were taillights and stopped vehicles from an accident that had happened. Fortunately, I was parked at the scale and ahead of schedule on my delivery.

Before pulling out later that night, I decided it would be wise to put a few chains on. I was only 85 miles from the delivery, and it would have been hard to even get out of the weigh station parking lot without them. I drove about 15 miles and things began to disappear. So, I took an off ramp to remove the chains. As I was merging back on (chainless) I tried to get a run at it, because the ramp hadn’t been plowed yet. I knew that once I was on the road again, I could back off. I ended up hitting a snow drift at the end of the ramp, and I guess the snow blast underneath ripped off one of the small air lines that goes to the air dryer assembly. I was able to maintain plenty of air to keep going, but the sleeper suspension bags deflated which made for a horrible ride the rest of the way. With the weather and road conditions the way they were, I didn’t feel it was safe to stop and wait for a service truck. I was only about 70 miles away at that point anyway. So, I kept an eye on the air gauge and limped it to the delivery. Loves was able to fix it pretty quick that morning. I figured I’d share the experience for anyone else driving a 579 with the dryer mounted on the belly. I’ve been told the Kenworth dryers are mounted more in a protected location on the frame.

I’ll try to attach a few pictures of what it looked like on I-25 that night.