Pullin with the dreaded PACCAR Mx13

I'm gonna listen to this while I drive tomorrow, but $220/hour is CRAZY. He and I run similar parts of the world.
One of the things I found most annoying is that the 5-7 year warranty or whatever it was ended with EPA21 and only applied to certain EPA17s...
My engine, at least, is out of warranty now as far as I can tell.

I've been doing research familiarizing myself with parts prices because I know that, somehow, if I went to a dealership and asked them to replace a fuel line on the side of the engine ($130 part and 45 minute job), they'd hand me a $2500 bill...

 

This truck's saving grace in this regard is the digital dash, and I cannot believe I am saying that.

It has a separate gauge for each tank, so I can see exactly what's going on.

Overall, I have been pleasantly surprised by digi dash. Zero issues of any kind so far and I have a good amount of information available, really helps me learn about how to drive fuel efficiently and everything else. I can see % of torque being used and little random stuff like that and it's super easy to sweep with my eyes.

But yeah that fuel system tomfoolery is super annoying, but it's just barely under the threshold where I can keep running as long as I want without being actively forced to fix it. Even if my primary tank ran dry, all I'd have to do is take a 10 hour reset and my APU would pump the fuel back into the primary tank and I could go again. Semi truck fuel systems as a whole are way more annoying than I knew as a company driver.

Nice to be able to choose when to work on it. Maintenance on your terms and not the truck's terms is a big deal.

 

I am scheming. Just got tanker, so I can do way more LTL stuff, which is the best paying stuff where I'm leased on. Last time I did LTL round trip I had a $7,000 net week, but my schedule has been bad since and I haven't been able to reach that since. But I'm gunning to try and do better than that.

Three main priorities:
1. Pay off truck. $36k to go. If I could run full time (personal scheduling issues), this would've been done last month. I have $25k saved for this purpose.
2. Get enough money to start an authority aging in June. It'd coincide with 6 months age hitting in January, when my scheduling issues end. I got a progressive quote for $21k for a full year with both a notional Reefer trailer and trailer interchange on there. I need to do more insurance research but I think I'd be ok. Overhead would be lower than it is now if I pay off the truck first. $1700ish a month rather than $2000 I'm at now ($500 insurance and $1480 truck note)
3. Buy a reefer, or if I can specifically get a 10 roads express dry van, a dry van. Why 10R? I like the lift axles and it's a bucket list thing. I'd make my money back anyways. But main goal is a reefer.
4. Buy a second truck as a backup truck. I'm toying with the idea of hiring a driver or two but I'm definitely not in a place to commit to that yet. My main issue is Uptime, which is low because of personal scheduling issues. It's like having a bunch of breakdowns under warranty, but I've had none. I've spent about $8k on maintenance overall having just got a brand new set of drives, an alternator for APU, couple oil changes, new brake pads, a set of new calipers for rear axle. All super basic wear stuff other than the APU alternator.

If I could just run for two months straight I'd make enough money to accomplish all of these goals. For now I'm doing fine, saving money while paying myself more than I made at my last job. But the timelines are mildly annoying because I see the rates changing and that voice in the back of my head is telling me that, ideally, I'd be about 3 months ahead of where I am now. If I'd bought a truck in May last year, not in October. Oh well.