Pulling a pup...

Wow...what a day. I need to vent. Hope y'a'll don't mind. Had one of those days... but I made it through and had some great learning experiences.

I started out on this tour last week. Drove to Lancaster Pa. Had no problems. Did the show, loaded out on Saturday night. Hit the Road on Sunday on my way to Davenport Iowa. Spent my first night in a truck at TA near Dayton Ohio. Made the rest of the drive on Monday. Came through a snow fog north west of Indy that was a little hairy but made it through no problem. Checked into hotel on Monday afternoon. No Problems.... It's really really cold here. Got 5-6" of snow on Tuesday afternoon and night. I have been going out and starting the truck, letting it run for a hour or so, warm it up good. Thought things were great.
Today, I get a call from the tour manager that we had to load into the theatre tonight. Was suppose to do it tomorrow...but hey, I roll with the punches...right??
I got out to the truck to start it up about noon. It got down to -12 last night. -27 with the wind chill. Truck won't start. Will hardly crank. Real slow crank. ####. So I call Penske. The send someone out within the hour. We hook up a charger and plug in the block heater. No help, keep trying for an hour. No help. So they run out four new batteries. The mechanic installs them. Bam... the truck starts... Yea!...oh wait. It's running really rough. Had the upside down triangle warning sign and the message Warn Engine*... white smoke pouring out of the stack. No throttle control at all. Could press the petal to the floor and it was like it was off. Nothing. Mechanic didn't know what was up. As it warmed up some we got a little throttle control back...as it warmed up more got more. Thank God as it got the engine temp up, it started running better. He thought the fuel gelled a little. I had treated it with antigel when I filled up and tanks were almost full. So as it ran, it got better and better. Smoked less and less...and the warning light finally went out. Great. Stressful day but still had a 1/2 hrs to get to the theatre.
I had called the theatre earlier and gotten directions. I checked out the map, Google earth, and my atlas. The directions the theatre fave me brought me to a low bridge just a couple blocks from the theatre. The person I talked to was aware that I was in a 13'6 truck but still gave me wrong directions. I call them back and she says 'oh right sorry' LOL!! So she puts me on hold and comes back with different directions. Cool. I check them out on the map and Google earth. She sent me under another low bridge!! WTF!
I got and talk to the front desk. They give me some directions that will work. I check it out on Goggle earth, my map and no low bridge..this route brought me over the tracks not under them. Great. So off I go. But before I left, I did a proper pretrip and calmed down a little. Took some deep breaths and calmed my nerves. After a stressful afternoon out in the freezing cold I didn't want to rush and make a dumb mistake.
So I follow my directions. So far so good. Then i make the turn onto the street that would bring me over the tracks.... no trucks over 5 tons. Course they put that sign at a place that I can only see when I completed the turn onto the street. Turns out it was a residential type street. Nothing I could do. I went to the next intersection and was going to turn to go out to the main st. No trucks. I can see the rail road crossing ahead several blocks... so I continue on. There wasn't a bridge, just a street level crossing. Just as I'm coming up to it a cop passes me. ####!! Lol. Thank God he leaves me alone. I make it to where I'm going. Whew!!! I double park and find the loading dock. I have jack knife the truck into a small parking lot blind side , off the busiest street in town, at rush hour, and then Jack knife it the other way within 5 feet of a car to get it to the dock. I have 5 feet on my blind side and less than 5 in front of me . I took it slow...did about 10 repositions and got that sucker in there. The Union stage hands said I did pretty good. Far from the worse. They said one night a guy took 1 1/2 hrs to get in there. I GOALed a few times and I wasn't perfect to the dock...but good enough that the dock plate bridged the gap!!
I never lost my cool. Tried to keep calm and do the next right thing. I feel like I accomplished something today...like a baby step forward. Driving down the highway one thing...but I faced a bunch of difficult circumstances today and did my job as a truck driver.
My lessons?
1) Don't turn the truck off when it's -12.. (It's out there running right now) lol.
2) Never trust anyone's directions. Always double and triple check
3) Even when you triple check, sometimes things still happen. Try not to make a mistake into 2 mistakes. I got lucky that the reason it said no trucks was because it was residential, and not cause it was a bridge.
4) GOAL... and go slow. And don't panic cause there are 6 stage hands watching you try to back up.
5) I'm exhausted ... stress sucks but calm down, breath deep and don't rush because of it....

When can I turn the truck off?? Lol... what temp do you think. When I was in Lancaster it was in single digits and it seemed ok. Even yesterday,after the snow it was ok. I'm here till Monday. Should I run it all night and shut it down when the temp rises up above 10? Lol. Can't wait till spring....

By the way, they had to send my first truck back to Freightliner with electrical problems. They gave me an International ProStar Priemum with 470,000 on it. Makes some strange noises but rides ok and has a fridge.... now this one freezes up.... lol