Random LTL Rants (all are welcomed)

No clue what happened, left ABF a few weeks afterwards, covered my butt tho, im sure what you previously said was also contributing factor of it rotting underneath. the idiot just added to it with salt water from his fisheys in cold PA winter, the trailer was on grassy patch, just sat frozen in time. had generator to run the water heaters. just a weird situation. I had to wait for him to remove two tanks and the generator.


LTL peddling always was weird moments hahaha

 

Not that this matters, but when I had my carpet cleaning business the shop that worked on my truck mount said "Don't do water extractions where there has been salt water you will rot out your recovery tank."

So same things.

 

Yes they do that is correct ha-ha. There was a trailer thread on the O/O side and actually I think Great Dane trailers are pretty decent. I know that's what we have at GFS and there pretty good it's pretty much the only trailer they ever buy. I know for a very long time all the major truck load carriers JB, Werner, Schneider and Swift were all big big customers of Wabash, but I know Wabash is still around, but I think Hyundai took a little bit of a bite in there business.

 

same here, carpet cleaning was a fun job. In PA as you know, hard to not do salt water extractions ( people track salt in from there shoes in the winter ) our 100 gallon recovery tank was rusted, we used customers water supply, no point to my post, Just agreeing.

 

That happened to one of our guys at a warehouse I worked in as a youngin. His forklift went clean through the floor and landed on its wheels on the blacktop underneath the trailer.

 

I've never seen a pallet jack do that. One of my happiest moments, however, was when a receiver at a home depot had her fork lift fall through the floor. She was such a PITA, it was all I could do to keep from LMAO at her. And of course, she had started out pissed, (always, when she had to receive anything, even though that was her job,) and then just flatly flamed out when she broke through. Couldn't have happened to a more deserving chick.
She didn't get hurt. But even if she had, I would have had one hell of a time to keep from laughing.

Nah, that wasn't a pallet of beer that found the soft spot, it was the operator of the pallet jack!

 

It's true though road salt galore in the winter time and pipes bursting left and right the minute it got zero degrees out that's when all the big flood work came in, god what a mess for those poor home owners...

 

OK Mike, dumb question here. Why use a metal tank rather than plastic?

 

The fresh water tanks were plastic, but the recover tanks are metal because it has to be able to handle all the vacume suction. A truck mounted carpet cleaning machine is powered by usually a motor no smaller then 18 horsepower. Mine was a Hydramaster Boxxer 421 the 21 meaning it had a Briggs and Stratton 21 HP V Twin Gasoline motor that drew it's gas from the vans gas tank. On full throttle when you were cleaning and really humming that suction will suck your eye ball out and the steel tank is where the vacume filter and connection. There are carpet cleaning truck mounts out there that have 60+ horse power diesel motors. The Prochem Everest comes to mind. You need all that suction to do factories and commercial and industrial places because you could be running 300 feet of 2" diameter hose.

In carpet cleaning water lift means everything because that's how much water your pulling back and in return it's how much dirt your pulling out. I think my machine had a pretty good sized Vedder Roots Blower which is what created the suction in the metal tank. There's so much suction there a plastic tank would collapse.

Now they did do what was called "capping" and that's where they would weld an aluminum or stainless steel wall to the inside of the metal tank if a tank rotted out. Any machine that was old enough and had been out here in the east long enough eventually the recovery tank would rot out all that salt over the years, unless you were really diligent about washing the tank out at the end of the day. Happens in Florida too with the ocean and floods if your sucking up ocean water oh boy you got headaches, you'll be getting a new tank or having a cap installed. Butler who makes arguably the best direct drive system around I believe uses both stainless steel recovery and fresh water tanks in there systems to prevent the rust issue of course a Butler system van and everything brand new out the door could be pushing $80K brand new. Carpet Cleaning truck mounts are very expensive for an entry level machine and van brand new you could easily spend $40-$60K. Usually they have a package where you can get a Boxxer 318 for $600.00 a month if you want those kinds of payments.