Taking the plunge. My journey as an O/O.

If someone tried to use a 20 ton jack to lift a extremely heavy permit load, well, jacks can fail. Blow a seal, and *poof* no ability to lift loaded trailers unless there is a spare in the shop, and the spare is not in use for another job.

 

Considering tires are probably 50% or more of a truck stop shops business, they have a lot more than one extra spare. If I've got over six different bottle jacks as a hobby/shade tree mechanic, a full blown tire shop like boss shops is going to have at least a dozen. @JonJon78 was right, the guy just didn't want to do it.

 

Who said anything about 1 jack? LOL.

 

they are lifting one axle - not the entire trailer - we are generally less than 20k per axle so maybe only 3k more than a freight truck. So a 20 ton jack is sufficient to do the job - and then it being and outside trailer you can drive the inside up on block and do it without a jack at all....

 

Agreed. But I imagine with some minor effort you could imagine a scenario where a shop might have all their 20 ton jacks either out of service, or in use.

*shrug*

 

Well, saw some snow on I70 Eastbound in Western PA yesterday.

About to depart Elizabethtown PA shortly, and there is a bit of snow dusting around and a freeze warning.

Georgia, here I come!

 

I can imagine an engine, transmisssion or driveline shop having all their bottle jacks in use, but I can not imagine a tire shop not having one available.

 

Well, one of Crete's long-running issues that they refuse to admit exists has reared it's ugly head again.

Background.

1. Crete (Shaffer) has satellite monitoring of reefer unit error codes.

2. Crete has a macro system that auto-generates messages to trucks, warning us of error codes.

3. The macro messages always go to the wrong trucks. Every time I get the messages, there is nothing wrong with the reefer I am hauling. When I actually DO have errors on my reefer unit, I never get error messages.

4. It is clear that somewhere between where the satellite collects the error data, and where the macro system sends the error to the truck, the trailer unit number is being borked.

5. Despite the fact that it is impossible for the broken macro generated error messages to deliver accurate messages to drivers, Crete has chosen to leave the broken system in place.

Somewhere in the world, a Shaffer trailer has thrown 4 critical errors in the last few hours. I am getting messages telling me all about it.

Since I want to be able to sleep, I have signed out of my Peoplegarbage machine, and turned it off after advising the dispatch team that I will only be reachable by phone.

 

Mebee they want you to hunt down the unit and fix it for them.
It would make me feel quite indespensible.

 

Well, I'm on 'home time.' Drove 100 miles out of route to meet my mother and get my mail from her, since I'm not going to risk exposing the family to me any more than I have to.

As for 2019 income, the accountant company has been working on it and the numbers have started to come together. I paid in about 7k federal, 2k GA, and 1k SC taxes last year. I will be getting about 4k total of that back due to expenses and perdiem.

Hopefully, I will have more clear data soon, I have a couple documents that I need to print out, sign, and return to them which I hope to be able to do in the hotel here. We shall see.