THE ADVENTURES CONTINUE - DFO gets a truck and hops on Schneider's IC Choice Program

Yeah man I'm happy to share what info I can, I'll be happy to let you know how the first week goes. It'll be a little hard to calculate for the first few because of the no truck payments for the first 2 weeks, and the fuel probably being split up on loads over 2 pay periods, etc, etc., but I can at least tell you what I am seeing per mile according to the load board, what I am making per ACTUAL mile, and what kind of hand calculated fuel mileage I am getting. I'll start with that on Monday with my first full weeks loads. I'm imagining my take-home pay won't be that great until I really learn that load board but that's OK. I know once I get more comfortable with planning my runs that will only improve as I gain more experience.

 

One of my favorite routes was cruising across upstate NY on 90. Delivering up in Lyons Falls once took me through some beautiful back country roads. I'll always remember delivering to a little warehouse up there, rolling down that steep grade into town, geared way down with only about 20,000lbs in the box and the jake still wouldn't hold me back, lol. I really wish I had a camera on, looked so cool rolling into town. You won't ever hear me knock upstate New York.

Since you're on the east coast I think you'd be smart to go bulk. I know at Charlotte I saw several drivers that were just out of school heading straight into bulk training. That tanker experience would be invaluable and opens up lots of doors even if you decide you don't want to stay with Schneider. Van isn't necessarily bad, but you know from reading my posts how a lot of my days went...

I'm really liking the new truck. Few quirks here and there. The check engine light came on once after bobtailing across to Detroit. I was able to pull the code from the little display on the dash, but it was an obscure one I couldn't really find any reference to. The only thing I could find was literally one post on some random website, something relating to a DPF issue. After I got a trailer behind it it probably heated up the DPF enough to go into a regen and burn off whatever was making the sensors read weird. It disappeared and hasn't shown back up since. Other than that one issue it's given me no trouble and runs really well. The engine was originally had a multitorque spec of 1400something ft/lbs on pedal and 1650 on cruise. It looks like it was flashed to straight 450hp and 1650ft/lbs on both pedal and cruise judging by the stamping on the data plate. I'll take it down to the nearby Cummins shop at some point and take it up to 500hp/1650 ft/lbs. I'll go underneath it tomorrow and check the trans and driveline but I'm pretty sure they're only rated for 1650 so I won't be able to push it any more than that. Even though the torque stays the same the extra 50 horsepower should widen up the torque band a bit and if I drive it right that should help with fuel economy. Many think that more horsepower = less fuel mileage. Not true in the least. It's all in how you USE that extra power and torque.

I'm not sure if the service on the Tripac was done as part of the PM or not. I've got an hour meter for it in the side box, I'll compare that to the writing on the filters tomorrow and check it out. It appears to have a little Yanmar diesel in it, I have slightly larger 3 cyl Yanmar in a tractor of mine that is one of the simplest most bulletproof little engines I have ever seen.

As far as the inside its pretty much set up. In the future I need to purchase a big inverter and a microwave, but before I go dumping money into toys I want to build up my personal (not the Schneider) maintenance account a fair bit. Once I get a microwave I'll probably get a larger fridge designed to fit in the cabinet area, then I can turn my current little fridge way down into freezer temperatures and use it to keep frozen foods I can cook in my microwave. Again, I'll happily eat my PB&J and lunchmeat for a while before I splurge on anything like that. Other than that I need to take a look at the speakers - on both cabinet panels behind the seats there are two pretty large oval holes that were covered up by metal plates with rivets in them. I couldn't figure out what the hell they were for until I realized the previous owner must have cut out the holes to put speakers in there. There is almost no bass, everything is very tinny sounding. So either the factory speakers really do suck that bad, or the factory speakers didn't get hooked backed up when the custom speakers got pulled out by the previous owner or the reconditioning guys.

Can't decide if I want to remove the little chain/flame sticker things yet. I'll take a few more pictures and get ya'lls input on that. I also need to learn how to polish aluminum. Any tips? Tomorrow is gonna be a nice day (68*!!) so it'll be a good time to get some work done on this thing.

Sorry for the rambling, but you asked and the gearhead in me is always up for discussing trucks, LOL.

 

Good call, forgot about that new regulation. I'll have to check the Qualcomm and see if I can.

 

Yeah checked my Qualcomm and I'm all good for a restart.