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

SLOWWW DAY, shoulda been in Greensboro tonight but still sitting at the Carlisle yard. Delivered to Ross this morning, then back up to Carlisle to see if my relay arrived yet. Driver kept pushing out the ETA further and further until about 1900, then stopped pushing it out. After sitting around all afternoon I called in to see where the trailer was, was told the ETA was still 1900 and was on its way.

Decided I will just spend another night here and run it down tomorrow.

Booked 2 more loads, running from NC back up to York PA (thank God not C&S wholesale), then another not far from York headed down to Savannah, GA with a 2nd stop along the way in NC.

Light loads, good pay, can't complain. But if this relay doesn't show up I won't be able to make my appointment times as schedules are tight. Very frustrated with these delays, original ETAs were for today at 0800 in the morning...

 

Ain't that the truth LOL.

I wish that Schneider would hold drivers a little bit more accountable for dropping relays. Not that the driver with my particular load is necessarily at fault (could have broke down, got sick, etc.), but unfortunately my experience in the past has been that drivers tend to say "screw it, I'll run this how I want" when it comes to relays, and not set ETAs until an hour before they arrive, stop at the truckstop for 4 hours because they aren't in any hurry, etc., etc.

Its probably not the best thing for IC's to grab these relay loads knowing the above, but when I have the chance to pull a <5000lb load that gets me out of an area that I don't want to be stuck in, going somewhere I want to go... well I'm gonna give it a shot lol.

I started my day early this morning hoping that I would be rolling out of here as soon as I got back to the OC to pick up the relay, I'm almost glad it didn't show up tonight because I would have been really pissed sitting here and watching myself burn up 13 hours and 20 minutes of a 14 hour day waiting for it to show up, lol.

But it is what it is, assuming it shows up tomorrow I'll be down in NC tomorrow night, then grab my load headed back up, then back down to Savannah.

The one headed down to Savannah should be interesting - like I said in the earlier post, its 2 stops, first pickup in about 20 miles from York, PA (can't remember the town), and the second is along the way in NC. Load board shows a total weight of just over 8k lbs, about 4k at each stop. After accepting the load on the load board I took a look at the actual customers, and the second stop is a customer that I have been to before that usually loads up products weighing over 40k lbs. I will be pretty pissed off if I end up having to run a 40k+ load, compared to the 8k load I was expecting, because that affects fuel mileage (and therefore the profitability of the load) in a HUGE way. It would be the first instance of that happening though with loads I've picked off the load board (expecting a light load, and having it being much heavier). We'll see, lol.

On a much more random note, tonight I was bored sitting here in my truck. Over Christmas I installed a new head unit and speakers in the truck, it sounds AMAZING. I got to thinking maybe I could pair my laptop up with the head unit through bluetooth and watch movies. Turns out it works LOL. It was pretty cool watching a movie, it was like being in a theater with the huge speakers that make the whole floor shake when there is a lot of bass. Playing a shoot-em-up video game sounded pretty good too.

Back to the truck itself, I'm still working on getting better fuel mileage. Winter fuel sucks, and hills and wind suck too, but I'm still not getting what I think I should be getting considering the amount of lightweight loads I pulled. When I was home for my reset last time I pulled out the exhaust backpressure sensor and cleaned that one out. I tried to remove the little tube that feeds the sensor from the exhaust manifold to see if it was clogged with soot, but unfortunately it is so corroded into the manifold it was spreading the head of my line wrench apart trying to get it loose, LOL. I didn't want to round it off, so I didn't push it too hard. I may try removing it shortly after driving the truck, maybe the heat will have expanded the metal manifold enough to make things loosen up a bit. If that fails, I'll probably have to get a new tube from Cummins, then cut it right at the part on the manifold and then I can get a socket over it and short of shearing itself off in the manifold, that should get it out.

But, I did notice that I got much further on this tank of fuel after cleaning the sensor out. Mind you, I did a fair bit of bobtailing this trip (from Garysburg to Chapel Hill, then Chapel Hill to Charlotte), so that may be the reason the mileage seems so much better. However, I'm going to be optimistic and say maybe cleaning the backpressure sensor out made the improvement? We'll find out over the next few tanks.

In the future, like, way way in the future, if everything continues to go well and I want to stay on the Choice program, when it comes time to look at another truck, I am thinking a setup like this would be absolutely amazing:

Start with a Kenworth T660 glider kit.

Ok, I really would want a W900L glider kit, but, the T660 would get better mileage, so I'd have to suck it up and go with the T660.

Next, drop in a remanufactured N14 Cummins. Yeah yeah yeah "BUT MAN U SHOULD GO WITH A SERIES 60 DETROIT THAT IS THE BEST ENGINE EVERRR!!!!11) - NO. It will have a N14 Cummins.

Transmission time - I like the 13 speed I have in this truck a lot. Shift it like a 9 when empty or light. Being able to split gears is amazing. When really heavy though, I find myself wishing that there was a gear between 4th and 5th gear (technically 5th and 6th gear, but the shift pattern has the "true" 1st gear marked as "LO" and 2nd gear marked as 1st), so I'd probably opt for an 18 speed.

Sometimes I do like to go a little faster than 60, but I really do try to drive at 60MPH. I'm thinking an 18 speed with a single overdrive would be a good fit, because you could run in 17th gear (direct) at 60 mph cruise speed. If you wanted to go faster (bobtailing, getting home, or hell who I am kidding going faster because you spent 4 hours looking for an empty trailer and are running late) then you could run in 18th gear for a bit of extra speed without having to wind the engine way out of its optimal RPM range.

Rear gears would all depend on the optimal RPM range of the N14. I'm not sure exactly what that would be - would have to do some research there.

The rear axles themselves I would try set up with only one axle as a drive axle, and have a second dead axle set up as a drop axle. The one drive axle would have a locker for obvious reasons. Would always carry tire chains too as even a little mud would have you screwed.

Running with the majority of loads I pick (honestly I think with the exception of one load, all of my loads this month have been less than 10k lbs), the dead axle would stay up and out of the way, not wearing the tires, not adding any rolling resistance.

If I needed to pull a heavier load, I could put that axle down to be legal.

However, I'm not sure if it would be possible to have a drop axle setup that would work on a standard wheelbase truck with a dry van trailer... I wonder if it would cause clearance issues against the trailer. Most drop axles that I've seen on heavy-haul trucks, etc. are far enough forward of the 5th wheel so that when they are in their upper position, they wouldn't touch anything. I'd have some research to do here.

Anyway, can ya'll tell I've been bored sitting around here all day? lol.

 

Both my DBLs and I had the understanding that hometime was FULL days - so if I wanted 3 days off, that meant if something happened and I made it 50 miles from home on my scheduled arrival day, and had to go on duty and drive for an hour the next day, then the day with the hour of driving was still considered a "work day" and I would take off 3 full days from there, leaving out on the 4th day.

Sometimes **** happens and you may not get in on the exact day you want, but don't let that cut into your time off.