Update on truck buying and becoming independent.

Get with Blackstone labs. They'll send you the kit. I also bought a suction pump that's compatible with Blackstone bottles at NAPA.

Blackstone sends the sample kit for free. You take a sample whenever, and it's $30 to have analyzed. The bottles have prepaid postage. So just take the sample, fill out the paperwork, and put it in your mailbox. Takes a couple weeks. If you pay to overnight it, they'll move it to the front of the line.

Don't bother paying extra for TBN unless you're extending oil changes, which I absolutely would not do in your case.

 

Just a few more thoughts for you.

Not everyone can have their own Authority but as the other person said when you have someone else dispatching you it's not really like you're running your own business. Not to offend anyone but really you're just an employee that has a truck.

The way that works is they have so many loads and so many trucks. The best loads will go to their favorites and then whoever's left will get the scraps. The ones that complain the least will get the worst but it doesn't really matter because you're not in control of your own destiny. It is always best for them to have too many trucks because then all of their Freight gets covered. If you don't work or you don't make enough money that has no meaning to them whatsoever. Their loads are covered.

I don't know about Texas but somewhere like Landstar or Mercer or mag carriers is much closer to your own authority and you're much more in control. Mag carriers purely just lets you use their Authority and you go on the load boards and pick. I'm not up to date on how Mercer is nowadays, but Mercer always was a company that had an army of salespeople and they had a ton of their own Freight that paid well, and I believe there is detention for your time also. I don't pull flatbed Freight but if you have excessive loading times I would think you should be getting paid detention.

Those loads make them money. Irregardless of whatever you think, it really does not matter to them whether you make money or not. What matters is that you start your truck and take the load where they tell you so they can make money.

Now as far as you think they're not making much money off of you think again. I know a guy they has a whole lot of trucks leased onto him. And all he does is rip them off day and night. A lot of companies will tell you they're only making this much and they make up rate cons that have different numbers on it there's all kinds of shady things that go on. I'm not saying all places do that, but you're putting everything in their hands including your money before you get it.

Look at your lease and see if there's any penalty for breaking it early. If there is maybe it's worth while to break it anyway.

The bottom line is you have a business that has to make money or you're going to go under. 5 weeks during the summer time is plenty to give someone a chance. They either don't have the work, they don't care if they have the work, they give you the crap work, or whatever the situation is the bottom line is you're just not making money and you need to get out of there.

You have to positively make money every time that truck starts or you are going to go under.

Every time that truck starts, every mile that you roll down the road, you are putting wear on that truck and you are moving towards having to put money back into it. Every day every time.

Your choices are that you have to make money, or you have to get rid of the truck. If you continue at all as you are that choice will be made for you.

You can turn this around but you need to take action. NOW!

Either that or your wife is going to have to go get a job if she doesn't have one already and you're going to have to take $50 for yourself out of whatever you get paid and put everything else back into an account for the truck.

I don't think wifey will be happy with that.

 

I have a 2021 and per Peterbilt it says oil changes every 80,000 miles

Now I do not do it like that at all but in your case if you start taking samples at say X miles and nothing is found then
you can move that number out a couple thousand miles and test again

Either way I wouldn’t run out a crazy amount of miles

I also started using Pittsburg Powers Max Mileage, it’s more for the def system but do your own research on that product but I have a few friends that swear by it and also couldn’t find anything online bad about it

 

A few thoughts …

I know there are a lot of people who think they know what they are talking about and take a reactive approach to maintaining a truck but don’t understand that reacting to a problem cost time and time is money.

oil changes?

Technology and materials have changed, the dumbest thing is to treat these new trucks as if it is a 1949 Ford and change the oil every 2000 or 3000 miles. It is a waste of oil - READ MONEY - and again a waste of time and time is money.

I have a lower fleet average right now for oil changes, it is 32,000 miles. Down from 40,000 this past year. These trucks use synthetic oil only, most have bypass filters on them and they have OAs done at specific intervals between the oil changes. Some of these trucks are approaching a million miles, very few have had internal issues, most to do with defects from the factory, I am not replacing the trucks as much as I was four years ago because of the improvements on reliability.

the one thing that is important is to keep the truck on the road and making money. If you have one crash and burn incident that can be avoided, then it is not making you any money and this is one factor involved in a failed venture.

I recommend (or preach) that you get a truck dyno’d and get a blowby test when you get the truck and at certain points like 400k. Blowby is not what comes out the vent tube as said by too many, it is the actual pressure built up in the crankcase when the engine is under a full load (no other time) and used to be measured by an instrument called a manometer but now measured by a electronic pressure sensor. Each engine manufacturer has tested their engines for wear and have established what the max pressure is allowed and what constitutes when an engine needs rings/pistons. The dyno measures the horse power and torque and for most engines if it is not making 80% of the rated up/torque, there is something wrong. The OA by the way looks at the bottom end and all other metal to metal surfaces, the reason for oil.

I also recommend a complete ECM dump for obvious reasons, not a summary but a multi page dump.

many think they can just treat a truck like it is a car, some get lucky and get a good truck but most trucks are driven to make money and the owners are reactive people and many of them, even many of those mythological single owner operator trucks are pure crap.

After reading some of the reasons of doing a rebuild at 600k without a Dyno, I wish I was the shop making money off of these people because without the Dyno, it seems to be a waste of money.

 

boss can you rla orate on why are you paying $3000 a month for insurance????

 

Oil changes can get pushed longer due to advancements in oil technology. There's almost no difference in the internal workings of a 1949 Ford engine, and a 2021 Cummins. It's oil in journal bearings. What's different? The oil.

A single O/O with a used truck doesn't want to be changing the oil at the same rate as a fleet owner that has trucks that:

1. He knows the history of
2. Uses synthetic oil
3. Analyzes oil at specific intervals and has been able to establish trends
4. Runs bypass filtration

Say you did none of those four things. Would you still change your oil at 32-40k? If yes, then you are wasting money on:

1. Synthetic oil
2. Oil analysis
3. Bypass filtration

OP needs advice tailored to his situation, and his situation is nothing like your situation. You're using the above four things to base your service intervals. In absence of those four things, is a 15k oil change interval really throwing away money? Or is it cheap insurance? Who knows. That's why it's called insurance.

And yes, a manometer is a perfectly legitimate way to measure blow by.

 

The only thing I'll add to this oil changing topic is that it's a lot quicker and a lot cheaper for me to change oil than to rebuild my engine.