What if it Snows?

Skillet man, you were young and naïve... You were supposed to come on at 5 PM as all left. Nothing on fire then. Make a round to each station, key the clock, carefully remove the key and go to next, and repeat etc, etc, all stations. Return to office;, throw in a chunk of coal from the scuttle, slip off your boots, open your thermos with its (whatever gave you comfort thru a long night), maybe open one of you sandwiches. Set your personal alarm for one hour and lean back with feet on desk. Alarm, wake, key clock with all stations keys and back to rest. At 7 AM, make a physical round and replace the keys in the little box location and greet the opening staff from next to last station as they walked in. Yell, glad you are here. nothing burned.
Or that is the way most of the night watch did it a at Federal Cotton Compresses for years. Box had a chain, but key had become detached over the years.
You go in before daylight to get a load, hard to wake the man in the office up.

 

Been a very long day

 

Well day one is in the books... Almost no driving. I spent the majority of the day crawling all over and under the truck. Changed oil and most the filters, will get the rest over the next couple of days. Still looking for the cabin filter location... If it has one. Been removing previous owners decals and numbers.

Trailers are an electrical nightmare... Half tempted to completely strip the wiring and lights, then start from scratch. One trailer has a cracked belly band that needs to be repaired. 2 tires need replaced immediately, 2 more in the near future.

Brakes on truck are near new, but need adjusted. Haven't looked too close at the trailer brakes yet, but a cursory glance says they are at least in legal spec. Truck has a few lights that need some attention. Lots of those chromed plastic switch covers that I'm going to remove, some are falling off anyway.

Truck has power for days. Seems to have some pretty tall gears near the top end, almost have to split the top 3 holes even when empty. Ride is not horrible, but its nowhere near the cadilac-like ride of my Volvo.

Only drove it about 20 miles up I-15 and back, for a round trip of maybe 40 miles. Takes 40 acres to turn around, looking like we may need to do some mixing and matching of trailers to get the off-track within legal limits for secondary roads.

First intersection I came to I took it too wide and ran out of steering... Had to do a little jack knife backup and then proceed forward to clear the cross traffics stop sign with the hood. Felt like such a rookie with at least 2 other trucks and several cars within line of sight. My shifting is a little rusty... I'm reminded of @D.Tibbitt comment when he first got Blue Bird. It wasnt horrible... But it wasnt pretty either, only rubbed gears a 2 or 3 times. Never missed a gear, but did have to slightly over rev once to catch the gear I was going for.

My boss also said he just purchaced today a set of twin 36 or 38 foot hopper bottoms he may have me pull some. Because of this he thinks hes going to license the truck for 120k or 130k... IIRC with that particular set of trailers the previous owner was able to legally scale at 129k gross. I know him and have seen that setup a few times before.

 

Excellent run down on day 1. Keep on checking and us advised, Very interesting. This belly band, have to weld upside down and with what in the tank?

 

Yes it will require welding above ones head... It may be more accurately described as a "Rib" rather than a belly band. It's a support structure that wraps around the tank to add rigidity and support the vessel itself. The welding will not involve the vessel itself at all, so no danger of cargo being a problem.

 

Man there's no bigger time suck then getting a truck ready to roll! Glad to hear you are least making progress. You glad to be back in a rig grabbing gears again? I remember driving a auto shift and then getting blue bird and having to shift again, it's a bit like riding a bike. but the downside is its hard to eat donuts and get up on the highway at the same time

 

Yeah, I'm very happy to be throwing a stick again. But in all honesty, its a little nerve racking too. I know for a fact that if I had had product in the tanks today I would have had some problems... I'm just not as smooth as I used to be. And smooth is VERY important when yanking a tanker, tank surge can be scary at minimum and possibly deadly... Even more so with a tank train.

I'm sure it will come back, I just need to remember to take my time and start doing everything sooner than I think I need to. If I have to start decelerating 3/4 of a mile before my exit, then so be it... Used to have to do that with the bullrack on a couple nasty hairpin exit ramps.

 

Hey you know the game as well as anybody ! Slow and steady wins the race. No rush no hurry.. My first trip with blue bird I got stuck in neutral on that grade on i15 coming down into butte Montana... funny how quick I remember how to shift after that... just don't be a dip #### like me . it will all come back to you in a couple of hours of driving

 

#### thats a bad place to completely loose your gear... Lol. The nice thing about an 18 speed... Ive a gear about every 200 to 300 rpm, just have to find the right hole.

 

Sounds great @Cattleman84. Hope you throughly enjoy the new job.