Screech! Change of direction

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I ended up going east to Chicago this morning instead of north to South Dakota.

I woke up at 0200 to get fuel and find my loaded trailer I noticed the right-side headlight was out. No problemo, I think, we have repair folks and its just a headlight.

Nearly seven hours later the corroded wire on the other side of the chassis that was the root cause of the problem was fixed and everything under the hood tidied up. The load I was to take was critical so it was given to another driver and I got a load of plastic resin material to bring to Chicago. It was a 460-mile trip and I had just over eight hours to run it, not to mention the slow Illinois truck speed limit and fighting Chicago traffic on the way in. In any event, I made it to my destination slightly ahead of schedule, and completely out of hours.

The (new to me) truck ran fairly well during the trip, though a few differences from Kenworth rigs were immediately apparent: the 12-liter Volvo engines are underpowered and the air-ride suspension is a bit skittish, especially in the high winds I encountered today. And, for some reason, most of the buttons on the dash work backwards to what I am used to. For instance, in most American vehicles when you flip a switch up it turns on that function, and down cancels it. In my Volvo many of the features are the opposite.

I didn't mention yesterday several other features of the Volvo that I appreciate. For instance, there is a built-in wraparound curtain with a curtain track just behind the front windshield and side windows which makes it very easy to "bundle up" at the end of your driving day. There is also a nice, informative dash display right in the center of your steering wheel with many different screens of information. For instance, I reset the fuel tracking after I topped off this morning and it tells me how many gallons I burned and what my MPG was.

The pre-plan of the day arrived just before I arrived at my consignee. Tomorrow morning, at my leisure, I will take a load of soft drinks from a plant about 10 miles away and relocate it to Lenexa, Kansas, which is a suburb of Kansas City. The only downside to this trip is that I can't deliver early, instead having to wait until the following morning at which time I would prefer to be running my next load. Perhaps my dispatcher will have a solution for me tomorrow...