When last we left our hero...

I haven't been able to access the Blogger site for the past couple days so updates have ground to a halt for a bit. Now, where was I...

Ah yes. I spent Tuesday driving from St George, Utah to Rawlins, Wyoming. Plenty of hills and a few mountains to climb and descend but the MPG wasn't bad with only 12,000 or so in the box. The weather was clear and warm with little wind, except for one big gust of air midway through the day that pushed me over quite a bit.

Overnight in Rawlins was pleasant, with temps in the low to mid 50's. After the sun went down I turned the APU off and enjoyed a quiet night for a change. Starting before dawn, I got an interesting surprise during my pre-trip: my oil dipstick broke! The last couple inches that actually dip down into the oil are a black plastic (why they chose black is beyond me) and when I went to get a reading on my oil level only the top 90% of the dipstick came out! The Volvo guys said it happens occasionally and not to worry about the tip: it will get caught in one of the filters or fall out in a future oil change.

The trip to Omaha, Nebraska took the entire day and I stopped by the Volvo dealer there to get a new dipstick. The plastic tips come in any color you want, so long as it is black apparently. Sigh.

Overnight in Omaha last night and fueled this morning at the yard for $4.10 a gallon, the cheapest I've seen since I started running my own truck. FSC this week is 56 cents if I recall, so (56 x 6) $3.36 of that is covered if you get 6 MPG.

Speaking of MPG, I have also discovered that the trip computer in my truck doesn't register the correct MPG. My 1,220 mile trip from St George to Omaha took 159 gallons of fuel, for an average of 7.67 where my trip computer was telling me I was getting around 8.6. I expect the computer only averages the last 25-30 gallons it puts through the engine rather than every gallon since I reset it when I fuel. A pity, I thought I was doing so well... Actually, I'm still doing fine as I track it in dollar amounts vs revenue anyway.


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I dropped off the load this afternoon in Ottawa, Illinois at the PetSmart DC I've often picked up at. I have a few hours left I could run with today but I'm a bit tired after this long trip and am taking off the afternoon so as to get a fresh start tomorrow morning.