Thursday, February 19, 2009

Take this trailer... please


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After dropping off a load of Sam's Club stuff last night I parked in their parking lot to snooze. Across the street was a Wal-Mart supercenter so this morning when I got up I grabbed supplies.

Today's orders: run southwest to Dodge City, Kansas to pick up a load of beef heading to Waterloo, Iowa. I had told my dispatcher the day before that I didn't have enough hours to complete the run and when I asked this morning they said go ahead and pick it up, we'll t-call it somewhere.

By the time I arrived in Dodge City plans had changed. A driver picking up a load last night from the same plant had his clutch go out so I was told to grab his trailer and paperwork and bring the load up to Omaha for a t-call. It took a while to locate the Kenworth dealership he had been sent to but eventually that was sorted out.

Then I look at the trailer as I'm hooking up. The unit is running but the readout is showing a fault. I walk around the trailer doing my usual checks only to find one of the trailer tires very flat -- so much so the thing was just hanging from the rim. Hmmm. Apparently the previous driver wasn't very conscientious.

I phoned in to our breakdown guy and he got a truck rolling to repair the tire. I reset the alarm on the reefer and it didn't pop back on immediately so that was okay for the time being. It was keeping temperature just fine.

A couple hours later I'm rolling with one less screw embedded in the trailer tire and about eight hours later I'm in Omaha. The Safety Lane folks that check our trailers added some engine coolant to the reefer, which is what it was bitching about and I swapped it to a different truck that was taking it the rest of the way tonight. I don't know what the reefer was having a problem with, the coolant jug was more than 2/3's full and the sensor on the side was under the coolant level. Maybe it was a bad sensor.

Tomorrow I have a rare day off while I'm out on the road. I only pick up one hour on my 70 and I only have about one hour left from today so my dispatcher agreed that I would take a 34 and come back Saturday morning. Yay me.