I called my dispatcher and our in-house breakdown guy Andy to keep them updated and see if anything could be done. Got voice mail both times. Within an hour, though, I got a knock at the door and a technician was outside telling me I had to vacate the truck so they could forklift it into a bay to get worked on. Go Andy go!
The cat and I debarked into the driver's lounge, as seen here:
A few minutes later they picked up the rear wheels of my truck with a forklift and maneuvered it into a work bay:
(White truck with the forklift behind it near the top of the photo)
Two hours later I was just going out to check on progress when I notice my truck is no longer in the work bay and is instead just being parked. Since it was under its own power at that point, I was amazed to think the problem had been found and fixed in such a short time.
I spoke with the guy who test drove it and he said it was driving normally. Back inside with the service writer, I'm told that the lift pump wasn't the problem. The problem was the mechanic that installed the new filter on the side of the road forgot to install the upper o-ring and had also left the lower o-ring dirty. This allowed air into the system which didn't let the fuel system pressurize properly, causing the engine to not want to turn over.
So, according to the Volvo folks, I likely had a clogged fuel filter originally when I broke down and the guy that came out screwed up the replacement, which in turn led to an enormous tow bill, a night spent in a hotel, a repair bill at Volvo, damage to my tractor's catwalk and left mudflap hanger and loss of income for several days.
I digested this after I finished the repair paperwork and drove off the lot. My dispatcher got me a load heading to Arkansas but before I did that I had to drive across town to Garland in Friday traffic then pick up a trailer to run back across town to Mansfield, Texas. After all of that, head back in to Dallas, pick up a reefer at the local Estes yard and run over to Fort Worth to fill its reefer, then over to Haltom City to the Sara Lee plant I so enjoy to pick up my load.
The cherry on top was finding out upon arrival at Sara Lee that the load that my satellite system shows as being preloaded at 1300 yesterday really won't be loaded until 1300 today. Since they don't let trucks park on their lot, it meant another 25 mile round trip to the Pilot to wait and fume.
