It has been one thing after another the last couple of days. After spending the entire weekend idling at the Iowa 80, I went to pick up a load and noticed that my truck was struggling up hill. That might be normal if I were hauling a heavy load, but I was bobtailing and still had very little power. I sent a message off to operations asking them when I'd be by an OC, hoping that I could get away with running it in that condition... no dice. My load turned out to be 45,000 pounds (not the 15,000 my work assignment listed), condemning me to limping along I-380 at dangerously low speeds. I took some water out of the fuel filter when I stopped to scale the load and the truck ran slightly better for a couple of miles, but it just wasn't enough. I averaged less than 35 mph along the Interstate until I made my next stop.
I was pleasantly surprised when I got to the truck stop and found they had a shop on site. I called the breakdown line to explain the situation and that I was 99.9% sure I just needed a fuel filter. They said that the existing filter should be on just hand tight and that, even though I had no tools at all to remove it, I should be able to take care of it myself. So I struggled with it while the truck filled up...no dice. I tried buying a filter wrench from the fuel desk, but it was too small. So I called breakdown again... turns out they'd closed out the work order, for some obnoxious reason, so I had to explain everything in exacting detail once again to a female who was quite condescending about it. They refused to deal with the shop on site, for reasons that were never elaborated upon; I had to wait almost 45 minutes for a road service guy to come out. The only solace I had was that, even with a filter wrench, he struggled to get the old filter off. So who hand-tightened the filter, Donkey Kong? Once they put the new filter on, the rest of the evening passed without further incident. I dropped my load, found parking, and took my break.
My current load has not been any better though. It started off easily enough, but things started going downhill very quickly once I crossed into Minnesota on I-94. I was pulled into the scale and given a level two DOT Inspection, which consists of walking around the truck and checking for anything immediately obvious. The headlight short became an issue, as did my non-functioning city horn (which I'd been told the shop doesn't fix, ever). The biggest pain in the butt, though, was that one of my trailer tires had gone flat. The officer "did me a favor" by only marking it down as underinflated, which isn't an out of service violation and doesn't immediately result in a fine, but he also insisted that I put air in that or get it replaced before I made this delivery.
I needed to make a fuel stop here in South St. Paul. While the truck stop didn't have an air hose, the Peterbilt dealership just across the street did and they directed me to pull up to a door so they could air up the tire. While trying to turn around, though, I heard a pop and a loud hissing noise, followed quickly by my trailer brakes locking up and groaning in protest as I tried to move the thing. At this point I knew I was pretty much fucked, so I called the breakdown line once again. I pointed out that I was already at a place that does repairs, but once again they wouldn't let me get it fixed at the obvious place. At least they provided a reason this time: the shop was swamped and they wouldn't get to me for at least three to four hours. However, since I could unhook from the trailer, I could take it to another shop where they could get it fixed. I bobtailed eight miles down the road, got both air lines replaced, and returned to grab my trailer.
Since it was pretty obvious I couldn't get the trailer around to where I had to get air - and with that violation looming over all this - I called breakdown once more to ask about getting the offending tire replaced. I could see the big, blue Goodyear sign glowing off in the distance and was "lucky" enough that they do commercial tire replacements. They're only open during bankers' hours, though, so I'm still waiting for a technician to get here for an after-hours call. I was told that it'd be only an hour - as opposed to two to three for a road call - but that still leaves me way behind on this run.
While originally I was going to just barely make on time delivery for this run, I'll now be fortunate if I'm only four hours late. Customer service is freaking out, even though none of this is my fault; the load's a service critical, just-in-time delivery that could leave the consignee unable to do business if I can't get it there on time. They've advised me to call in once I park for the night to see about setting up a relay. It's not a good situation for anyone, since it'd leave the driver picking up the load very few miles (I'll be within 50 of the consignee) and there's probably little freight around here to get me moving again tomorrow. But there's absolutely nothing anybody can do with this load until the trailer gets fixed.
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