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I started out this road trip with a bad cold, followed by an infection that cost me a night in the ER in Memphis, and now...the truck broke down. I was going over a very bumpy section of I-20, near the I-10 split, when the speedometer started reading zero and the cruise control was disengaging, then the tach went all over the place and back to zero, and the engine quit for a while and started running again. We managed to get it to the fuel lane at a truck stop, where it refused to start again.
At this point, all I can say is that there is no way in God's green hell that I would be a company truck driver. We called our contracted's "on-road" service, they sent another driver to pick up the trailer and take the load from us, and then a tow truck arrived to pull the tractor out from under the trailer. The tow truck driver told us that he was supposed to move the tractor to the parking space, and that we were not going to get a hotel. BULL-SHIT! Poor guy thought I was going to kill him...he said, "Hey, don't shoot the messenger". hehe We're in business for ourselves. We pay for the tow truck, the repairs to our tractor, and the hotel, but if we were company drivers, we would be sitting in that truck for two or three days, with no air conditioning and no eletrical power. As it is, truck is at the Volvo dealer, and we're at a reasonably decent hotel, by central Texas standards. At least they have a restaurant, cable TV, Internet, and a beer store next door.
So, since Monday is a holiday, hell, we may be here until the middle of the week. I don't know what goes wrong with Volvo tractors that makes the engine shut off for no particular reason, but there are so many electrical devices designed to make the engine shut off, that, my guess is, one of them just did its job. I would have guessed that it lost the signal from the speed sensor, but that wouldn't keep it from starting again. Remember when a diesel engine would keep running, once you started it, until you shut off the fuel valve at the injector pump? Dem was da good ol' days.
Oh well, off to spam some other message boards.
At this point, all I can say is that there is no way in God's green hell that I would be a company truck driver. We called our contracted's "on-road" service, they sent another driver to pick up the trailer and take the load from us, and then a tow truck arrived to pull the tractor out from under the trailer. The tow truck driver told us that he was supposed to move the tractor to the parking space, and that we were not going to get a hotel. BULL-SHIT! Poor guy thought I was going to kill him...he said, "Hey, don't shoot the messenger". hehe We're in business for ourselves. We pay for the tow truck, the repairs to our tractor, and the hotel, but if we were company drivers, we would be sitting in that truck for two or three days, with no air conditioning and no eletrical power. As it is, truck is at the Volvo dealer, and we're at a reasonably decent hotel, by central Texas standards. At least they have a restaurant, cable TV, Internet, and a beer store next door.
So, since Monday is a holiday, hell, we may be here until the middle of the week. I don't know what goes wrong with Volvo tractors that makes the engine shut off for no particular reason, but there are so many electrical devices designed to make the engine shut off, that, my guess is, one of them just did its job. I would have guessed that it lost the signal from the speed sensor, but that wouldn't keep it from starting again. Remember when a diesel engine would keep running, once you started it, until you shut off the fuel valve at the injector pump? Dem was da good ol' days.
Oh well, off to spam some other message boards.
with a BS ticket ugh
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