Good Start to Week

This week has started out excellently! I called Daniel this morning to find out how the load was going ... He said they were about done unloading him, but the return-trip load had been canceled. Seems the cold storage facility in Minooka had insufficient product to do the load. So he is stuck there until he can find a load back.
The load up barely paid enough money for the fuel to get it there ... the load back was supposed to be the money maker.

My wife called the dentist this morning to confirm my dental appointment at 09:00 a.m. The appointment was made at the end of March, written down in the book, and the secretary wrote out an appointment card for me to take home as a reminder. It seems it never made it into the computer at the dental office. No dental appointment.
So my wife drags me around to take fotos of houses all over the countryside. Took so many flash fotos that the camera is back on the charger to get enough energy to download the fotos to the computer.

Nice day though. :0)

Misty Morning

It has been misty all night.

This morning is one of those on which you hear water droplets dripping down thru the leaves on the trees ... you can hear the power lines sizzling in the mist ... and the darn mocking birds are starting to kick up a ruckus as the light is coming up thru the mist.
Everything is pastel and fuzzy.

Arrival Home

After arriving home ... I took my personal stuff out of the truck ... and gave all the paperwork to Daniel. It is his turn to drive this week (I have a dental appointment).

My wife came home with 2 grandsons ... they wanted to go fishing. As you can see, we trekked down the hill to the pond and spent some time fishing. The cane poles don't require technical skills. Wife + grandsons did fine with the closed face reel ... but experienced technical difficulties using the open-face spinning reel.

Let's go eat! :0)

Dumb Driver!

After loading this morning, the drive axles were a little over 30,000 lbs. and the trailer axles (at the rear of the trailer) were 35,000 lbs. NOT good. They can't be over 34,000 lbs. So I needed to slide the trailer axles further back to take some weight off of them.

I went back in front of the axles to release the pins that hold them in place. Sometimes it is a pull lever, and sometimes an air release valve. I saw this air valve right there ... and didn't immediately see a release lever ... so I pushed the air valve ... the pins didn't move ... air was hissing out ... and the trailer started lowering. OOPS! Wrong thing. Stopped that quick! Found the camouflaged lever and pulled it (releasing the pins).

The knobs that control the air brakes for the tractor and for the trailer were pulled up while I did this. I went back to the tractor, released the tractor brakes by pushing the yellow knob down, rolled the tractor forward ... pulling the trailer ... while the trailer wheels stayed locked in place. Went back to check and found that just a little bit more forward pulling and they should lock into a hole (I released the lever so the pins could do that). Sometimes there is a lot of resistance pulling the trailer with the wheels locked ... and what happens is that the wheels actually roll. There is an additional trailer brake lever that you can pull to lock the brakes so they won't roll. I pulled the lever down, rocked forward, then rocked backward to ensure the pins were fully extended ... let go of the lever and it flipped upward. When I pushed the red knob down to release the trailer brakes, there was still some resistance. I fiddled some more with the brake knobs ... and then scaled the load ... 32,520 lbs. on the drive axles and 33,120 lbs. on the trailer axles. That's legal.

I headed down the road, but noticed it wasn't accelerating . I was checking in the mirrors and noticed a puff of smoke. I IMMEDIATELY pulled over onto the shoulder of the road. The trailer brake pads were smoking. I sprayed water on the pads and drums to cool them ... spit, sizzle! I was wondering what the heck I could do to remedy the problem. My cell phone doesn't have service over there ... I was totally on my own. I'm sitting there holding onto the rear bumper and looking at the brakes ... wondering what I can do ... when it popped into my head that I could get the 11mm wrench and back the brakes off mechanically. Duh! So I backed them way off. (the 11mm bolt head is in the middle left area of the foto, near the bottom of the dark greasy thing). Then I was running down the road with no trailer brakes, air-cooling the pads & drums ... so the tires don't catch on fire. About 6 miles down the road, for some reason I looked down and noticed the hand lever for the trailer brakes ... I pushed upward on it ... and discovered that it hadn't been all the way up!!! No wonder the trailer brakes had been rubbing and gotten hot. Dingie.

A few miles further down the road was a place for trucks to park. I stopped. Went back and checked the temperature of the tires (warm but not hot). I touched the outer rim ... cold. Touched the inner rim ... no heat s I got close to it with my fingers ... it too was cool to the touch. So I adjusted the brakes all the way in ... and then backed them off to their proper setting. This time everything was working fine. What a ditz.

Hurry up ... And wait.

I delivered my frozen load in Jacksonville, FL this morning ... ran to "the yard" to pick up my check ... then onward to Blakely, GA to wait to pick up tomorrow.

Dan is trying to conserve on fuel money. Otherwise, there would be the trip from "the yard" to the house ... then from the house to Blakely and back to the house. So, it was a shorter trip to Blakely ... and only one trip to the house tomorrow.

In the meantime, you can see the view out my front window. I'm parked behind the Huddle House Restaurant on the 62 by-pass. The reefer doors are open to let the breeze air-dry the interior. So tomorrow I won't have all that condensation on the walls. There are no stores or anything else even close to here. No truckstop either. And this is the only place to park while waiting to pick up. Surfing-the-net, reading (Kansas Weddings), letting the air flow-thru the window screens (no engine running) ... and waiting to eat the Subway Sandwich that I picked up at the Pilot Truckstop this morning in Baldwin, FL. If I really feel energetic (or bored), I could go sort the 3 stacks of pallets to weed out the really rotten ones into a separate stack that they can pull off and never put back on again tomorrow. :0)