STRAYCAT’S DOGGONE BLOG

MORE MARCH MAINTENANCE MALAISE

March 30, 2005 on 2:21 pm | In On The Road |

On March 25th, I got a load after taking a couple of day off for ‘hometime’. It picked up in Las Vegas and delivered in East Moline, IL. Since it didn’t deliver until the 30th, I made arrangements T-Call it in Denver. I don’t know why I thought it would go well after the horrendous month I’ve had so far. Anyway, I picked up the load at 3:30 PM. It took me 1 hour and 45 minutes to go the 5 miles from the TA Truckstop to the Shipper. I forgot that it was Good Friday. All of the LA people arrived in town early, and every road, freeway, artery, street, avenue, boulevard, cow-path, or anywhere you could put a vehicle was packed bumper to bumper. The load picked up just off of “the strip” at Tropicana and Swensen. After picking up the load, it took me another hour and a half to get to the freeway, and another half hour to get out of town. I stopped in Mesquite, NV to get my mail and take a break. It was just turning dark when I started to leave. I was doing a ‘walk-around’ to check lights and discovered that I had no Marker or Clearance lights. I had Tail Lights, Brake Lights and Turn Signals, but that was it. I drove to the Truckstop and called “on-road”. They sent out some “clown” who had no idea what he was doing. He first got out his circuit tester. I was watching him at that time, and he clipped the connector to a “glad-hand”. I’m by no means an Electrician, but even I know that you have to have a ‘ground’ to get the tester to work and the “glad-hand” is not a good ground. I suggested that he connect it to the frame. After that I went back into the truck to let him work. He puttered around for a couple of hours then came to me and told me that the problem was in my Truck not the Trailer. I said that I wasn’t going to pay him $75.00 an hour to chase wires when I could take it to our Terminal in Salt Lake City and only pay them $45.00 per hour. Bottom Line: I still had light problems and I couldn’t go any further until daylight because of the Utah Port of Entry. I called Salt Lake City and told them the problem. By then it was 10:00 PM, so I went to bed.
I got up the next day and drove to our Salt Lake City Terminal. When I arrived at the shop, I told them the problem. I said that even though the “mechanic??” that on-road sent out said the problem was in my Truck, I wanted them to check out the trailer first. The Shop has a tester (basically, it’s an inverter that converts 110 volt AC to 12 vold DC) that checks out all of the lights on a trailer. I first showed the mechanic the lights that I had with my tractor hooked up. My theory was that if the lights on the trailer worked when they hooked up their tester, then the problem was in my truck, and they could start chasing wires. If, when they hooked up their tester, the trailer still had the same lights inop, then the problem was in the trailer, and I could inform the Planner and T-Call the load and be on my way. Bottom Line again: It turned out to be the Trailer. I went to Dispatch and T-Called the load. I lost 2 more days driving this month.