So yesterday.
Drove up to the plant north of Tulsa, dropped and hooked trailers, started heading back. About 4 miles going back into the trip, I hear a lot of air passing through one of the air valves. It got worse, worse and worse.
About 8 miles I found a place to pull over and checked it out. The air was hissing from a brake chamber and it was bad. But this is the middle of nowhere and I didn't want to be stuck out there, so I tried to get the air back up. It worked - long enough to get down the hill in front of me and that's where I came to the revelation I best pull over, put out the triangles and call for help.
3 hours later, a mechanic comes - clear from Oklahoma City, like 140 miles away. All the repair outlets in the Tulsa area were all booked up and wouldn't be able to get to me for a long time. It took this guy 2 hours to fix the problem. I left.
A mile down the road, the hissing started again. I'm like, man, this dude just replaced that with a brand new brake chamber! There was no where to stop and unlike previously, the brakes weren't dragging so I just drove to the Casino. I didn't know there was a casino up there, just found it on the Trucker's Path app and that was the closest place. I got there, no trucks at all. Started wondering if they even allow trucks, tho there were plenty of parking spaces for them.
I got out and determined that I now have an air leak on one of the air bags on the trailer. Gag.
I flagged down a Security vehicle - do you allow trucks to stay the night here? Yes, but you have to do some business here - in other words, spend some money. Yes sir, I plan on eating dinner. Okay, no problem. So I called the breakdown line, reported the problem, gave the info and they told me a half hour at most they would call back with info for who they were getting to come out and fix it.
Good luck with that,, I thought, at this time of night? I went into the casino only to find the restaurants were already closed at 10:30 pm, even tho their website says one of them says they're opened until 2 am. Be nice if they updated their website whenever they make changes like that. So, I decided to have a beer at the bar. I sat down in front of a electronic style machine that is mounted onto the bar top.
I hadn't gambled in a while, I decided to play blackjack on the thing. I lost $65 before I won $120 and then back down to $100. It was a bit of a reprive from the day, I went next door and got a sandwich from the convenience store and then went back to the truck. It was fully 2 hours before they called back to tell me it would be another 2 hours before a mechanic would show up. Ok. I was up til around 3:15 am last night. The mechanic got the air bag off and said he would be back asap after going to a parts place that is opened 24 hours.
I dunno, I went to bed. 3 hours later, he's banging on my door. I couldn't find a replacement so I fixed this one. Okay.....It's holding air fine, no problems. He seemed to be a competent mechanic, so I figured to just take his word for it;. He said you're good to roll! I thought, no I'm not, I'm exhuasted. I went back to bed for about an hour and a half and then - realized I was almost out of fuel. Time to get up! Felt like crap, not enough sleep will do that. But I drove the 60 miles to the Love's, fueled up and then drove the rest of the way back in.
16-1/2 hours of breakdown pay, that's going to make this particular Oklahoma trip worth a lot more than the normal ones. My dispatcher contacted me a little while ago - do you want to go to Houston tomorrow to pick up an empty trailer? Sure, why not? I was otherwise facing 3 full days off because the loading plant is shutting down - today actually - for scheduled maintenance. It's about 440 mile round trip, take about 10 hours which includes each end. Not worth a lot but better than nothing. Then I'll have 2 days of sitting around and then back to work on Saturday - allegedly anyway. You can never really take their word for it, stuff happens all the time in this industry and schedules change.
Yes, I couldn't resist, even tho I now know the surveyors won't be there until next week? I drove by there on the way home anyway, lol.
Okay, with that I'm going to take a short nap, I'm just out of it today.
