To Err Is Human, To Forgive....

Well, that is just part of the job. My job, at least. With so many things that can and will go wrong, it is almost a requirement to have a forgiving temperament. Otherwise, life would be pretty miserable while out on the road.

This week had so many pitfalls, I should probably do a single post for each day of the journey... But I will try to keep this one relatively in check.

Sunday night was easy enough,only 140 miles to my first customer. Well, except for the fact that the loaders forgot to strap down parts of my load. Plus they also loaded all the palletized material on one side of the trailer. That could be a problem later in the week, but did I ever tell you how much I hate to get dirty before I ever even leave the yard? So, the first chink in my armor was having to work on my load. The second would be the fact that, while I spent a day in Tennessee last week having repairs made, my truck is actually running worse. I went from an average of 7.9 mpg while loaded to a staggering 4.1 miles per gallon.

Monday started out just fine, with the previous ordeal of the straps forgotten...until the removal of some freight left those pallets in a vulnerable position. Later in the day, a small pallet double stacked did in fact do a nose dive off of a larger pallet and onto some other material, but there was nothing I could do about it. The center supports had been left off of the trailer...I was not destined to get much done on Monday, but I knew that before leaving out. So, it was 4 stops in Tennessee. I finished "working" before noon. But the drive left me grumbling, because along with the heavy consumption of fuel, there was also a very noticeable loss of power. Let's just say I climbed out of Dunlap, Tn at a whopping 12 mile per hour, and that was after I dropped off 15,000 pounds of freight. I have never dropped into the low side of my gears for this pull, so I was not looking forward to cruising through Kentucky.

Tuesday morning finds me just south of Indianapolis, In. A quick glance at my gauges alerted me to trouble...Seems I had someone steal some fuel during the course of my overnight stay. Good thing I slept at a fuel stop, because I would not have made it very far with what they left me, now that I was rolling at 4 mpg. I am just happy that they left the fuel cap, although it was not secured.

Upon arriving at the Indy customer, it is now mandatory that I do something with the overturned pallet. Good thing it only weighed about a hundred pounds. I was able to flip it off of the bundles of metal to deliver here, and thankfully, the lift driver then helped me to reorganize the remaining pallets for safer traveling. After delivering Indy, I headed north to drop off a few goodies around the Detroit area. I finished my three stops there and headed west just in time to watch the arrival of the saltshakers (snowplows). Although, I never did witness more than a handful of flakes actually falling from the sky.

Wednesday morning I awoke to the glorious landscape of winter in Kohler, WI. After making my delivery and getting my shortcut planned out, I took off down a two lane heading for Minnesota. You might find this surprising, but I was already needing to look for fuel again. This continued all week, because I was not accustomed to running at 4 MPG !! Sheesh... The route was good. My truck, not so much! I have to regenerate my exhaust every 1800 miles, which also pulls down my towing capacity. Unfortunately, my truck decided it was not going to regen and began to show the telltale signs I was in for an even longer week than originally expected.

Holy Cow, did I even mention this before.. I am going to Minnesota... That will complete my tour of the 48 contiguous United States. I have now driven through all of them and it only took 13 years to do so.

But back to the main event. So, without regenerating, the truck will eventually smother itself because the exhaust filters will become clogged. While it is having a hard time exhaling, it also is struggling to maintain the feeble job it was already performing. But, on top of that, I am now blowing out so much exhaust that it appears my truck has blown a turbo. I like to call this fumigating, and the folks behind me on this two lane stretch of real estate were not happy about it. I managed to get to the fuel stop, and decided to run a manual regen, in hopes that I could delay the inevitable.

It worked, but it took 45 minutes to complete and I was already behind schedule. I needed to make a quick stop in Winona, MN, before heading up to Minneapolis....

...to be continued

Route 23 near Kohler, Wisconsin