I certainly had an interesting ride last night. I had been on the road for an hour or so and was cruising along listening to the radio and then BANG! A very loud noise rocked the truck. I looked in my mirrors and saw allot of dust and debre flying along side the truck. My first thought was.....did I just run over something? I never felt any bumps or impacts so I ruled that out....my next thought was....I bet just blew a tire......I turned on my flashers and pulled over to the side of the road. I had to put on my coat, hat and gloves since it was 22 degrees outside.....I also put on my safety vest so other vehicles could see me while i was checking on the truck.... was traveling south on I-35 going from Des Moines to Kansas City.....this is a very busy highway.... I wanted to make sure that I was going to be seen at 11:00 PM at night! I took a flash light and my tire thumper ( a heavy metal stick to hit the tires with to see that they are still inflated. you listen to the sound of the impact of the thumper on the tire). I thought that maybe I had blown a trailer tire. I was wrong. It turned out to be a passenger side drive tire.... So my next step was to call my driver manager in Moberly.....she passed me along to the mechanics in the shop.....they took down some information and said that they would get back to me......I got to get back into the truck which was nice and warm while I waited. The mechanics called me back to let me know that a roadside repair service was on its way to my location and that they would be there within an hour.........It is amazing that the repair guy showed up exactly one hour later.....the repair guy told me that there was a rest area two miles down the road and that it would be better if I drove there to have the repair completed. That is exactly what we did. He followed me to the rest area, took off the blown tire and put on my spare tire. (here is another difference between big trucks and cars......big trucks care spare tires only. they aren't on a rim and are not inflated. the repair person has to take the blown tire off of the truck, then take the bad tire off of the rim. They then put the spare on the rim and inflate it. very different than carrying a spare tire already on a rim and inflated like in an automobile). the repair took around an hour to complete. So i was only down for a little over two hours....not too bad, all things considered.
I finished my run down to Springfield, MO. I get there a half an hour before I was scheduled to deliver. I am told that Kraft usually has the next load ready to go when the drivers get there.....well today that didn't happen. I got there and dropped off my load and was told that the load I was to bring back up to Moberly wasn't ready. It seems that they didn't have an empty trailer to load into. They told me to wait while they got the load ready. I called my driver manager and they got involved in the situation. After waiting around for three hours....my driver manager told me to just "bobtail" back to Moberly. I got as far as Lebanon, MO before I ran out of hours. So here I sit waiting for my clock to reset. I had a good sleep earlier and just got up and ate some lunch. I will be ready to move again around 7:45 PM. It will take me around three hours to drove back to Moberly. I won't get there until almost 11:00 this eve3ning. I am hoping I get a load. I might not because I won't have my full 14 hours available. Time will tell. That's all for now.... I will write more later.....Tom
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