So here I am sitting at a hotel a little bit north of bloomington il on 39. I'm. O/d and o/w. With a drop off tomorrow little north of Rockford. Woohoo. Doubt it happens but hope so. Anyone in the clipper that can tell me how the 35 mph winds are affecting the 3-5 inches of :lol2:snow. LOL.

 

I'm in Northern Iowa, and I finally gave up. Zero visibility was getting annoying. The East/West roads were okay, other than some drifting snow in spots, but the North/South roads were impossible to see.

Supposedly it's going to be finished around 3 am. I'm planning a 5 am departure.

 

Well I'm planning a daylight departure or at least checking the road report to make sure I have a path. But odds are I will probably wait a little while so the locals can get the surface streets cleaned up.

 

I left Chicago this afternoon and went to Grand Rapids,MN. Hit the snow around Janesville,WI and ran out of it in Eau Claire,WI. Thats when the wind picked up and had a pretty stiff side wind. Glad I was pulling a loaded tank. Currently unloading and the temp is -20 with wind chill of -40.......

 

Well i guess it was a bunch of overblown hype for the area i was in.. Left around daylight..unloaded by noon. Just got back to cinci.. I did hear they had a white out overnight though but just not much snow.

 

It was nasty cold over in Minnesota and Iowa today. -12 when I got up. I guess Iowa will see another 5 inches of snow tonight.

 

Well I'm back up here again. Snowed the whole way. It's freezing cold right now. -? Wasn't to bad of trip though all except for the snow covered o/s detour on 74 Indiana. Just hope I can get my truck out of it's tracks in the morning.

 

It's going to be -16 tonight in Northeast Wisconsin. Tomorrow, it will be 70 when I get off the plane in Ft. Lauderdale.

 

You better warm up slowly. May crack and bust if thaw too fast

 

Little did I know that 30 minutes after I made this post I would do $1300 dollars damage to my truck.

This load that we now have going to the water treatment plant here in Grand Rapids,MN is a real pain in the *****. First you pretty much have to run the load straight from Chicago so that the temp of the product doesn't cool off too much and the product is real thick and slimy and not easy to unload. Last week when I was up here it was 20 below zero with the wind chill and having to use my truck pump and 3 3" hoses in that kind of weather is pretty brutal. So after fighting with it for 3 hours I finally get it off and unhook everything, there is no place to empty the hoses into and both of my buckets are full and frozen. So I just hook the ends togehter and know that they are gonna freeze half full of product and I will deal with it when I get to the tank wash.

When I get to the tank wash the guys there are none too happy with me,but I could care less I did the best I could in the conditions I was in and they are just gonna have to do their job and thaw out the hoses and clean out some frozen material in my pump also. After 6 hours and much complaining they finished and I was on my way.

I made it pretty clear that I no longer would be available to take another load to Grand Rapids,MN I was told that was ok I could do a load of the same stuff going to St. Paul and it would be much better as they had an inside unloading facility and they only use air to offload. So I did that run for the rest of the week(3 trips) and was supposed to do it as a dedicated run every other day.

Well of course something happened and guess what? I didn't get the St. Paul run on Monday and I was now needed to take another one to Grand Rapids.....in the mean time I had talked to one of the company drivers and he told me that all he ever did was use his air compressor at GR and so I thought thats what I'll do so I wasn't dreading the run except for the impending blizzard.

When I got to the plant it was 12:30am and a balmy -13 with ungodly wind chill. I hook up my air line and start charging the tank up and get the inlet unfrozen which takes about 1/2 an hour. I start unloading and as I sit in the truck getting warm I notice that my air suspension gauge isn't going down at all, so I go inside the building to the tank and look inside and there is barely a little trickle coming. So now I start thinking I wonder if I just give it a little time with the warm product running thru the hose if it will loosen up and start flowing better.....after another 1/2 hour no change so I make the decision to bite the bullet and hook up my pump and do it like I did last week.

To say I just hooked up the hosed to my pump makes it sound so simple and easy,which at -40 nothing is easy or fast. It takes me a good 45 minutes to get it already to pump off and get product moving......when I throw the pto switch all seems well,I get out and look at the pump shaft and it's turning fine so I head inside the building to check the flow, just about the time I get around the front of my truck I hear a sound that has happened before when the pto doesn't fully ingage, so I get back in the truck and disengage it and then engage it again.....Well what happens in the next instance can only be described as bad.

After the loud crash and the sudden sickening feeling in my stomach I step out and immeadiatly step on gears and other assorted parts that I am pretty sure should not be outside of my truck and look under the truck and see oil running all over which in my humble opinion is never good. I shut the truck off and after a moment to myself I get out the flashlight to inspect and find that the pto drive had exploded and left its parts scattered all over the underside of my truck,see I knew they weren't supposed to be there. I waited for 2 hours then had a tow truck take me to a local repair shop where they had to get a new pto shipped in and installed today. $1,300 later I still don't have the load delivered and now had to take the trailer 130 miles to St. Paul to be steamed back up to temp then back to GR to unload some time tomorrow 3 days later.

Why is it that things like this always happen when you aren't even supposed to be there or are doing a favor for someone? Couldn't have happened at a worst time for me either,but then again when is a good time?