[mike3fan]

I posted this in another thead but thought I would put it here also.

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?

[solo379]

Sorry about your fortune Mike, but you bring it to yourself. You should stick to the plan;-

I made it pretty clear that I no longer would be available to take another load to Grand Rapids,MN

[Orangetxguy]

Sorry to see this Mike. But...You got to do, what you got to do.

I have been sitting since Saturday, and am 6th out on our terminal board....Have only delivered 3 loads since Thanksgiving, have only delivered 5 loads since the first of November.

My truck is paid for...so sitting doesn't hurt as bad as it would if I had that payment. I know you have a truck payment...plus all the other expenses life throws at us...You got to do, what you got to do.

[dobry4u]

That is awful, Mike. Hopefully things will be righted for you shortly and you'll be rolling a lot and repair free, AND in a warmer state!!!

[Maniac]

I hate it when one of my students $%^&'s up. :-)

Of course at minus whatever, EVERYBODY has a degree (get it?)of brain freeze.

When its below freezing, NEVER, repeat NEVER turn on the PTO without first turning the pump shaft at least one full turn, even it you need to use a pipe wrench, it MUST turn one full turn.

ALWAYS leave the pump un-capped in the winter, after its been washed, it will NOT freeze up.

I NEVER cap my pump unless there is product in it, it is un capped now and full of whatever they put on the roads, a little ether or brake clean, will make it look like new.

[mike3fan]

Originally Posted by Maniac

I hate it when one of my students $%^&'s up. :-)

Of course at minus whatever, EVERYBODY has a degree (get it?)of brain freeze.

When its below freezing, NEVER, repeat NEVER turn on the PTO without first turning the pump shaft at least one full turn, even it you need to use a pipe wrench, it MUST turn one full turn.

ALWAYS leave the pump un-capped in the winter, after its been washed, it will NOT freeze up.

I NEVER cap my pump unless there is product in it, it is un capped now and full of whatever they put on the roads, a little ether or brake clean, will make it look like new.

Yeah sure, all the smart ones come around with the advice after the fact.

I knew better and still did it.....whats that say about me? I'm a dummy!

I will leave my caps off from now on though. good advice.

[RostyC]

Sorry to hear that Mike, that's a lot of dough to spend in these times.

[Beachcomber]

Originally Posted by mike3fan

Yeah sure, all the smart ones come around with the advice after the fact.

I knew better and still did it.....whats that say about me? I'm a dummy!

I will leave my caps off from now on though. good advice.

Sorry to hear that Mike...Folks who've never been involved with the trucking industry [battling the elements] have no idea what it's like to be out there sometimes...There are so many unforeseen circumstances that can ruin your day very quickly!

[mike3fan]

Now the rest of the story.......

After I got my truck out of the shop I headed back to pick up the loaded trailer. They had sent someone up to try to pump it off using a different truck,well that didn't work out. And then this driver was gonna drop their empty trailer and take the loaded tank down to St. Paul to put it on steam to re-warm the product, well the driver couldn't get unhooked from their trailer because everything was frozen......

So late Wed. when I got my truck I headed over to get the trailer and head to St. Paul myself, after hooking up and pulling out my truck started to sputter like the fuel was gelling up (-22 at the time) so I quickly pulled over and dumped some 911 into the tank and headed to a little fuel stop that had #1 diesel and put in 100 gallons. No problem the rest of the way to St. Paul (180miles).

I hooked up to the steam at 7:30pm and at 11:30pm when they were going home they turned off the steam and left every thing hooked up so that when they came in at 7am they could just fire up the boiler and I should be at temp around noon or so.....

When they came to work in the morning all the steam lines inside the trailer were frozen and they couldn't get the steam to flow through the trailer. They pulled me inside the building and tried for an hour and a half and could only get the return line to thaw. Are you getting the idea of what I was working with here? So back outside I go with steam only going one way through the trailer and at mdinight I was only to 90f which was close enough for me, I decided that there was no reason to go back to GR in the middle of the night so this time I ask them to let me park the trailer inside which I did and I would leave Fri. morning with it.

Friday morning I hooked up and had them unthaw my pump one last time before I left and I left my caps off because someone told me that would keep the pump from freezing . When I reached Grand Rapids it was a down right heat wave at 7f so I get all my hoses drug out from inside the building where they were warm and got the trailer aired up, then checked the pump and yep you guessed it.....frozen, heated it up with a torch and procceded to pump the load off, or so I thought. Pumps running, air gauge in the trailer shows 30psi, should be flowing into their tank....nope.... only an occasional blurp of product. Tried everything, had flow out of tank, had flow into pump and at inlet. Only thing we could figure was that the inlet line was frozen inside the building so we spent the better part of an hour heating the inside line, which did absoulutely nothing.

Now it's 4:30pm on a Friday and I have to make the call to the Chicago terminal that after all this I still cannot get the product off the tank. After a few discussions it is decided that the guy that was just now loading in Chicago headed to St. Paul would come up after he deilvered and try to pump it off. Once we got everything thawed out again and hooked up to his pump and started we had the product off in under an hour finishing at 2pm on Sat. Something must of happened to my pump when I broke the pto, seems like the guy washing it out would have noticed it wasn't working when he had me turn it on to flush it? who knows they were not the most helpful of a bunch.

Anyway I am back in Chicago 4 days after I left on a 541 mile trip. :ranting:

[Kranky]

When the shop replaced the PTO, they didn't inadvertently install one with reverse rotation did they?

In other words if your old PTO turned counter clockwise, they could have put in one that turned clockwise or vice versa.