Finally had to head to the shop

Well, folks, it finally happened. We crossed the threshold of the factory warranty running out at 500,000 miles and had to put 'ol Obsidian in the shop. Bare with me... I know Nicole normally handles the blogging of all things Virago Transport related, but I figured I'd throw my hat into the game today. I'm sure she does a better job than I do, but here goes....

So, Nicole had her early morning baby appointment this morning (which I'm sure you've already seen the post about) so I was directed to "man the lines" and keep an eye on the load boards while she did her thing. So, in her typical fashion I took on like, 7, other tasks at the same time... brewing my first cup of coffee, compiling our numbers so I can complete our Quarterly IFTA filing (fuel tax), accounting and balancing the books, adjusting some calculations on the spreadsheet we use to figure our cost per mile and quote brokers, declining foreign dispatch services who push that they have "high pay loads" and can run my business better than me, pushing Total Quality Logistics to voicemail... you know, the usual stuff.

To clarify, yes, I push TQL to voicemail. They are the well known undercutters of the business, underbidding everyone else to move freight cheaply while they cut so much off the top for themselves, so much they have a stadium named after them, that there is really little left for the Carriers. Their American dream is a Truckers worst nightmare. Nicole always answers them, takes their info, kindly declines their offer that is usually 35% to 67% less than what we need to operate and have some extra revenue for the business, tells them our rate, and casually 'man-splains' to them why we won't take the load.. but if they can't cover it for their rate to call us back. It's quite a magnificent thing to watch her work. And, it is rare that Nicole trusts me to actually answer the business line, but when I am directed to (yes, directed... she's the boss after all) I have the strict rule to "be nice" so as to not lose us future business. I'll.... do my best, love. And, if doing my best includes not answering TQL calls then so be it. So every call gets the 'ol middle finger red button every time I see them pop up. This route is safer for me than just going off on these people and then dealing with the wrath of the boss later. I know it's not really their (the broker's) fault as they just have a job to do, but I also have a living to make and a household to provide for so I have placed them on my personal boycott list.

Anyways, I digress. So I get a call late this morning from a broker looking for a carrier to move some steel plates from Connersville, IN, about 67 miles from Whitestown, IN where I stayed last night and relocating it to a customer in Paton, IA (NW of Des Moines) for a rate we could both agree on. Yes, I was actually nice about it, and we actually chit chat a little while I quickly did some background checking on his company to ensure they weren't going to steal from us after the load is delivered. I receive and sign the rate confirmation (our contract to move the load), do my morning clean-up of the truck, conduct my pre-trip, start the truck up and immediately am greeted with a dash message stating there were 3 hours before a derate, and to seek service. For those that don't know, derating is when the truck detects a problem severe enough that it will eventually limit the horsepower throughput and prevent me from using the full engine potential, in a nutshell. 4 minutes later it disappears. Uh... ok. So, I roll out.

I head south on I-65 and get near downtown Indy and, in addition to the derate message, I now have a Stop Engine Immediately message to "prevent damage to the engine" that popped up. Well... crap. Off to the shoulder I go. Sometimes with these trucks you can cycle the ignition once or twice and it will reset itself. This time? No joy. Our Electronic Logging Device (ELD) service provider shows on the administrator site when there are faults or engine codes, so I pulled that up real quick to find out that there were a multitude of codes, mostly DPF related (Diesel Particulate Filter... a system that is known to be faulty but is supposed to clean the exhaust from heavy vehicles.. Thank you California) related codes that were shown to be intermittent, on top of an "Engine Manifold Pressure 1" error code that was consistent. Hmmm. So, I immediately Google the nearest Kenworth, see that it's only 10.8 miles away, and head that way. Thankfully the speed limit was only 50 on the Interstate, because that's all I was getting out of the throttle.

Meanwhile, I gave Nicole a less than enthusiastic holler to update that this is occurring and asked her to call the broker because I had to focus on the mission at hand. She 3-way calls and lets him know we're headed to the shop and has me explain what I'm seeing... also so that he could hear my dashboard going nuts, so as to show we're being truthful. She felt this was absolutely necessary as some carriers will cancel a load if they find a higher paying load.. leaving the broker high and dry, sometimes at the last minute. Our ethics are better than that.. but this was to prove to him that we were not doing the bait and switch thing. We told him I was about 10 minutes out from the shop and we'd have an update for him in 20 minutes or so... he was waiting for an update before any decision was made.

I limped Obsidian 7 miles to KW, check in, explain the codes my ELD pulled to her, and she checks with the "Triage" tech, the guy who is responsible for diagnosing the problem until a Diesel Technician comes available, to see when they could get me in, which turned out to be sometime later today. Way faster than some of the dealerships near home... which have been known to take days to get it done. The service lady tells me where to drop my trailer and where to park "on the service line".. and I head out and around the building to do so.

Meanwhile, I give Nicole an update that it'll be later this afternoon before they can get me in, and she makes another 3-way call to the broker letting him know that we would probably have to drop off the load as we didn't know how long it was going to take, and apologized profusely as this isn't how we like to do business. The broker, nice enough, said something to the effect that things happen and he understood, and that our communication is WAY better than what he gets from most carriers. I had already warned him that we're over communicators, to his benefit. Chalk that up for a win! He said he would try and recover the load with another carrier, but that if we were in and out to let him know and we could still take the load. Highly unlikely.. but it was a generous offer.

Unfortunately later this afternoon he did call and said he was able to get the load covered, but that if we were fixed tomorrow to let him know as he may have other freight to move. Duly noted. So, here I sit after 5 hours still waiting for them to finish diagnostics and let me know what the situation is. They're open until midnight, but I'll give them until 8pm or so before I look into a hotel for the night. Not expenses that we're looking to incur, but we'll do what we must. We still don't have a cost, as of yet, but thankfully we DID purchase an extended warranty to cover us for 200,000 miles or 2 years after our factory warranty ran out. Here's to praying it is under $1,000, the cost of our deductible, otherwise we'll begin to bark up the warranty tree. That is not a fight I'm looking forward to pursuing, especially since it isn't with Paccar themselves and the weekend coming.

I tried to get a picture of Obsidian in Triage, but unfortunately was too late as they had already moved her to a service bay.

Edit: Need a new DPF at the cost of $5,700 all inclusive. Bad part is our warranty hasn't been registered yet, apparently, with Kenworth or Cummins. On to the warranty fight!