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We had an owner operator with a real problem.

It was Friday night about 9:00.   He had a load from Florida to Michigan.   Nice paying load right!   Delivery Monday morning…..no problem.  

Two year old truck, serviced within the last 5,000 miles by a reputable company.   He got to Perry, Georgia and the dash lights come on.   It wasn’t long and he realizes he cannot limp any longer.   He pulls the hood, thinks it all looks good and decides to call the tow truck after he has decided that this is definitely a warranted job Freightliner is going to pay for.   The load was obviously moved to another truck.  

Monday morning we pulled the truck into our dealership to find a major problem.   A broken belt!   Yes, a sizable paying load was lost and the customer had to pay the $400.00 tow bill over a broken belt. You have to figure into the hard cost the cost of the missed money.   How much?   Minimum $1500?   This hurts in any economy, especially today’s.

 After talking to the customer I learned that even if the customer had seen he had a belt broken, he had no tools to do the simple task, and no belt to replace it with.

Sad isn’t it.  

What is worse is this could have been a lot of you.   I speak to people all the time who have no “emergency stock” items on board and no tools to fix a medial task.   Don’t let this happen to you.   Spend the time finding out what belts you have and carry a spare set.    Buy the tools it takes to change them.   If you don’t know, ask someone.   There are highly skilled people running trucks today.   People like Nick who runs a van for Tristate expedite, and Bob and Linda Caffee who run for FedEx, Tom Evans, and others.   There are so many others out there.   Don’t be afraid to ask.   Take the time and learn how if you are physically able.   Come into my shop, we will show you exactly how to do it.   We don’t want to see anyone losing money over a simple issue.

I appreciate comments to this and other related topics.

Heath