What Little Putt Putt Needs, Little Putt Putt Gets
by
Phil Madsen, Expediter
(Written June 4, 2007, for publication on SuccessfulExpediters.com)
This Monday morning, Diane and I woke up in an RV park in Indiana, where we spent the weekend. We had been dispatched on Friday for a Monday, 2:00 p.m. pickup.
As we sometimes do, we camped in an RV park to kick back, rest up, walk for exercise and recharge to haul freight. With our pickup just a few miles away and not until 2:00 p.m., we slept in and looked forward to a very relaxed Monday morning.
Having time to spare and being parked on grass, I laid down on my back and crawled under the truck to look things over. With the truck approaching one year in age and having 133,000 miles on it, things looked good. The brake pads had plenty of meat on them. All seals were intact. The under side was clean and dry. Tire wear was even. All wires and hoses remained firmly attached. No bolts had worked loose. Plugs were all in. Drains and drain hoses were all clear. There were no leaks, dents or cracks; no damage from road debris.
Then I saw it.
A single drop of red liquid hung on the bottom of the coolant filter. I crawled out from under the truck and opened the hood to check the coolant reservoir. It was full. That meant the leak had not been there long, but there was clearly a leak. (For those who do not know, some trucks use extended life coolant. It is red in color. The coolant filter looks like an oil filter on a car.)
Back under the truck, I closely examined the filter. There was a coolant trail from the top of the filter to the bottom where the drip hung. There was no evidence of coolant coming from a higher point, so I focused on the filter.
The service interval for coolant filter changes is two years. This filter had been on the truck about one year and worked perfectly until now. It came with the truck from the factory. No one had touched it since it was installed. I watched for new drips for ten minutes. None formed.
So, now what do I do? It is 8:00 a.m. Our load was to run from Indiana to New Jersey. We could probably make the run, especially if we picked up a couple extra gallons of coolant, but do we want to try?
Overheating an engine can do serious damage. If the leak got worse and we had to stop, the load might be late and we would be charged with a service failure. If we call in the problem now, dispatch might pull us off the lucrative load to put it on a “good” truck. We don’t want truck failures of any kind on our record, especially with a truck this new.
A field fix would be to close the shutoff valve on the coolant filter housing. Our coolant is in good shape. It would probably not hurt to run the truck for a day or two without coolant flowing through the filter. The better fix would be to replace the filter. The engine was cool. The shutoff valve on the coolant filter housing would make it clean work. I carry a filter wrench in my tool kit.
I was all set to start work, but more bad news came. After searching the truck twice, the extra coolant filter I thought I had was not to be found. Two engine full-flow oil filters? Yes. One engine bypass oil filter? Yes. Two fuel filters? Yes. Generator air, fuel and oil filters? Yes. Reefer air, fuel and oil filters? Yes. But engine coolant filter? No.
I decided to take a risk and try tightening the filter by hand. A gentle twist produced no movement. A firmer twist also produced no movement. The filter seemed to be already turned on tight. But something changed. Before, there were no drips in ten minutes. After putting hand pressure on the filter, there was one drip every ten seconds.
That brought me back to the shutoff valve option, but it was an option I did not like. This is the only truck we have. We hope to run it for ten years or more. Without it we cannot haul freight. Without it, we are essentially out of business. Consequently, our truck maintenance philosophy is, the truck comes first. Whatever the truck needs, it gets, and it gets it now.
Before we bought the truck, we had a name in mind for it. Like people name boats, we would name our truck. But it never came to be. We ended up calling it “the truck,” and that was good enough. Over time, we have come to appreciate the truck more and more. If we built another one, there is very little we would change.
Unlike some trucks we have driven, this one is a joy to drive. It handles mountain grades and maneuvers in tight parking lots better than any truck we have run. The sleeper floor plan is perfect for us. The truck body (box in which freight is hauled) houses all the equipment and provides all the space we need to earn a good living hauling freight.
Recently, a name for the truck came to mind that we both like; Little Putt Putt. We treat Little Putt Putt like the best employee any business person could ever have. Putt Putt is ready to work whenever called. It performs tremendous amounts of work, sometimes non-stop and for days at a time. What Little Putt Putt needs, Little Putt Putt gets.
In the form of truck payments and maintenance costs, Little Putt Putt gets paid before us. If dirty, we treat Little Putt Putt to a trip to the beauty parlor (truck wash). Little Putt Putt is good to us, so we are good to it. If there is a choice between hauling lucrative freight or doing scheduled maintenance, we go out of service and do the maintenance. If there is a choice between taking in a tourist attraction or taking the truck into the shop, the truck goes to the shop. Like I said, the truck comes first.
Diane was in the sleeper getting ready to shower. “Diane!” I called up, “Things have changed. We need to get a filter now. Call Volvo to see if they can get us in, Secure for running. I’ll start out here.”
“Secure for running” is one of several shorthand phrases that have evolved between us in our time on the road. It means put away whatever is not put away. Do a walk around or pre-trip inspection as appropriate to the situation, update log books, start the truck to warm up the engine, etc. If we are responding to a load offer with an immediate pickup, run paperwork is prepared and routing is mapped.
We both know what needs to be done and how to do it. When one of us says, “Secure for running,” the focus changes and the pace picks up. Whatever one is not doing, the other one does; until all things are done and the wheels are rolling. Typically, it takes just a few minutes to get the wheels rolling.
So much for our leisurely Monday morning. No showers, no relaxed breakfast, no pleasure reading, no casual internet surfing, no friendly visits with the campground staff, no enjoying the fresh air and sunshine of a beautiful spring morning. We were instead back to work, and with some worry about how our day might turn out.
The closest Volvo dealer was an hour away in Indianapolis. They had time to get us in. We were there an hour later and, sure enough, they put a man on the job right away. I thought about just buying a filter and then going to a nearby truck stop to make the repair myself. But with our pick up time closing in and having no time to spare if something went wrong, I chose the safer and quicker path.
They did not even have to pull the truck into a bay. The weather was great. The repair was simple. The mechanic, laid down on the blacktop, crawled under the truck, swapped filters and that was that. He did not even use a creeper.
It took the dealer longer to do the paperwork than the job. The filter cost $19.44. Labor was $56.00. The service manager said he gave us a break on the price. Pointing to a large sign on the wall that said, “One Hour Minimum For Any Work Done,” he said he only charged me seven tenths of an hour. He recognized our truck from a previous visit and said he wanted us to come back.
$56.00 seemed steep to me but they did get us in and out as promised. I did not have to risk losing the load by having something go wrong during a parking lot repair. The load and our service record were very much worth protecting. $56.00 was a small price to pay to stay on the load.
We let the truck idle for fifteen minutes in the parking lot to make sure the new filter did not leak. While Diane stayed with the truck, I went to the parts counter and bought an extra filter. Next time, if we need it, we will have it. I returned to the truck and found no leaks around the new filter. We were good to go.
That left us four hours ahead of the pick up with an hour of driving time to get there. The Flying J truck stop was nearby. We had shower credits on our Flying J fuel cards and time to use them. We also had time to eat breakfast in the truck.
While the morning did not go as planned, we arrived at the pick up with time to spare, loaded the freight without incident and headed to New Jersey in a healthy truck.
Soon after leaving the shipper, the Qualcomm unit beeped with a load offer. I was driving. Diane looked at the offer. “We want this one!” she said. The load picked up in New Jersey, just nine miles from our delivery. The pickup time gave us all the daytime sleep time we would need to do another overnight run. The money was good. And the best part was, it delivered in Memphis, Tennessee.
Little Putt Putt is due for reefer service. Our reefer dealer of choice is located in Memphis. The timing was perfect. What Little Putt Putt needs, Little Putt Putt gets.