Tucking Fruck

dbBrad gets a new truck. Not for vanity, show, luxury or fuel economy, but strictly for work. My old truck transmission died and I replaced it so I could keep on working.

This is not my new work truck, but in the days of my youth, I too wished for a gas guzzling, jacked up, ridiculously modified and useless truck with monster tires and highways of mud!

It happened like this. Maranokos didn't have my rock and couldn't deliver. Frustrating, but these things happen and I worked the problem. Simply borrow a trailer from my dad and pick up the rock myself.

dbBrad's truck with dbDad's trailer and a dbDead trany.

The pavers were 4200lbs, the 3 large granite steps at 900lbs each makes 2700lbs and the three little steps were only 1800 combined. Because of ease of loading, the pavers went in the truck and the trailer was loaded with all the granite. Seemed like a decent way to do it but clearly my truck was overloaded and more weight should have been on the trailer. None the less, my little 250 did great with the 8700lbs. Including 1600#'s for the trailer, I was at 10,300.

dbBrad and dbDead truck, being towed away. This was the second attempt to tow it as it was dropped off the first truck, bending the bumper.

My truck, a 1996 F-250 is a work horse. It has 180k miles and is still running strong. In fact the engine has more power than the transmission can handle apparently.

The old wonder truck, an 85 Nissan, still running with 320k miles.

So on Friday, Memorial Day weekend, at 4:45 pm, in Kent of all places, my truck is doing great one minute as I'm talking about needing to charge clients delivery fees to cover my costs and how I could hand pick the rock, deliver it, and still save them some money, when I look in my rear view mirrors and see smoke.

Turns out the seal on the transmission failed, probably due to overheating of the trany fluids and it was dripping onto the exhaust and hence the smoke. I was able to drive off the freeway, but there I was, 100 miles from home, 15 minutes before every single store was going to close for the next 3 days, with 8700 pounds of rock.

Thank God for my Dad and for Del's truck rentals. They had a lovely truck which I could rent if only I could get there by 6:00, before they closed. I spent 10 minutes asking anyone I could find for a ride before I realized that all the nice trucks in the parking lot belonged to guys in the bar who probably couldn't drive by this time and I was screwed.

A very nice rental truck from Del's in Woodenville, with the Dura-Max engine and leather king cab. Nice truck!

So once again, my dad came to the rescue and picked up the rental truck, brought it to me, and helped me move the stone out of my truck and into the new one and I was home by 8:00.

dbBrad having a little fun with his new truck. I purchased it a long way from home so to make it simple, I rode my motorcycle which I loaded in the back.

Still needing a truck for my current projects, to get to the job, haul materials, and to move my excavator, I found a new one on CraigsList which has turned out great. Very similar to my old one, but a 350 with duallys and only 60k original miles, less than 1/3 that on my broken truck.

dbBrad proudly stands on his new truck.