My Ailing Trucky

Today my truck fell very ill. He has been feeling a little off for the past few days. He has had a slight cough and a little sputter here and there since about Wednesday. He seemed okay for the most part, but occasionally he'd hack a little and cough out some black smoke. I took him by a shop to see if they could tell me anything. They just said it was probably dirty filters and sent me on my way.

Trucky is due to have PM, Preventative Maintenance, performed on him between the 14th and the 24th of this month. The shop told me that they wouldn't do it early and that he would be just fine until then.

Ha! Shows that they knows!

Little hiccups here and there for a couple of days apparently took it's toll on Trucky. And yesterday he started coughing and hacking a little more frequently. I wish I'd known more, but I could only go by what the shop told me and I assumed all would be okay.

Today Trucky took a turn for the worse. We did okay this morning, he didn't really do a lot of coughing or hacking from Covington, IN to Owensboro, KY. The check engine light came on three times, but never for more than 3-5 seconds. And when I stopped to check the diagnostics screen, nothing showed up.

So I kept going. After we dropped off our inbound load, we picked up our outbound load and headed northeast. Trucky coughed and hacked a little more after we got going for a good bit. Then Trucky started choking out thick black smoke and started making some really nasty sounds under his hood.

From that moment forward today Trucky has been a very sick truck. He keeps losing power and doesn't want to go over 50 MPH. When I tried to get him back up to speed, he just belched out more black smoke and coughed and hacked a whole lot more to let me know he didn't like me pushing him.

I called our company about the problem (which is obviously the turbo) and they advised me of a couple of things to check. Trucky didn't like me climbing all over him and he got me very, very dirty and broke one of my toes.

I did find one thing that might have been causing the problem and I tried my best to fix it. A clamp on a hose was loose. So I tightened it down and got back in and hit the road.

Only to learn that Trucky was slick at hiding his problems and that what I "fixed" wasn't the issue. So he coughed and hacked about 30 more miles up the interstate to the next truck stop. There, I let Trucky take a break and I called our company again.

The representative advised us to head to an approved maintenance garage... so off we went. 50 MPH with 70 miles to go... it was slow and stinky and smokey... but I kept reassuring and encouraging Trucky, explaining that we just had a little bit further to go before we could stop for the evening and try to get him fixed.

Once we arrived at the maintenance garage, Trucky opened up wide for the guy who was hoping to fix him. He changed a couple filters and tightened a couple more clamps and told me to take Trucky out for a test run to see if that fixed it.

So we hit the highway... belching black smoke and coughing and hacking the whole way. Problem NOT solved. So we went back and told the guy we appreciated his help but that it wasn't fixed. He said there was nothing else he could do without proper parts and such. So, after one more call to our company... we decided to call it a day.

Tomorrow we're going to choke and gag ourselves (and everyone else) all the way to our Seville, OH facility for real fix'n up'n. Trucky is going to have to work really hard and take it nice and slow and easy for about 300 miles. But I think we can make it.

Think happy thoughts for Trucky's safety!