I Killed Kenny... Again.

Things had been going pretty good since I got Kenny out of the shop in Cincy. Nothing out of the ordinary had occurred at all to tip me off that Kenny might still be sick.

Until yesterday.

I had picked up a load of paper waste to take to a Kimberly Clark plant where it would be turned into toilet paper or paper towels or something like that. The load was heavy but not anywhere near max gross weight. After being loaded I hit the road and planned to stop at the nearest scale just to make sure I'd put the tandems in the right place.

Things were going great! I was a little behind schedule, but that was because the loading took a little longer than anticipated. I arrived at a TA truck stop where I scaled out on the CAT scales and then I parked and went inside to get my ticket. Things were still going well.

It was after I got back on the road after that stop that it all went to hell. I made it less than two miles away from the truck stop when the problem that killed Kenny this time occurred.

I was pulling a slight grade and noticed that the RPM's were decreasing and that the transmission wasn't downshifting as it should. I was losing speed fast. I put on my flashers and put the auto shift into low, usually when I do that it will downshift right away. But it didn't. So I put it in manual override and tried to downshift again. At that, there was some sort of buzzer going off and the readout on my dash that tells me which gear the transmission is in was flashing between 10 and F and --, which means it was in tenth gear and faulted and unsure of what to do next. Faulted simply means that it's trying to do something but can't.

I pulled over onto the shoulder and pulled the brakes and tried once again to get the transmission to switch gears, preferably into neutral. It wouldn't budge. So I shut down and let it rest a bit. There are several different methods of "tricking" the computer to put the transmission back into neutral which I tried at this point, to no avail. Next I called emergency support. The gentleman on the other end of the line walked me through a new step which involved disconnecting the batteries. Doing this was supposed to reboot the computer and allow it to find neutral on the transmission end of things. I did what the guy told me but it didn't help either.

Kenny was like a three year old who'd just thrown tantrum and was now standing still as a statue, arms crossed, refusing to go anywhere. Screw you Kenny....

Emergency support dispatched a wrecker and I was towed to the nearest Freightliner dealership. Of course, it was after 5 on a Friday and the dealership was backed up already. Kenny won't even get checked out until Monday... so I'm stuck in a hotel for the entire weekend. I still have no idea what is really wrong this time. Won't know for a few days. Boo, Hiss Kenny.

Comments

chip said…
time to kick kenny to the curb. He is costing you too much money!
Jason S Harry said…
My Lord Gi-Gi! You and this truck just ain't getting along so well! At one point I thought I had admiration for you fancy automatic drivers- but tomorrow I'll have new enjoyment to manually go from gear to gear whilst driving my old school set-up!!!

Make the best of it and enjoy your extended hotel stay!
Angela said…
Jason, I talked to the boss yesterday after I got checked into the dealership... as he always does, before he let me off the phone he asked if there was anything he could do for me... I told him to get me in a different, manually operated, truck asap. So hopefully that will happen soon.

Chip, yeah luckily it's not really costing me money directly. Hotel and repairs are covered... I just gotta deal with food and entertainment while I'm down. I'm not making more than a little breakdown pay each day otherwise... so I'm still ahead.

I would much rather be working though. I'm not one who enjoys sitting around with nothing to do.
some asian guy said…
looks like kenny landed himself in time-out for that tantrum.
Angela said…
You got that right Philip.
so sorry to hear that you're broke down again!...who knew this adventure with the autoshift was gonna be so frustrating!....our's is giving us a few problems also, but no shut down as of yet, so i'm not gonna read your post outloud and give it any ideas!....lol...hope you're up and rollin soon!

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