RowdyRebel

Dang...I've got well over 1M miles in a Mack, but no plaque. Guess they don't do that anymore? Just shy of putting 1M miles on my own CH when I parked it 5+ years ago...plus my time pulling pneumatic tanks (CH), logs CH & CL's), and now hauling feed (R)...had my CDL almost 23 years now & been at the wheel of a Mack for all but 4 of them. Anyway, Merry Christmas, y'all, and to all of y'all a good night!

Funny story...in my younger years, mom used to HATE the fact that I was always the last to arrive to place the presents I'd bought under the tree...so they were always front & center for the "before" picture of her beautiful tree. "Why", you ask? They were all "wrapped" in cardboard boxes (later progressed to plain brown paper) taped up with Alabama Chrome. I've got pics somewhere...but not sure if I've got enough space to upload.🤦‍♂️

$5.83/gal?!?!?!?!?😱😱😱 Walmart has their store brand here for around 3-1/2 bucks for the good stuff (whole). The name-brand stuff is up there, but it all tastes the same. Sounds like you're a gallon-per-day house like we are. Sucks about the chickens...I've been wanting to get some, but my wife is opposed. Coyotes are a problem around here. One morning, back when Ol' Dozer was still around & riding shotgun with me every day, I was out pretripping my truck. Ordinarily, he'd be off doing his business during this time, but that morning he was laying quietly between me and the ditch, staring intently into the darkness. When I noticed, I shined my light over there & saw a coyote stalking us. Called the sheriff once we were rolling to see what options the law says are available to me in that sort of situation & was told "just shoot it". OK...good to know. About a year later, I was out checking the propane tank and got an eirie feeling like I was being watched. Turned around & saw one about 15-20 yards behind me creeping up on me. Pulled out my Governor & sent a load of 000 its way. Every once in a while, we can hear them off in the distance. Chickens in the yard would bring 'em closer for sure.

Wife's birthday tomorrow. I have always made dinner on her birthday. It's the 1 day out of the year you'll find me in the kitchen if she's home. She wanted Chicken Alfredo. Ok, easy enough. Found a skillet meal that doesn't have broccoli. Throw in some garlic bread, potatoes in a buttery garlic sauce, and some honey roasted sweet corn. Cake, ice cream, card, and a bunch of candles. F***ing cost $65 at Walmart...and I have to heat it all up! For that, I could've almost taken her out to eat & not had to spend a single minute in the kitchen. Probably would've been cheaper to make it from scratch, but then I screw up oatmeal. Nope. Dump it in a skillet & heat. Corn is steamable in the bag. Taters are the same way, or I can dump them in a pan to heat up & make it look like I'm doing more than I am. Garlic bread is just a "warm it up in the oven" deal. SHOULD be able to manage without screwing anything up. Funny thing is, I could have the heads off an engine, transmission sitting in the yard, and brakes tore apart the day before we're supposed to leave on a road trip and have it all back together in time and it'll all work just fine. In the kitchen, I could follow a recipe to a T and it just turns out nearly inedible.🤷‍♂️

Something I've been saying for years is that there's a reason we have what we have. The BEST people for the job value their good name & reputation more than the power of the office we need them for, so they aren't willing to have their good name & reputation dragged through the mud campaigning for that office. What we're left with, is a bunch of crooks, liars, and thieves who value the power of the office more than their name & reputation. That's why voters, more often than not, are left to choose between the lesser of the evils. A slow, gradual decline (with naive hope for a reversal of course) rather than a full throttle race over the cliff. Sometimes I wonder if the WOT approach might be best so that the resulting civil unrest would be mine to deal with before I'm too old instead of my kids when they're old enough...

Illinois is doing this. Less than 2% compliance so far with the registration requirements on so-called "assault weapon" parts & pieces. I don't even own an AR and have been considering purchasing a 30rd mag just because they're "banned". Crook County (Chicago) dems don't have a clue how little respect the other 99% of the counties have for their laws. Hell, even before concealed carry was legal our sheriff's view was "just don't get caught by the state boys". As long as you aren't causing trouble, they don't care what you do.

Grandpa was in the Army during WW2, serving in Europe & N. Africa. The only stories he ever told were from his time with an anti-aircraft outfit, when he'd disgustingly say they'd hear the enemy planes, know where they were heading, but by the time word of the planes went up the chain of command and the permission to fire came back down, the planes were out of range. He didn't care much for bureacracy. When he passed away, Grandma finally got his DD214 through the VFW. Come to find out, he was with anti-aircraft for about a minute before volunteering for a bridge carpentry unit because he knew how to swim...which makes some of the other stories we heard about what was in the letters he had sent to grandma...anti-aircraft likely wouldn't have been as mobile as the letters seemed to imply. She was always upset about how he'd use both sides of the page to write to her, and the gov't sensors would cut out any info they deemed "sensitive", meaning it wasn't just the sensitive content being removed, but also whatever was written on the opposite side. Anyway, come to find out he had earned 4 bronze stars, but due to the fire at the NPRC in 1973, we'll probably never know what he did to earn them. We respected his wishes, though, and he was not buried with "full military honors"...no flag draping his coffin, no 21 gun salute, no taps...he said those honors belong to the men who didn't make it home, and he didn't want to diminish the meaning of those same honors by accepting them when he didn't pay that same price.

If your kids playground has more christmas lights than your house...🤦‍♂️

Yup. Same here in Illinois, even though few know about it. Law says you have to be licensed for the class vehicle you're driving. A farmer does not need a CDL to drive his own semi truck hauling his own grain from his own farm to the local elevator. However, he DOES need a class A license. When my wife moved up from Texas, I told her "Before you leave the DMV, make absolute certain your license is still a class C." Texas doesn't have class D (under 16k) which is what pretty much everyone gets here in Illinois. Problem is, my F250 has 8k tags, and our gooseneck has 10k tags...so that combination is 18k. If she got stopped, she'd be driving out of class if she only had a class D license. Her Texas class C was good up to 26k...and that's what she needed to keep. For once, Illinois didn't screw up. She's still got her class C license. Bottom line, here you need to be licensed for the vehicle you're driving. If you're not engaged in commercial activities, it doesn't have to be a CDL. There are exceptions for rental vehicles (u-haul, etc...) and RV's. Fire trucks get an exemption, too, because they figure you've been trained how to drive it by the department. School busses require an additional endorsement beyond the "P" ...and that requires a background check fingerprinting, and an annual classroom session that's only available if you're actively working as (or training to be) a school bus driver. And if you've already got the "P" and are just going for the "SB", you need to pass another road test. Absolutely crazy how many ways there are for them to play "gotcha" when it comes to driving various types of vehicles on the road...and to make it worse, every state is different.

One of my favorites, I stopped off at the Houston yard to drop a load & grab an empty before booking it on down to Laredo. Got back to Houston where my truck took a break while I scrapped the trip to Laredo & continued on my way home. The truck caught back up to me the next day, and I made sure the logs matched what the company needed to see before sending them in. I only ever kept 1 book, and made sure whenever I was driving, it showed me legal. Slipped up one time, and wouldn't you know, that's the time I got busted. Hotel where I'd usually stay was booked up, so I slept under a tree in a field. Woke up, played with ol' Dozer for a bit, and was getting bored waiting for that ridiculously long 10 hour break to expire. I left after 8, which was all that was required when I started driving, and was only 5 hours from home. Turns out, I was 15 hours from home. Cop caught me about 30 minutes into the trip. So, I got a motel room and watched TV for 10 hours getting good & tired before rolling home in the evening when I'd be fighting heavy eyes the whole way home because obviously that was a lot safer than just letting me continue on my way home in the morning when I was fresh and alert after having slept all I was going to sleep that day.

Years ago, I had my truck leased to an outfit that pulled pneumatic tanks. We'd sometimes load at a cement plant on a US highway just north of the last exit before the scale over on the interstate that runs parallel to the US highway. Our terminal was 2 exits south of the scale. The state allows 22k on a single axle and 36k on a tandem, as long as you're within the 80k gross...and as long as you're NOT on the interstate. The cement plant loads on a platform scale, so you know you're OK on gross weight, but your axles might be a little off. We'd usually run down to the yard where we could pull across the scale to check axle weights if wed had to go any distance. Anyway, I was talking to a company driver one day and he'd been pulled over on the US highway on his way back to the yard to park the truck & go home. DOT asked for his swindle sheets and like a dumbass, he handed them over. (I always tell them I don't have one, that I'm a local driver and not required to have one). His just happened to show him being over hours, thanks to a delay in getting loaded. So here it is Friday evening and he's told to turn around, head back north, get on the interstate, and proceed to the scale to be weighed and shut down for the night. Of course his axles weren't right for the interstate, where he wouldn't have been if not explicitely directed that way by the 1st officer. All because he failed to claim he was a local driver operating under the exemption that allows local drivers to not have to keep a log book. I don't care if my log book is 2 days behind and in my door pocket, if I'm within the mileage range of my house or a terminal, I've always claimed the exemption. Only when I'm outside of the allowed radius do I ever produce a log book. They can't cite you for not having something you're not required to have...but if you hand it over, they can go through it with a fine tooth comb and cite you for any infractions they think they find on however many days logs you hand them. It's why I always did loose leaf logs. IF I had to hand over my log book, they got today & the 7 previous days. If they wanted to see any farther back than that, they'd have to go get them from the company. I miss those days...all this ELD crap just takes the fun out of it. At least what I'm doing these days I'm exempt...both as a local driver and hauling perishable ag products to farms. Company has ELDs in all of the trucks, but 90% of the time we don't even bother signing into the stupid things. They operate OTR trucks, too, as well as some retail stores making local deliveries...different divisions, but all operating under the same usdot#...so they just make blanket policies that are tailored to the OTR fleet, but ridiculous and unworkable for the retail & ag divisions. Is what it is. Just because they put that crap in the trucks doesn't mean we have to use it.😂

I'm so used to going around scales, I was driving down the interstate in the Suburban with the family on board and hit the exit ramp. My wife says "where are you going?" Yeah, there was a scale ahead. Old habits die hard.🤦‍♂️

See, that's where they get you. They used to sit at the exit before and the exit after and be on the radio with each other. If a truck got off at one & on again at the next too quickly, they'd be harrassed for going around the scale. There was also a fuel stop in between that the smart drivers would pull into, and either grab a bite to eat or top off their fuel...SOMETHING to have receipts showing they stopped for a legitimate reason. The smarter drivers were already off the interstate and stayed off another exit or two. I prefer to run the 2-lanes over the interstate, and so I just don't have to worry about many scales. If I do have to make a longer trip, I plan my route to keep away from any scales. They can't get you for dodging something that just isn't along your route.

The last time I crossed a permanent scale, it closed as I entered. They saw my old Mack coming and started licking their chops. Pulled me into the inspection bay. Would've been a clean inspection, if not for the air line that blew 30 seconds after I applied the brakes so they could measure the stroke. Got wrote up for it despite never having been on the road with an audible leak, and the officer told me they usually get several pages of violations from these old Macks, and that he was impressed with how well I kept up with my truck maintenance. Ever since then, I just go around them. I seldom crossed them before...only if I was crunched for time...but if I've got a target on my back, it takes less time to go around than it does to deal with their BS. I don't care if I'm in a brand new truck and haven't put 10 miles on it since it had its annual inspection, I'm going around the damn scale. If they want me, they can come find me...at least then they had to work for it. I just don't see the point in rolling up to where I know they are, bending over & grabbing my ankles, and hoping they go easy on me. Nope. If you want me, you gotta come find me.

Illinois still uses the portables. Got pulled over & weighed last year on 'em.

You're allowed 34k on a set of tandems, and 20k on a single axle (including the steers IF the tires/rims/springs/axles/shackles/etc are rated for it). Your weight might be limited by your overall length...the bridge between the steer and drives...but that doesn't affect what the individual axles can carry. For example, the feed truck I drive has a 20k steer & 46k drives on camelbacks. There's a tag axle behind the drives, but it's only far enough back to allow 43k on the drives with it lowered. If there was a little more distance between the front drive and the tag, it'd be 45k. With the allowable axle weights of 20k steer and 43k drives, I can run 63k without getting an overweight axle ticket...but because of the overall bridge between the steer and tag, I'm only allowed 61.5k before I'm over on gross weight. If you're a T/T, there's a nice little exception that allows 34/34 on the drives & trailer tandems for an 80k gross weight despite being a little short...allowing for 39 & 40 foot trailers to gross 80k. What a lot of folks don't realize is that those same 40' trailers that have a spread axle can only legally gross 78k because they don't have a pair of tandem axles as required for the exception. They have 1 tandem on the truck, and a pair of single axles on the trailer...so while they can legally put 40k on the trailer axles instead of the 34k allowed with a tandem, that means their drives are limited because they only have the distance to haul 66k on those 4 axles (drives & trailer) instead of 68k through the use of the exception. The feds have a nice little chart, and a pretty thorough explanation: https://ops.fhwa.dot.gov/freight/publications/brdg_frm_wghts/

Yes, my wife has a sister...but I hope to GOD she ain't your wife. She's married to a real dumbass. His name even sounds a lot like dumbass, which is why I only refer to him as "dumbass" instead of using his actual name whenever I have to mention him in a conversation. Funny thing is, it doesn't matter who I'm talking to...if they know him, they know exactly who i'm talking about.

Meanwhile, my wife says there's a critter in the garage...possum or coon or something. She gets home from work the other night, goes out onto the back patio, and retrieves my large live trap. She sets it up in the garage, and asks me to check and see that it's correct. Yup. Good job. Next morning, I check the trap. It's been tripped, but nothing inside, so I reset it & left for work. Turns out SHE tripped it before going to bed because she didn't want the garage cat to get caught.🤦‍♂️ I explained to her that it's a live trap. If the cat gets caught, we can let him out again. It's not going to get hurt...kinda the point of these live traps. Next night, I make sure it's set before turning in for the night. She apparently got home from work, and not only tripped the trap, but removed the bait as well, because I had to set it up again before leaving for work in the morning. "I don't want the cat getting caught." I tried explaining that the critters she thinks it might be in the garage are nocturnal...which means if the trap isn't set overnight, the chances of catching the stupid thing goes down considerably....and if the cat happens to get caught, IT'S NOT GOING TO GET HURT! We simply let him out and life goes on. For as much effort as she went through to go outside and get the trap, carry it into the garage, and set it up, it's almost like she DOESN'T want to catch the critter. Maybe I shouldn't have mentioned that I'd take it out back & shoot it if/when we caught it? 🤔 She wanted me to "relocate" that skunk I trapped last year, too...but I wasn't getting close enough to that to get sprayed. A single 25-30 yard shot with a .45 lever action solved that problem. Now with the rat I caught several years ago, I took it out back and released it from the trap...and then shot it as it was running away. It made it about 15' in the time it took me to raise my pistol & squeeze the trigger. A coon or possum would get that same opportunity.

Shit. 2023 has been the year of the heart attack 'round here. Jan 2, my neighbor had chest pains & tried driving himself to town. He was dead before the head-on crash he caused after drifting across the center line. Buddy of mine spent over a month in the hospital in the spring with AFIB...took that long to get his ticker back in rhythm. Another neighbor had chest pains late spring/early summer and got a ride to the ER. 95% blockage. Doc told him if he'd have gone to bed that night trying to tough it out, he wouldn't have woken up. I'm driving out of the retail store filling in because one of their drivers didn't show up for work last Wednesday. After not answering his phone, they sent someone to check on him...found him in his pickup in the driveway like he was leaving for work...but slumped over dead. I'm just ready for this year to end. Too many funerals. Too many close calls.

Back in high school, a girl in my class had parents with money who bought her a brand new car for her 16th birthday. 15,000 miles later, they were putting a brand new engine into that brand new car because she had no clue how to check the oil, let alone that she needed to. But to do that, she would've had to know how to put the hood up...which she didn't. Some people should just ride the bus.

When I first started trucking, I would occasionally be sent to deliver at GM's OKC facility. They'd have 20-30 trucks scheduled for 7:00 pm. Show up at 7:01 and you were reported to your company for being "late", yet they wouldn't touch a single truck (unless, of course, it had a part they needed...and then you'd better hope it's in the nose because as soon as they find it, they stop unloading you) until shift change. Around 2 or 3:00, they'd get started...and by 7:00 am everyone was unloaded & ready to roll out. One time, I pulled out my guitar, sat on the curb, opened the case, tossed some change in it, and started strumming. Security came by in their little golf cart & sat there listening for a minute or two I looked at 'em and said "Well I ain't making money any other way sitting here waiting on y'all to get to work..." That was interestinly enough the last time the company sent me there with a load.😂

Well ain't that just a kick in the teeth. Before I left, I was told I could take 3 days paid for the funeral. Now, after taking the time off, I'm told it's only 1 day paid for a grandparent. Oh well...guess my check will be a little shorter than usual this week.🤦‍♂️ Guess I need to install one of these in the old Suburban... https://www.oreillyauto.com/flux-capacitor 😂

Lived to the ripe old age of 101-1/2, and the last few years she's been battling alzheimers, so she didn't know who anyone was anymore most of the time. Needless to say, it was time. Anyway, I was up in the Chicagoland area for the funeral, and the people there are absolutely the most inconsiderate, disrespectful, and ignorant bunch I've seen in regards to funeral processions. Flashback to November of 2005 when my grandfather passed, I had to stop leaving the church to avoid being hit by a speeding HVAC minivan who blew right through the middle of the procession as we made the left out of the church. Yesterday, it was a gray Mack Vision pulling a 28' end dump that, despite traffic in the right lane being stopped as we made the left into the cemetary, I saw him approaching at a high rate of speed in the left lane & thought it best to wait for the asshole to fly by rather than try to make the left & get T-boned with the wife & kids on board (or I make it & my brother's family in the car behind get hit if they didn't see it and followed me into the cemetary). Even on the short 1/2 mile or so between the church and cemetary, we were in the left lane (because the cemetary was on the left) and traffic was passing us on the right. Around here, and pretty much everywhere else I've been while touring the country in a truck, folks show a little respect by stopping & letting the funeral procession go on their way. Absolutely ridiculous how everyone up there seems to be in a big hurry to get nowhere. Hell, on the way up there, once we got past I80 we were doing 80 mph with eyes glued to the mirrors trying not to get run over. Even the trucks were cruising right along at 20+ the posted limit. ISP could've filled their annual quotas in a single afternoon if every trooper in the state had been there. If I ever find myself in Chicago for another funeral, I think I'll rent a car & get the insurance...might not be so inclined to avoid the wreck. Only problem with that is I'd likely end up in jail for beating the fuck out of the stupid SOB that hits me. Guess it's best I just drive my own vehicles and not get 'em tore up.

If you've ever used a rust hole in the floor of your pickup truck as an access point to reach the bleeder screw on the clutch, and proceeded to bleed the clutch by yourself, pressing the clutch with one hand while cracking & snugging the bleeder screw with the other... 🤦‍♂️