RowdyRebel

Why not just add an aux trans? That would let you "split" the gears you've got now, give you another OD to compensate for those low rear gears...biggest downside would be the extra weight. ...just a thought.

...courtesy of the Heritage Foundation:

I WISH I had a B to ride around in...I swear I was born about 50 years too late...my attitudes, tastes, and pleasures just don't fit well in this "modern" era.

...and people wonder why insurance is so damn expensive.

I've always thought an axle-forward Granite painted to look like it was carved out of it's namesake would look pretty bad-ass...not sure what I'd do with a CL, though...

Screw the aluminum crap. Stainless steel, baby! With a little thickness to it, them deer will just bounce off it without tearing it up...and if it DOES get bent, it can be straightened out, welded up, or whatever else you need to do to it to get it looking "pretty" again without digging into your pocket again.

...and leave insurance out if you can. After the deductible, they won't fork out NEAR as much as they'll collect from you after they jack up your premiums.

Ugly truck makes just as much $$$ as a pretty truck. Get to KEEP more of that $$$ with the ugly truck though since you ain't spending money trying to look like you've got money to spend.

I've always said elected officials should earn 1/365 of the average annual income of their district (the people who would be able to vote for them if they bothered to show up on election day) for each full day they work. Miss a hearing? Pay gets docked. Miss a vote? Pay gets docked. Etc. Etc. Etc. If they want a raise, they can either show up to a greater percentage of the meetings etc that they were sent there to attend, or they can work to enact policies which would encourage lower unemployment and better paying jobs in their district. Government handouts would NOT be counted as "income" and should probably be calculated as a NEGATIVE income for those individuals to discourage politicians utilizing those "entitlement" programs for anyone who does not honestly and truly need the TEMPORARY helping hand.

Not much drop & hook is one of the FEW things left to like about where I'm at...lots of recent changes, and that has caused quite a bit of tension...I don't LET myself get walked on.

Would have been able to show a simple start time/end time & total up the hours in between, but had to hook to a different trailer and spend a few hours in the shop getting things fixed that SHOULD have been written up by whoever dropped the damn thing on the yard. 8 loads & a fuel stop in what SHOULD have been a 10 hour day. Turned out to be a 14 + post-trip, so I had to fill out a RODS rather than just a record of my hours worked for the day. And you want this LEGIBLE?!?!?!?! Hell, I couldn't even show any time on line 4 for loading or unloading or I wouldn't be able to show enough drive time on line 3 for the miles between the p/u and del. I friggin' HATE log books...

Why buy a Mack if you're gonna put a vendor drive train in it? When I was truck shopping, if it didn't have that gold bulldog on the hood, I wasn't interested. Maybe it's just me, but I just don't see the point in buying a Mack truck unless it's got a Mack engine, Mack transmission, and Mack drive axles...

Driveline seems to be specing the u-joints and such...size, strength, etc. Can't tell you off the top of my head, but you can Google 'em and SHOULD be able to find the torque limits, etc for each option you have available. If you can afford stronger components, get 'em...ESPECIALLY if you're going to use the truck to do ACTUAL WORK! Pencil-pushers like to spec the light-weight stuff...which might be OK if you've got 500 trucks and trade 'em in every 2-3 years...but if it is your only truck or you plan on hanging onto it for a while, you don't want those light-weight parts wearing out or breaking on you. The rear axle oil temp gauge is just what it says...a gauge that tells you what the oil temp is in your drive axles. My truck has a temp gauge for the transmission and engine oils, too.

4.19 means the drive shaft spins 4.19 times to make the axle spin 1 time. 4.80 has the drive shaft spinning a little faster. I'd guess b-box is the battery box.

Does that emissions warranty cover your downtime too? If not, you might still go broke from all of your unplanned & unpaid vacation time while the emissions crap is being fixed...bank is still gonna want that note paid whether the truck is on the road or not. Or have they got all them bugs worked out of that crap by now?

Damn...I've hit 3 of the little f---ers and all they've ever done is bust them $8 plastic clips/adjusters for the headlights. Metal bumpers can be straightened...fiberglass repaired...headlights replaced...and steps reattached. The headlight might set you back $100 or so (might find a take-off from a wrecked truck for less) and a fiberglass repair kit is less than $20 @ your local Wally-World (or anywhere that carries any automotive-oriented products) and you're back on the road. Hell, steal a step mount (or even the whole step if you need to) from the passenger side since you really don't NEED steps on that side anyway (unless of course the wife rides with you...then you'd be better off minus the step on the drivers side just so you don't have to listen to her bitch about not having a step...). As long as the tank ain't leaking, it ain't gonna hurt you to leave it as it is. There ya go. Including the 12-pack you'll drink while you work on it, the truck will be fixed for $150-$200 and an afternoon. No sense turning that into your insurance...won't even cover the deductible.

I'm amazed at how far technology has come...wasn't all that long ago any cell phone pic anyone shared would be accompanied by an apology for the "crappy cell phone pic". THIS was taken at night with my Blackberry Q10:

So yesterday things were going pretty good...making decent time...depending upon what my dispatch would be for today, I Might be home with plenty of daylight left to get a little more done on the horse trailer. When I was loaded with my last load, I called in for my dispatch...if I was starting out over near where this load was dumping I'd just take it home (25 extra loaded miles, but saves me 100 miles bouncing home only to go right back up the way I came to start my next day). Dispatch wasn't ready, so I drove to the fuel stop right where I'd head west to deliver or south to take 'er home and tried again. STILL wasn't ready...so I headed south a little ways and then cut over east to the yard...which let me drop off last week's paperwork and it is also the farthest I could go before making the decision to deliver or take the load home without adding any miles to the trip (it only adds time, since this route to deliver goes through some towns with red lights instead of mostly following the interstate. STILL no dispatch. So, I sat around shooting the bull with another driver for a while until he called dispatch...then he handed me the phone and I FINALLY was able to find out what I'd be doing today. To say I was pissed would be an understatement...I could have been dumped off & nearly home by then had my dispatch been ready earlier. In hindsight, I guess somebody that knew more than me thought I needed to be somewhere else, though. I seemed to get stopped at every red light going through the next few towns...I just couldn't catch a break. Finally, in the LAST red-light infested town, I thought it strange that nobody tried jumping around that loaded truck before the lane ended and we got to the hilly 2-lane road on the other end of town...but amazingly enough, they didn't. I had JUST got up to speed when I topped a hill and saw brake lights and then 4-ways come on about a mile or two up the road over another hill or two. There was also a truck coming the other way with his 4-ways on, and the vehicles were far enough apart I could tell SOMETHING had just happened, but I couldn't see what because it was dark by then. I started slowing down gradually, and topped that last hill about 20 mph to see a truck jack-knifed in the road. There was a car down the embankment that had been going the other way that had crashed into the rear drive axle of the jack-knifing truck. It looked ugly. The truck driver was shaking real bad and was visibly shaken...understandable considering he thought the people in the car might be dead. There were others down by the car...people who'd been behind the truck and the guy from the car ahead of me that had stopped with his 4-ways on. I went down to check on the people in the car for the driver and they were amazingly enough OK...a little banged up, but the airbags did their job. I went back to relay the good news to the driver. There was a lady there by then who had been in front of the truck and saw what happened. A deer ran out in front of the car ahead of her and that car stopped dead in the road. She was able to get stopped. The truck was empty, though...when he tried to stop, he locked 'em up and just slid...the fact That he was going downhill didn't help matters much. As the trailer pushed the back of the tractor across the yellow line, he steered towards the ditch to try to keep out of the oncoming lane...but that oncoming car hit him. I tried keeping him busy...had him grab his worthless disposable camera and start taking pictures...figured if he's doing something it might help calm him down...but with how bad he was shaking (and it was dark out) there's no telling how those pictures will turn out...so I pulled out my phone and just for S&G snapped a pic. It took remarkable pics given the poor lighting, so I made sure I had all of the pics he'd need and gave him my card to pass on to his boss. He's a local guy on his way home from the daily coal haul...might have passed him 1000 times...anyway, everyone was OK. When the road opened up again and I got to thinking about things, I can't help but wonder about things. Despite how upset I had been about dispatch causing me to be running so late, I was right where I was supposed to be at that moment. I don't particularly like to be all preachy and crap, and I know most of you probably don't come here looking for religion...but what they say is true: The Lord works in mysterious ways. We may not always know WHY something is happening or what His intentions for us might be until after an otherwise unexplainable course of events has placed us right where He needs us to be and after-the-fact we're left sitting there reflecting on our prior thoughts and attitudes...and I'm really not exactly sure where I'm going with this, so I'll just shut up now & go get the truck fired up for another day behind the wheel. Be safe out there people.

Why limit to a few hundred miles? I traveled to about an hour north of Denver to have a look at the one I bought. I got a ride out there, but plan B was to put a draw bar on my little beater truck (which I ended up doing eventually anyway) and at the very least bolt a hitch onto the rear cross member to drag the beater truck back home. A tandem dump might already have a pintle hitch installed...

Not all frame rails are created equal, either. How thick are they? If they are the heavier (3/8" or thicker) frame rails, they'd have a better chance of holding up than if they are the thinner ones (1/4" or less). By specing a thicker single rail, you can get similar strength without the rust-jacking issues you'd see with a doubled up thinner frame rail. Heck, a 7/16" single rail is dern near as thick as a 1/4" frame that's been doubled up.... ...but I've never run tandem dumps, so what do I know? Only dump experience I've got is with T/T's.

Been crossing this bridge 4 times per day for a few weeks...looking at these expansion joints & wondering just how far they can be stretched before they fail. Scary thing is, this ain't the worst of 'em...just the one I got lucky enough to capture in a pic.

http://www.mediaite.com/online/twitter-mocks-jim-messinas-customer-service-gripe-worse-than-healthcare-gov/?utm_source=heritagefoundation&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=&utm_content=&utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBell

http://money.cnn.com/2013/08/13/news/economy/obamacare-penalty/index.html

Simple solution to Obamacare: Claim more deductions on your tax forms at work so that less money is withheld, or otherwise plan your tax payments so that you write a check and pay every April rather than getting a refund. That makes better financial sense anyway since the government does not pay interest on your tax overpayments throughout the year...if you get a refund, ya done gave 'em an interest-free loan. Anyway, the ONLY recourse the IRS has to collect the tax penalty if you choose you'd rather not pay it is to take it out of the refund you'd otherwise be entitled to. No refund? They cannot collect. No leins, no wage garnishments, no criminal prosecution...just an IOU that sits there until you have a refund they can steal. SO...if EVERYBODY who is opposed to Obamacare did precisely this, revenue collection throughout the year would slow, and then NOBODY would pay the penalty. Our government derives its power from the consent of the governed. If 3/4 of the population simply refused to comply with this BS, it would send a very strong signal that the federal government went too far and attempted to exercise a power they simply do not have.

Man's gotta have priorities. "Do I grab the important papers, maybe some family photos? Nah...gotta save the beer!" At least he didn't go back for the beer 'til the kids were safely out...