HeavyGunner

Wow that's a lotta zoom OD! I'm expecting lots more girl, I mean scenery pics.

Grew up near there, now I'm about 4.5hrs from there

Found this article pretty interesting and thought some on here would enjoy it. The only thing I wish it would've went more into was the 3 refineries around Sunburst, Kevin, Oilmont area and all the fuel storage that was there to fuel the war against the next attack in Alaska from Japan. I was told there was far more fuel stored there than any refinery has storage for today. Look at those little towns on google earth and you will see the the land is pock marked with retaining dikes from the 100000 barrel storage tanks. http://svcalt.mt.gov/education/textbook/Chapter19/Chapter19.pdf

They use lots of trailers similar to that in Montana. We actually have mega load construction business popping up in north central Montana. They build entire buildings, shops etc to be hauled up to the tar sands in Canada. They had to make all the power lines crossing the highways 30+feet and they literally take up every bit of a a two lane highway so they actually shut them down in sections. I saw a steep little hill where the load powered out on and the push/pull rigs had to call a semi wrecker to help them over the hill. You could see where one of the trucks literally dug down into the asphalt from spinning the tires trying to claw their way over the hill.

How did it go from this Waste heat recovery was a key contributor to the program results that achieved a peak 75 percent improvement in fuel economy over a baseline 2009 production truck,” says Ken Damon, manager of Peterbilt Motors’ vehicle performance group. To this? Greszler says waste heat recovery systems theoretically could provide fleets with up to a 4 percent boost in fuel economy – assuming they operate in the right applications. It’s more likely a vehicle would net only an overall increase of 2 percent because of lost aerodynamic efficiency, he says. “These are sizeable systems, and packaging will be problematic.”

No affiliation. http://greatfalls.craigslist.org/cto/5108263284.html

Cool article

Don't you have uneven, loose and possibly muddy ground to get around at the quarry? From the couple of tandems I've seen on farms around here with a dead axle there's no way I would give up power to both.

It's only rare when compared to a unicorn

With the money saved by not having big monthly truck payments and lower running costs (hopefully much fewer break downs like the new engines) pay the drivers more on what your saving in overhead. I wouldn't think it would take long for word to get out about a company with a nice, well kept older fleet that pays well. Just a thought.

That tracked semi with the boom on the back of it is an interesting piece of machinery. Bet it would go through some snow.

Or if you think the problem isn't a leak it could possibly be the gauge.

What freight train posted above

I liked that roll back, looked like someone put in a lotta time to make it look good and functional.

Isn't that your neighbor Paul?

Yeah what green dash said, it's most likely to be a leak. Have someone work the pedal for you and snoop around, could be a blown diaphragm in an air can. Either way the leak should be on the service side of your air system in case you need to start tracing the airlines.

You might be able to register your truck as an rv in SC. People are doing that here in MT and pulling campers and horse trailers without a cdl. If you are going to do ANY work/driving commercially here with a 1 ton pickup or bigger at minimum you have to get a class d cdl. Not sure if this helps much but it'll give you somethings to explore.

Your right if you broke down it may take a few days for parts, but compared to how unreliable most of these new engines are it would likely be way less downtime/risk to run the older engines. Not trying to crap on detroits this is just my experience, if an owner operator had the (2) '06 or '07 series 60s with the dpf that we had at work I guarantee it would've bankrupted them. The two we had would run maybe a day or two. Sometimes a week then break down and need tons of parts and work then run a day or two and the same story again. The story I heard at work is our company threatened to never buy a freightliners again unless they took them back. Both trucks had under 200k on them when freightliners took them back.

Cool little attachment on that skid steer. I always laugh and give my dad a hard time when I see my dad cutting firewood with his Timco with Logmax head. Most expensive wood blocker ever lol, but he'll if ya got the tools to make that job easier ya might as well use it while it's at home.

That truck has a lot of character. I would love to have it. Never seen one before.

Our fleet is all freightliners and for what it's worth our company figures it's 50/50 between dirt and paved roads. We are probably using these tractors rougher than most but they (freightliners) are just about shot by 300k miles. Cascadias in my opinion were the worst model we had, noisy, plasticky and most if not all screws in the cab are covered up so you have to know where to pry what to get a door panel off for example. We run detroits, the DD15 is better than the Series 60 with dpf but neither is great. Lots of down time when I compare it to cats I ran before I went to work at my current job. I was getting a repair at a diesel shop last week and was visiting with the mechanic and he told me they are literally doubling the size of their shop and employees to keep up with the huge load of new broken down def trucks. I asked him if any of the new engines stood out from the others and he said nope they're all crap. Keep in mind I highly doubt that shop has seen a newer Mack and rarely even sees older Macks so I don't think Mack was considered on his newer truck engine assessment. Hopefully you can find something that will run long enough to make a payment on itself. Good luck.

A lot of college graduates don't make $15/hr their first year but Mexifornia and New York want to pay the burn outs of society who can't or don't want to try to get another job more than them?! Hell mickey d's might be a pretty Cush job at $15/hr, I should look into that. No more pee quizzes or ridiculous federal laws to follow, no more physicals or scales to deal with. Hell since DOT can pull you over without cause I feel they are profiling and infringing on my rights, and people question minimum wage at jobs with no responsibilities to speak of.

Something is going to change and soon I hope. Eventually the dwindling working class are going to get sick of supporting everyone else. Eventually no one is going to want to work just to give everything but a little bit to survive on. I really hope we start getting some better politicians. Cut the government way back. Make it smaller and serve its purpose, TO SERVE THE PEOPLE not serve the fringes and special interest groups only. No more career politicians two four year terms and you are done. The regular joes working class citizen which I think makes half the voters or more needs to start speaking up. Hold all government officials from city council to the president accountable, don't let them lie right to your face on TV and not make a fuss. its a long shot for any real change but it certainly ain't gonna happen if we continue to just sit on our hands and shrug our shoulders.

Scary and sad. So many people fought and died for this country, worked their tails off and made something of themselves just to have their own government sell 'em out.

Though it's unrealistic I wish the working class could make the barter system work and never technically "make" any money. Wouldn't that be great to watch half the U.S. And our government crap their pants!