Eicher Ramblings

We’ve had this truck 2 weeks today.

It has 10,500 miles already, is dirty and looks lived in.

It endures comments like, “I wonder why it does that? Our old truck never did that!” Or “I wish it did “___” like our old truck”.

We had entertained the idea at one time of buying The Red Bull (our old truck). What our new truck doesn’t hear are the comments we voice to ourselves, “boy, I’m so glad we didn’t buy that truck!”

Since driving the new truck we realized there were lots of little things wrong. We put up with and got used to all the little indiosincracies which might seem odd, but without having anything to compare to, we just didn’t know!

We like our new truck. It has a lot more room in the sleeper. It came with an inverter, which made Kevin happy because he gets to take our old one home and install in his pickup. Boys & their toys! As we live aboard our new truck, our comparisans to The Red Bull get less & less. He becomes a distant memory… sniff.

We have fond memories of our first 2 trucks I will always remember.

Meet Barney, our very first truck out of school. The company we worked for, TransAm, had trucks of all colors. Being the only girl in the new employee orientation, when the guys discovered my favorite color was purple they would rib Kevin about the possibility of getting a purple truck. Now the likelihood of it happening was pretty slim, given there were 30+ in our class.  When Kevin returned from his 3-week training period and was handed the keys to his truck, he went to find it… you guessed it! A purple T600 Kenworth. We had to name him Barney!

Kevin drove the truck on his own for the first 6 weeks and just prior to picking me up for my training period, one of the steer tires had to be changed. When I started my training period, the truck handled so badly we’d get comments on the CB wondering what was wrong with our truck! Steering this truck was akin to holding onto a buckin’ bronc. We were such greenhorns we drove it this way for 2 weeks before finally calling road service and telling them about it. I can remember saying over & over to Kevin, “there’s got to be something wrong, I don’t remember our trucks at school being this difficult to drive!” What a way to learn what a 1/4″ tread height difference makes.

On another day, I was driving on a US Hwy in Colorado, when suddenly it seemed every bell and alarm went off in the truck, half scaring me to pieces! I looked at all my gages and my initial glance I couldn’t see anything amiss. But one thing hammered into our brains was if things go wrong, get off the road and stopped as soon as possible. This had more to do with losing our air pressure but I certainly wasn’t going to take any chances. After coming to a stop on the roadside, Kevin opened our hood to discover Barney had thrown every belt (I think he had 3!). The road service truck finally arrived to find they had the wrong belts and had to go get the right ones. We spent a total of 5+ hours out of commision.

The Red Bull gave us relatively few problems… one of the reasons we really like him so well. Probably the most serious offense was when the transmission decided to back out of it’s housing making a racket and had the potential of being fairly dangerous. We spent the weekend swiming and lazing in W. Virginia at the company’s expense!

The day we met The Red Bull, it was dark and rainy. This truck had 71,000 miles on it and lots more room. When we had first started with CFI they had put us into a T600 (again) so we were excited to have more room in this T2000 Kenworth. We drove this truck for 2 years putting 520,000 miles on. We spread out like we were in a country cottage, bringing all sorts of things from home. We dreaded the day we had to change trucks. But oddly enough, it was raining again the day we moved into our new truck. With just 3 hours to pack and unpack we didn’t have a lot of time to agonize over the excessive baggage, but a lot has gone to the dumpster or home!

Now we have this new white truck… and no name. We’ve had some suggestions, but none have stuck. Any ideas?