Almond Capital of the World

Everywhere we look we see these Almond Tree Orchards

We are sitting in Ripon, California. Not a bad place to sit actually. The weather is beautiful. The almond trees are in bloom. We have plenty of food choices from where we sit. Life is good at the moment.

After getting the turbo actuator repaired, again, we left the shop in Turlock, Ca and headed north to Ripon to visit the Speedco. We needed to get the maintenance done on our apu and figured we might as well do it now. We weren't going to go back in service Tuesday anyway since we had both been up all day while the repairs were being made. I'm still ticked about that whole deal, but I'm trying to move on.

After the apu was serviced we filled up the tanks at the Flying J. We were hoping to get a parking space there but they were all filled up. At 7PM local time. Amazing. We drove back across the street and hit the jackpot with a parking spot at the Loves that is pretty sweet. It's a straight walk into the Loves if I need to use the restroom. John can watch me walk in so he doesn't feel the need to accompany me for safety reasons. I'm a free woman! Haha!

The Loves has an Arby's. The Flying J across the street has a Denny's. There is a Sonic, a Taco Bell, a McDonald's, a Jack in the Box and a Carl's Jr. right next to us. All within easy walking distance.

So far in the three days we have been here, we've gone to Denny's twice, Arby's twice and Sonic once. These places are getting rich off of us! You know you're living a weird life when you base your location happiness on your available food choices. That, and whether or not we have 4G. Which by the way, we do not. And it's really annoying. Shouldn't 4G be everywhere by now?

Will this be John's Dream Car?

We've been using our downtime to continue car shopping. I think John has found the car of his dreams. It's right down the road from where we live. Now if it's still there when we get back home next week, he'll be a happy man. It's a 2008 Bright Red Ford Mustang GT Convertible. We used to have a 2005 Mustang GT Convertible and he's always regretted getting rid of it.

I applied for a Capital One Auto Loan yesterday. You can do it online and it's a pretty easy process. You should get an answer almost immediately, but of course, since we are self employeed, it required that we send in 3 months of bank statements. And since we have 4 different bank accounts, it turned into a lot of work for me. I finally got them all printed out today and faxed them in. 38 pages. Haha, bet someone's gonna have fun sorting through that!

We should get an answer within 3 business days. We've been preapproved pending the approval of the bank statements. They have a pretty sweet deal. 4% interest. They will mail a blank check to the house upon our approval and we do have to buy a car from one of their approved car dealerships but there are many of them on the list. Pretty much all the namebrand places. Luckily for John, the dealership that has the car he wants is on the approved list.

I swear sometimes he is such a kid. He's spent most of the morning looking at pictures of that car on the internet. I think he's in love!

Quality Control. Anyone ever heard of that concept?

I really do not know what to think about the problems we keep having. A couple of weeks ago, our turbo actuator went out and we ended up driving 1300 miles under load without a turbo. It sucked, but on that load, our freight was only 200 pounds and the route was from Iowa to Florida so there weren't any mountains to deal with. What we thought at that time was a terrible drive, we now know was only a nuisance.

We know this because that new turbo actuator that was installed two weeks ago failed while we were on a load from Alabama to California. This time our freight was 6100 pounds and we had mountain after mountain to deal with. Our total trip was 2230 miles and the problem began when we were in Tucumcari, NM. That left us with 1160 miles to our delivery. Sheer torture. I think we drove most of those miles with our flashers on. Every time we encountered even the slightest incline, the truck would lose speed and there was nothing we could do except downshift and put the flashers on when we got below 45 mph.

It was a test of our patience and determination. We were not giving up that load if we didn't have to. We wanted the revenue from the load to cover any repairs that we were going to have to make to fix the truck. Of course, we didn't know for sure that it was the actuator until we were able to get to the dealership and have it looked at, so there was the possibility that our turbo itself would need replacing so we were preparing ourselves for a $2500 repair bill.

Fortunately, the load had plenty of time on it for delivery. In fact, it had an entire extra day. But because this was a weekend load, we weren't able to stop into a dealership and get the repair made on our way since they were all closed and at home nice and comfy and not at all concerned about us and our problems. Problems that it turns out is caused by poor workmanship. It was indeed a faulty actuator. Two weeks? Two weeks is all it lasted? How can this be? We pay dang good money for parts and labor and I expect more  than two weeks! Sure, it was covered under warranty. But what about our down time? What about the frustration of driving over 1100 miles through mountains with no turbo? What about that?

I asked the service counter guy if that was unusual to see a part go out after two weeks and he said no. He said unfortunately they get a lot of angry truck drivers who are upset because their parts aren't lasting. I asked him where these parts are coming from and he said Asia. I don't know if he really knows or if he made that up, but wherever they are coming from, it needs to stop. How about making them here in America? How about holding manufacturing companies responsible for quality parts? We would be money ahead if we had to pay a little more for a quality part that will keep us running rather than paying less money for a part that isn't going to last and is going to cost us downtime, potentially a tow bill and a loss of a load.

What do I know? After all, I'm just a driver!

Looking for a new ride

We are back to work again after a short (for us) visit home. We got a lot of things accomplished while there this time. We didn't have any company which allowed us to stay focused on getting things done.

International in Ocala repaired our broken turbo actuator. That was no fun driving 1300 miles with no turbo. They also replaced our ac compressor. Again. This is the 3rd compressor in 9 months. We had to pay for the first one (in El Paso) the last two have been under warranty. Makes me wonder what is going on with the parts we are getting from International.

We took the truck there to get the turbo fixed. Along with a clutch adjustment and we had a freon leak from the hose running out of the compressor. Those were the known problems that we had. In addition to that, while they  were testing things out, they said we had a low fuel pressure reading so they wanted to change the fuel pump and the fuel pressure regulator. We dropped it off late Thursday night. We rented a motel room for two nights. On Saturday we were told that it would probably be Tuesday before they would have the truck done.

We decided to rent a car and go home and come back and pick the truck up when it was done. I first called Enterprise since they will come and pick you up. They informed me that they had no cars available and no person available to pick me up even if they had a car. I tried another nearby Enterprise location and got the same answer. I tried called Hertz and was told no cars. Getting desperate, I called Avis and hit the jackpot. They had a car available.

I called up the International dealership and asked them if they could come and pick me up and take me to Avis. They said no problem. Someone was there within 15 minutes. He dropped me off at Avis and I left there with a very nicely loaded Chevy Cruze. Leather, sunroof, all the new gadgets, push button start and best of all, air conditioning that worked!

I went back to the motel, picked up John and Cody and we drove the 100 miles home. It's always so nice to go home and walk in and find everything exactly like you left it. This time while we were home we had to find a plumber to come out and do some drain work for us. The thing I've noticed living in Florida is that getting any kind of contractor to do work for you is a challenge. They don't return phone calls. They're over priced. They work when they want to work and a lot of them do shabby work.

I had no idea who to call so I just googled plumbers and started down the list. We got lucky and one finally called us back two days later and we set things up with him. He ended up coming a day later than originally planned because we had major rain the day he was supposed to come but he did get the job done and did it very well. His price was reasonable also so we feel very lucky that we now know a good plumber.

On Tuesday we drove back up to Ocala to pick up our truck and return the rental car. We started the drive back home and stopped off in Wildwood to fill up at the TA. I put the nozzle in the drivers side tank and tried to set it to automatically fill so I could go to the passenger side and get it going. It kept clicking off and wouldn't stay running. I finally called inside and asked if there was a problem with the pump. The lady said not that she knew of. I went around to the passenger side and put the pump in and it started filling up like normal. I went back around to the drivers side and pulled the nozzle out and found the problem. The tank was completely full. The passenger side took 35 gallons to fill it up.

This isn't supposed to happen. The truck is supposed to keep both tanks equalled out. I called International back up and asked them if they had done anything that would have caused this. They said no they hadn't, bring it back in. We turned around and drove 30 miles back to them.

We only had to wait for about 20 minutes for a tech to come out and hook up with his laptop. He ran some tests and determined that the fuel transfer pump wasn't working. Apparently, our trucks engine pulls the fuel from the passenger side tank. The drivers side is just a supply tank. There is a pump that will monitor the level in the passenger tank and pull from the drivers side over to the passenger side to equal them out. He replaced that pump and we were good to go again.

Back home we headed with our fingers crossed that nothing else would happen. We also needed to get our translucent roof resealed. Because we had been in so much rain we saw a couple of spots that were leaking a little bit. We decided to get it done on Monday right before we went back in service.

Another thing we did while we were home was car shop. When we started this job 3 years ago, we sold our vehicles and our boat. When we are at home we use our sons car. John has recently gotten the fever to own a car again so now we are shopping. Something that I consider sheer torture. I couldn't care the less about a car, but he is a car fanatic.

Our first test drive was a brand new Cadillac ATS. It was nice, not as nice as I had imagined a Cadillac to be, but we were seriously going to buy it. However, as usual, they tried to play the numbers game with us and we told them no and walked out.

We also test drove a new Dodge Dart. It's a nice little car but too small for me and not enough power for John. We drove a slightly used Chrysler 300. That was an absolutely beautiful car. We really thought about getting it. The only thing that stopped us was John wanted a hemi and it didn't have one. Honestly, it doesn't need one. He's just being a power hungry guy. Our next test drive was a Dodge Durango. It was a 2011  like brand new. We both really liked it. It had a lot of room in it. All the fancy gadgets. But, again, no hemi. If it had a hemi, we probably would've left with it.

So, we are still without a car, which is fine with me. John can continue looking for his dream vehicle while we are out on the road. The internet makes dreams come true, so we will see what happens!