I received a phone call Wednesday night or early Thursday morning.  It was wee hours, just after midnight from Robert.  "Yasir!   I'm picking up a load of bottles and I had a little accident". 

"What's your problem?", I asked.

"I was driving down the trailer line looking for my load and I ran over a cement pylon.  It knocked a hole in the oil pan and I lost all the engine oil," he replied.

I instructed him not to run the truck and to get comfortable for the night, there was nothing we could do until morning..  He wasn't happy.

Oh well, neither was I. 

I talked with my bud Kevin about eight in the morning.  We were trying to coordinate schedules to go and pickup the truck with his toter and bring it to either the farm shop or the repair shop in Abilene. 

The plant the truck was making the pickup at is one of the core products in the mix.  They are very picky with what is discharged on the ground.  In fact at their plants, when they wash trailers or trucks, they trap and recover the wash water.


So, I sent Bill with oil dry and brooms, scoops and drums.  They dusted the oil dry down and swept it in and picked it up and if necessary repeated the process.  Luckily only a small portion was on cement, the rest was on asphalt, which is an oil bi-product.  So we did a modified enviormental clean up.

They finished up and Bill brought Robert to Abilene.

By then Kevin and I had realized our schedules were too far apart for a Thursday retrieval so an early Friday trip was planned.

When we arrived at the accident location I was flabbergasted.  It wasn't a cement pylon Robert had driven over, it was a cement curb, about a foot tall, painted florescent yellow with silver and red reflective tape on it.

How the driver didn't see it I will never understand.

I had already started the wheels in motion on checking on price and availability on the repair parts.

$800 seemed to be the number split evenly between parts and labor.  I felt I could probably live with this number..  As we made our way toward Abilene, this number became a moving target.  Parts went up and labor went down, but finally set in at $1300.

We were getting out of my comfort zone with the in creased $$$$$$ so I decided to make a call to a friend who buys wrecked trucks with good engines and good trucks with bad engines and swaps pieces out to have a good truck AND engine. 

What we were working on was a VN Volvo with Detroit power, so the position of the oil sump is a little different than the majority of the big trucks using this power.  (Axle placement is critical.  Usually set back axle means front sump, forward axle placement means rear sump.  The Volvo is a radical set back axle, and therein lies the problem).

"Come on down", was his reply.  "No guarantees, but we can look through my junk and make a few calls".

The standard pricing for used parts is half of new.  With this man I would have been surprised if he had charged me anything.

So eastbound I went.  I had a short window of opportunity to find the part used and get it back to the shop.

After one stop in Gordon, I headed to Lancaster.

No luck Friday evening, but we would try again Saturday.

About noon I got a call from the shop manager.  We had decided to look at the road and main bearings farthermost from the oil pump, or, the ones that would starve for oil first.

The mains were a little rough, while the rods seemed fine.

This is the truck that had $14000 spent on the engine just months ago, so I pulled the trigger and told him to roll in new main bearings.  He told me it would take about two hours, to pull the mains and roll new ones in and re-torque the bottom end. 

When asked how my scavenger hunt was going, I realized if I had the used part in hand and hit the road right then, they would be waiting on me when I got back.

The quest was over.  Defeated, I instructed them to go with the new part.

Throughout this entire ordeal, the driver maintained the accident was not his fault, and it was just a little one.

When I went by today after spending the weekend in the metroplex, I stopped by and paid the truck out of the shop.

$1848.

Crudola!  I guess I should be thankful this was a "small" accident.

The best thing I did find over the weekend was a place called Casa Rita's.  Their specialty is?

You got it, margartas, and they have a grill as well.  Excellent beverages and excellent food.  Margaritas begin about $6 and go to $11, but oh is that Grand Patron grand!

I nearly stayed in the metroplex forever.  Did a little shopping, ate some good food.  Did something most folks never do, I drove around and through the old stockyard district in the daylight Sunday. 

It is like a city within a city.  I would love to go back and spend an entire day walking through it.  As it was, it was a late start and lots of people.

The old wooden pens are impressive on their own.  A wide variety of restaurants and "saloons" linen the streets.

I may schedule another trip down there in a few weeks.  Hank Junior and all his rowdy friends are going to be a Billy Bob's in September, or so the marquee said.

But all good things must come to an end.

After an early start to my day I rolled up, just in time to change clothes, a quick shave and put on my boots before taking Memama to Christy's Dad's funeral.

Whew.  I needed to come back to work to rest up!

Hope you had a weekend and a day!

FATHER, thank you for small blessings.  Help us to realize that no matter how bad things are, they could be worse.  I lift up Christy and her family for YOUR gifts of comfort and care as they deal with their loss.  Great are YOU GOD!