For a truck that starts and stops 100's of times a day It's way beyond broke In. Like I told another person In this thread, the right thing to do would be to trade It off next year when It hits that 300,000 mile mark. I'm far from being able to do that though. This high diesel price hasn't helped much and It took me 8 years to save up for this rig. In time though as I get other business related stuff paid off I might be able to close that gap some. We'll see what this wonderful economy does I guess.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- No we haven't. No one has ask about your truck. BUT... it is a sweet ride.... small.... but nice. LOL
Up here, not many dairy farmers live on asphalt roads, so I'm sure a lot of those miles are on gravel, that'll beat the piss out of a truck in no time.
Great post, Steve! Can't wait to see the pics of daily operations. If I lived closer I'd love to come along for a ride-along one day. Back when I was a Grainger Industial Supply account executive, that was the favorite part of my job: going in and seeing all sorts of different job duties and getting to hang out and learn more about what everyone did. Good stuff!
Nope, C13 Cat. Cat and Mercedes was the only diesel motors I could choose from. It' the 1st Cat I've ever owned. It's been alright, lacks In power though. Cummins so far Is my favorite Diesel motor In heavy trucks. I had a 370 M11 In my other truck I traded off for this one, loved that one! It had 720,000 miles on It.
At the cheese plant I unload the milk at Is where I clean the truck and the Inside of the tank. There's a big spray ball that goes Inside of the tank from the top. It does an excellent job. It does a soap, acid and water rinse, takes about 20 minutes. I do that once a day. I'll take a pic of the truck loaded with all the axels down.
Funny you should post this, I just learned about this process in my Food Science class last semester. We didn't go into great detail, but just the basic outline of how milk goes from the farm to the consumer. Pretty interesting stuff
Allot of people through out the years have rode with. If your ever In Mn some time give me a call, we could arrange something. Agree Greg. Seeing different jobs has always been Intriguing to me too. A person can never learn enough can they. Thanks!!
Right on Jay. Gravel roads are by far the worst things for these trucks and 95% of my farmers I pick milk up at live on gravel (wash boardy) roads. Southerners don't deal with this but up here as you know we have a ton of frost In the ground from the winter months and when spring approaches the frost comes out and these gravel roads get down right ugly with all the frost boils. A few different times I've had to get towed out being stuck In the middle of a gravel road In the spring. A few bumpers have been wrapped around my front tires when falling through the frost boils. Spring Is the worst time and the hardest on these trucks. Winter Is no cake walk either. Snow storm or not, the truck has got to go.
Yo Steve, My fire department has an old milk truck we converted into a tanker. Only 2000 gallons though....
Your right you didn't ask, doesn't mean a few others haven't. Small? Lol!! For a straight truck this Is about as big as they get. Thanks David.
I've heard of fire departments doing that around here too, the smaller town ones anyway. Grain farmers usually try and buy these trucks too being there set up good. When I trade trucks the tank comes off and goes on the new truck so whoever buys these old milk trucks could put whatever they want on the chassis.
Very cool Steve. When I was young a family friend drove milk truck. I had a blast riding along to the farms with him many times. Drinking cold milk right from the bulk tank at my grandparents farm.....YUM.
