Feeling Like An Idiot Today.

This morning I was sent to a different yard (60 miles east) and I did my pretrip as I normally do. I checked all my fluids and such under the hood and noticed my coolant was just a tidge under "cold minimum" and I figured I should add some, but I was scheduled over a 13 hour day as it is, and ill have the shuttle guy bring coolant out with him tonight as there isn't any in this truck. I made it 3 miles down the road before the truck stalled , with engine light, as well as the red check engine light that says stop, both flashing. Odd thing is when roadside assistance showed up an hour and half later it wasn't giving off any codes. He seen coolant was just a little low so he gave it a shot and Boom, problem solved. The dilemma caused me to be over 3 hours behind which resulted in needing them to send me somebody in a van to help me, and take some of the stops off me. I still ended up putting in nearly 14 hours today. Moral of the story......DON'T PUT OFF SOMETHING THAT ISN'T RIGHT. Fortunately being paid hourly I didn't lose any money in this and learned to slow down and do things right, as if you half ass it your gonna end up being even later. Unfortunately my company now has a road side bill for something as simple as low coolant, and I've got an embarrassing story to tell. I was contemplating about posting this, but I feel my mistake may help others not repeat this mistake. Like I said, it was barely below the minimum.

This will indeed help others. Yeah, those trucks are set up so that they'll shut down if they're low on coolant. If you look at the reservoir you'll probably see a little sensor with two wires going to it. If the coolant gets below that sensor the truck will shut off.

Don't think anything of it. You learned something new. It's nice to see you're smart enough to care about costing your company money though. Some drivers really don't care about that, but everyone should. The more money you can make for your company the more likely they are to keep you around and pay you more money, right?

No biggie. Thanks for posting that, though. A lot of people probably don't realize the trucks may shut down if you're a little low on coolant.

I did not know that the trucks would shut down if low on coolant; I would much rather the truck shut down than the engine crack or blow up. Nice safety feature, sort of like when all the in-cab electronics shut down when the batteries are low, the truck leaving you with enough juice to start it with. Self preservation!

Trucks nowadays will d-rate, turn off and a whole slew of other things. If something slightly out of set parameters the truck will turn itself down (d-rate). If something hits certain benchmarks than you get the dueling banjos and the truck turns off, lol. Sometimes in the most inconvenient places, LoL.

Trucks nowadays will d-rate, turn off and a whole slew of other things. If something slightly out of set parameters the truck will turn itself down (d-rate). If something hits certain benchmarks than you get the dueling banjos and the truck turns off, lol. Sometimes in the most inconvenient places, LoL.

Yeah...its too bad it didn't die in the truck stop I left 3 miles prior! I could've gone inside and warm up, or go buy some coolant. Thankfully it wasn't colder (was 31 degrees). This morning it was 14! To stay warm since I'm in a day cab I jumped in the trailer and started downstacking my pallets to help myself later on. As well as stay warm.

It's nice to see you're smart enough to care about costing your company money though. Some drivers really don't care about that, but everyone should. The more money you can make for your company the more likely they are to keep you around and pay you more money, right?

I agree and would like to add that it is also simply the right thing to do...I wish everyone would get that part.

Me and another guy get sent to the other domicile before beginning our route today to bring truck and trailer to des Moines as they are gonna start running that route out of des Moines. After the incident with antifreeze I made sure to get a good hard look at it. Turns out it must have a small leak because the antifreeze was around the level it was when it started giving my hell. I ended up going inside the truck stop and buying the $15 bottle of antifreeze, which I will be reimbursed for within a couple days. I really wish driver who had truck yesterday would've done a PROPER post trip inspection and I wouldn't have had to deal with it, but I guess that comes with slip seating day cabs. Atleast I can say I'm doing my part, as I wrote it up for repair once I get it back to our yard.