Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Boy, Did I Blow It

Monday, Dave used my tractor to help someone. He parked the truck with tractor bearing trailer on the road just beyond the house successfully blocking access to the bee hives and cabooses. When our caboose guest, Mindy, came home, I decided to move the truck/trailer to another location. I put the ramps up and secured them. I made sure the trailer was chained to the truck. The truck started pulling with effort but being a diesel truck, it is always slow to start forward and it had a load. However, after about 4 feet forward, I knew something was not right. Dave had just put rear jacks on the trailer. Not expecting them, I did not notice that one was down until I had a 4" trench in the hardpack, gravel road. Whoops! Mindy and I dug the jack out and tried to make it go up but no luck - even with a bigger hammer. Plan B - just deflate the truck airbags and the front end of the trailer will go down, lifting the rear and pressure on the jack. Still did not budge. Plan C - take the tractor off the trailer to take the pressure off the jack. Tractor battery was dead, thus the reason Dave had left it on the trailer. He was going to take it back to the repair shop because even after two, spendy service attempts, the battery still does not charge with the motor on and drains charge at an alarming rate. Plan D - make a nice dinner for Dave.

Needless to say, Dave was not happy when he got home. To compound the problem, Dave had burned up the truck air compressor on his Monday errand. (Something I did not know.) There is no way to re-inflate the air bags, thus there is no way to lift the trailer tongue to set the front jack so the trailer can be removed from the truck. A battery charger and long extension cord got the tractor charged enough to get it off the trailer and relieve the pressure on the rear so the jack could be straightened and raised. The truck/trailer is now moved out of the way and is ready to go back to the tractor shop for a battery charging fix and the truck shop for a new air bag compressor. Of course by this time, dinner was a bit overdone. Yea, I blew it.