10-4 Magazine / June 2025 51 multi-generational farming operations, two of us went into the maintenance and repair fields, and unfortunately, we lost one to an industrial accident. That leaves me as the odd man out. I was raised in a farming family, and when I returned from my military service my grandfather wanted me to take over all his land and farm it in partnership with him. One of the hardest choices I ever had to make was telling him it just wasn’t going to work. I was a young man with a wife and there wasn’t enough land to support another family. Yes, I could have taken out more debt to buy more land, but with more land, it would have required more equipment, and that cycle never seems to end. That’s the difference between an 18 year-old kid wanting to chase their dream and someone who has lived through the harsh reality of disappointment. I was only 23 years old at the time, roughly the same age as most university graduates, but the difference was that I was not saddled with a huge debt around my neck, pulling me down every time a wave of opportunity passed. There really is value in work experience – even if it’s not the job you dreamed of. In just a few short years on the job, most of us can separate our dream from a fairytale. This reenforces the old adage: if you catch the right wave, it will carry you wherever you want to go. Normally, during the month of June, we have the 72-hour Safety Blitz. However, this year the DOT changed things up and scheduled it for May. I don’t know if it had anything to do with the number of drivers taking time off and vacations at the same time (who knew that some drivers would run 60 or 80 miles out of route just to bypass a scale). I have even heard of a driver purposely taking his ex-wife and four kids from the neighborhood on a week’s excursion in hopes of avoiding the Blitz. Well, that may not be true, but it could happen. I for one may have on occasion sent my drivers home for the week and used that time to do routine maintenance on their trucks and trailers. I figured the cost of just one out-of-service violation would more than cover the cost of all repairs. I never considered it “cheating the system” because I was doing exactly what the purpose of their exercise was for – to make sure our equipment was safe and in compliance. I have been following the Iowa State DOT on Facebook for a fair amount of time, and the violations they find are horrendous. If they weren’t dangerous, it would almost be comical. I have to ask myself, how is it the driver never noticed? More importantly, does the driver even realize it’s broken? I don’t know, but if you are missing both tires on the same side of an axle and the rims are scratching the pavement, “Houston, we have a problem!” Maybe the new school repair is for the driver to turn up the radio enough to drown out that loud screeching noise. Another one of my favorites is when the brake chamber and slack adjuster is tarp-strapped out of the way using an old rusty set of vice grips. If they have been on there long enough to rust tight, you’re probably not on your way to the repair shop. I have always been fanatical about tires. For starters, they are expensive, and I don’t like to replace them any sooner than I need to. Secondly, there is a lot of truth in that phase, “Where the rubber meets the road.” Anything done with or on or by a truck is done using the tires. Therefore, they should be given extra attention during an inspection. In most cases, when we are referring to our tractors, they are called wheel ends. That’s more than just the rubber tires, it’s the complete assembly, including the brake mechanism (brake chamber, s-cam tube, and slack adjuster), wheel end bearings, brake shoes and drums. They also have an inside seal, along with an outer axle shaft seal, too. I wrote an article a few years back where I had a brake shoe malfunction that cost me both tires on that wheel end because the brake lining separated from its base, locking up the axle, and flat spotting the tires. It happened in a single lane construction zone, and by the time I could stop safely, those tires were
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