It's a Team's Life

Handling the Unexpected

What do you do when the unexpected happens while under a load? For those who know us, they know the type of freight that we haul. For those that don’t know us, you might be able to figure it out. Let’s just say that the freight is very special.

On one such load we had about 48 hours to drive over 2300 miles. It was tight. As we all know, we do what we have to do to get the job done. On this particular load we were trying to contact the delivery point for delivery hours and exact location with no success. For three days we tried to get in touch.

In the very early hours of the day of our delivery our 2021 Volvo decides to throw a code. Not much after that, a message came across the display saying that the truck would derate in 60 minutes. We are less than 6 hours from our delivery. And, of course, this is happening on a Friday! 

Fortunately, I was able to pull off the highway to get to a truck stop. Unbeknownst to us there just happened to be a Volvo dealership a quarter mile from the truck stop. Talk about good fortune! Anyway, Volvo has a fantastic program called UPTIME. It is a service that is provided to all Volvo owners Once the warranty expires a Volvo owner can purchase UPTIME for a minimal fee. UPTIME assessed the situation that helped us to make an informed decision as to whether we should continue on our way or go to the shop for repairs. We opted for the latter.

Of course, it was after hours. We waited until the Volvo dealership opened, got in and was diagnosed quickly. Within an hour and a half we were back on the road. 

Now comes the fun part of the story. Because we were driving through a larger city during business hours rather than through the night, traffic was bumper to bumper. We lost so much time. We arrived at our destination at 2:03 in the afternoon. We were informed that everyone had left at 2:00 P.M. We tried to explain to security that the freight we were hauling needed to come off of our truck that day. This particular location did not take any deliveries on Monday so we would have had to sit with the load from Friday until Tuesday.

Long story short, the location was able to find someone to offload us. What would you have done in this situation? Fortunately, we had some very patient and kind people to work with to diffuse what could have turned into a volatile situation. Moral of this story: ALWAYS keep a cool head! Things will work out as they are meant to work out.

Here’s to millions of safe and profitable miles!