Adventures with a Pete 587

[JimT]

So here's the story of a red 587 with a red engine and a green OO.

Brief history about me. I Started my driving career in 2004 doing local dryvan LTL and airfreight.
Drove a 2001 Volvo VNL 300 daycab with a 7 speed, D12 engine and 152" single axle wheelbase.
Good job, but the economy forced a big layoff in 2013. I switched jobs to a dedicated flatbed account for a large southern CT based structural steel distributor (Starts with a B, ends with a K and usually includes a few curse words before their name). Got lots of lovely pictures of horrific loads out of there! Learned to love flatbed and got my first taste of real trucking. Still ran daycabs, about 185" wheelbase. JB#@nt had prostars, first with the bad maxforce engines, then swapped to new ISX (probably a cm2350). My first 10-speed. Then early 2015 the account switched hands and the new carrier leased 2015 Volvo daycabs with the D13 engine and volvo's autoshift tranny. Not bad, except the lease was through Ryder and they didn't get the "premium shifter" which meant no manual shift control. While at this job I started my couple year journey to become an owner op. Lots of research, though sadly I didn't find this site before I bought a truck. Unfortunate mistake.





2012 Peterbilt 587 Mid-Roof
Cummins ISX cm2250
Eaton 13 Speed
3.42 Rears
220" Wheelbase
Dual 100 80 gallon tanks

So I bought the tractor early June of 2018. Had it looked at, PM'd, DOT'd, got onboard with a big OO only carrier. My first tractor, my first 13-speed, my first non-daycab. Got my first load as an OO around the 25th of June. Heavy load of wooden spindles. Moved the truck to the side after being loaded, set the brakes, popped the clutch and bam, forgot to take it out of low gear first. Lots of bad words followed. Inspected the best I could but couldn't see anything broken. The next 2 weeks I only hauled a few loads. Only weird thing I noticed was that the shifter would move a lot side to side when the engine was applying torque...

On my way home with another heavy load just after the 4th of July holiday and I messed up a shift on a steep hill about 5 miles from home. Next thing I know I'm getting low coolant and check engine alarms. Parked it before the temp got too high and ended up getting towed to a shop about 3 miles away. The torque caused the engine to twist just enough to break the plastic inlet elbow on the top of the radiator.

Come to find out that I broke the 2nd motor mount when I popped the clutch. According to the mechanic the other mount was completely missing and looked like it had been missing for a while. The only thing holding up the engine was the front mount. Yes, he replaced ALL the motor mounts along with the radiator during the repair. He also found that the remote lube hose for the clutch wasn't connected and ended up putting 2 tubes of grease into the clutch! It was much easier to operate after that.

When I bought the truck I had 2 different shops look at it, an annual DOT inspection and of course my ignorant self looked at it too. Of course I didn't know sh!t back then, so I can't just pass the buck and blame others for my ignorance.

Expensive lesson 2 weeks in to my new career. On the bright side while the truck was in the shop I struck a deal with the property owner to park my rig there. Still, that was almost $10k in total costs that should have been completely avoided, even after I screwed up with the clutch.

Well, that was how I got started learning things the hard way. In the next installment we'll explore what it's like to pay someone else to work on your truck for 10 months!