Monday of this past week I was supposed to do a load for a truss company using their trailer. I show up at 10am as scheduled and looked over the load and trailer. As a rule, I don't like pulling other trailers and will never do it again.

I backed up to the trailer but not under it, and was strapping the load down. I didn't have a good feeling about this venture. The forklift driver told me to set my fifth wheel all the way back because this trailer (old step deck) likes to eat the light bars off the rear of tractors. I back underneath hook up and slid my fifth wheel all the back. It looked too close for comfort but I figured I'd at least pull forward and turn the wheel to see if my light bars cleared the trailer frame. I ask the forklift driver if he would watch as I pulled forward and he said he would, so I hook up the air lines and pigtail.

I jumped in the truck to pull it forward and the trailer wouldn't let go, I thought to myself "great, here we go." Upon exiting the truck I looked over at my wife (who was with me for the week) and said "I smell something burning do you?" She said she didn't smell anything.

So I jumped out of the truck to see if I can get the trailer brakes to release. After a moment or two my wife hollers out "Dave there's smoke in the truck." I go back to the truck and there is smoke, a lot of it. I turn the truck off and look for the source but can't find anything.

I let the forklift driver know that I'm doing not this load due to their trailer frame and now something is wrong with my truck. I unhooked from the trailer pulled forward turned everything back on and there was no smoke. It was their trailer that caused this electrical problem.

I then go home and hook to my trailer and everything was working. I thought I got lucky and had no damage. The next day a guy calls me out on the CB and informs me of a light problem on my trailer. When I hit my left turn signal all the lights across the trailer flash. I checked it out when I got home and sure enough they all flashed, just not as dominate as the turn signal. I had to pick up a load for Chicago the following morning so I figured I could limp it to the weekend and then fix the problem.

The following morning I leave to go pick up the Chicago load and when I hit the brake pedal my left front turn signal lights up as bright as I don't know what. Aww Sh*t.

I did the load to Chicago and back and this morning started "hunting" for a burned wire. Well I found it. I took pics but they didn't turn out. The harness is fried, there no patching anything. Wire insulation melted everywhere, I cut back 5 inches or so and wire insulation is still melted. I'm surprised anything worked at all. I called Peterbilt, there's only one harness in the country, it's being shipped to my house express from Texas. $375.00 issedoff:

No more pulling anyone's trailers........... no exceptions. That's my story for the week.

 

Better replace the circuit breakers that are on whatever circuits run through that harness.

If something in that trailer was shorted, the circuit breaker should have tripped before the wires melted.

.

 

Yeah, I'm going to get a new circuit breaker also. Some of these breakers aren't working on this truck. My, I can hardly wait to see what Peterbilts price is for a circuit breaker. :roll:

 

They are free if you go in after hours :lol:

 

Nothing like a good caper to get the blood pumpin! :thumbsup:

 

Super bummer !
A daunting task ahead of you, BOL.

 

I gotta give Fed Ex a prop I guess. Rush Peterbilt (Texarkana, TX) sent the harness overnight with Fed Ex for $27.00. It was shipped at 1:27 pm and will be delivered to me at 10:30 am Monday morning.

I also got lucky for the fact that the reason there was only one in the country was because someone ordered it and didn't pick it up, otherwise I'd be waiting for a couple weeks for Peterbilt to make a new one.

I'm trying to see a silver lining here.