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North End I-15 | Speaking of "Road Kill"
I was hauling grain down the interstate at harvest time about sunset . Running 80,000 lbs at legal speed . Spy some thing in middle of right hand road lane. Checked mirrors to pull over in to left hand land and a car pulls up along side passing me. Had to stay in my lane and straddle what turned out to be a split ring off a truck tire .
Rattle ,bang ,clank and out the back of semi trailer it came and landed off the pavement.
I watched the oil pressure , air gauges , hoping nothing was poked or tore off . Tried the brakes all was ok .
All seemed fine and being I was about 2 miles from the interstate exit to elevator, I decided to wait till I got there to do a walk around.
The elevator is about a mile east of interstate exit and through the town . I took the truck by pass through town to elevator.
When I pulled in to elevator I noticed it had tore off the cross over fuel line fitting and hose was dragging between the two side mount tanks .
Diesel running all over from both tanks . Just was lucky it snapped the spare tank cross feed and not the fuel supply side. Found a piece of wood and whittled a plug for the broken fitting .Pulled the cross over hose up above fuel level of tank and wired it up.
Had to wait in line for a half hour in line before dumping so all fuel had quit dripping from chassis.
Next day I hauled another load in . Elevator scale guy said I had lucked out . Not 5 minutes after I left a Hi way patrol officer had followed the fuel trail in off the interstate through town to the elevator.
He was looking to ticket who ever had left a trail for a couple miles ending at the elevator !
Elevator guy said no one had dumped a trail of diesel in to his pit so that was the end of that story .
I after repairing the broken fitting I saved the plug in the tool box . Had to use it twice more , but thats another story or two.
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Rolling Coal
