Brand New Truck!!! Oops!, Someone Already Hit It!

It has happened... Well, a lot has happened, actually.

For some reason Matt's company decided to trade several 2006 trucks in early at only around 450,000 miles on the odometer. Matt and I were assigned a brand-spankin'-new, red, 2011 Freightliner Cascadia two days ago. Hooray! Never have I experienced the smells of a factory new semi truck with only 19 miles on it. Quite an experience for this aging cat. And to think that only 8 months ago Matt and I thought we would have to part company due to anti-idling laws and our company's seemingly rigid pet policy.

Now the bad news. And it's mounting. We drove only about 242 miles to North Platte, NE from our company terminal where we got the truck before realizing some bugs that had to be fixed. Unfortunately they weren't the kind of juicy, crunchy bugs with wings in which I occasionally indulge, but technical crapola that caused us to go to the nearest Freightliner shop to have it fixed. A part was ordered to arrive Saturday so we spent the night Friday evening at the nearby Love's Travel Plaza.

At around 9 or 10pm we heard a loud scrape-crunch noise on our driver-side caused by some 4-month rookie driver whose passenger wife was too lazy to get out and spot for him to make sure he backed in next to us safely. Now he will likely lose his job, and we will have lots of downtime getting this damage fixed! See photos. So now while we waited for the technical stuff to get fixed, we looked forward to going back to the terminal and wait for them to do the body work. But they told us to wait until the middle of May when Matt and I take our vacation to have it fixed, since it would be at least a 1 week job. So we get to drive around showing off our new accident, while everyone thinks Matt probably caused it himself. Lovely. Oh well, everything has its price.

The part that sucks the most for me....is all the time I'm spending locked up in my kennel. All day while Matt transfered all his junk from one truck to the other, most of the day while we waited to be told what was needed to fix the truck, the day following the accident while we waited for UPS to deliver the part we needed, while the damage was being assessed at the corporate terminal by honchos of note, etc... It's a wonder I don't start making messes in this thing. Glad I have a towel in here...

Today we're in Ohio, on our way to Rochester, NY to deliver Monday (too much time to deliver), so we can get a load through home to have the nearby terminal also assess the damage and order parts and panels. Phew! Lots to do when rookies hit our truck!