Well, yesterday was one of those days. I am hauling a fire truck out to Fort Sill, OK. I was making pretty good time and was on schedule to get through St Louis well before the afternoon rush hour curfew on over sized loads.

Well, that was until I suddenly heard a very loud, high pitched whine coming from my engine. I had an idea of what it was and knew it couldn't be a good thing so I backed off my speed and limped down to the next truck stop which was, luckily, only a few miles away.

The whine was extremely loud, sounding almost like a siren, and I got a lot of looks as I pulled into the parking lot. I raised the hood to try and determine where the sound was coming from and, as I had suspected, it was coming from the turbo. Nope, not good at all.

At 9:15 am I placed the call to our service department. An hour later they had decided that trying to drive the truck to a repair shop would likely do too much damage to the engine (duh) and they were setting up a road service call.

The road service guy showed up around 1:00 pm. By 4:00 pm the turbo was replaced and I was able to get on down the road. At this point I was sort of screwed because the afternoon curfew in St Louis had already started.

I went as far as Troy, IL where I had planned to stop for fuel anyway. I fueled up and parked my rig to do some quick calculations. The afternoon curfew ends at 6:30 pm. Lots of road construction combined with heavy traffic. Distance to the closest truck stop on the other side of St Louis with a parking lot large enough to park in with an over sized load. Sunset around 8:00 pm. Over sized load daylight only driving.

Nope, no way I could make it to that truck stop before I ran out of daylight. I was stuck here in Troy until after the morning rush hour curfew ends at 9:00 am. So here I sit.

I had hoped to deliver the fire truck today but now that is out of the question. Both Missouri and Oklahoma have me on some secondary roads to route around road construction and the Oklahoma tollway, on which over sized loads are not allowed, and I am forced to go about 150 miles out of my way to get to Ft Sill.

Also, my OK permit expires after today so we will have to order a revised permit to allow me to move the load through OK tomorrow.

Such is trucking.