What car do you drive

 Thread resurrection to show off my new toy! I picked this beastie up yesterday;

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Old "violet" 23 year old tranny camper wicked bus only work 5 mile from home so daily driver. Lovely m5 too by the way only ever drove a 528 and that was quick so tilt must be a rocket

Edited by paulus - 28 June 2015 at 9:14pm

njw wrote:  Thread resurrection to show off my new toy! I picked this beastie up yesterday;             All I can say is what a machine!

that is extremely sexy, im extremely jelous!!

Bought my third truck a few months ago. Got it so cheap i could not resist and tought that a spare is nice to have after a bad experience with a three week standstill last summer because of long delivery time on spare parts for the hydraulic piston on the red Volvo. A three week unplanned standstill is expensive..

This is a Volvo FH16-540 -08 with steerable tag axle! And 800000km on it so it still got some to give. i payed less than 30000€ for it and i think that only tank and compressor i(compressor for unloading, big thing. 19m3 air/min) is worth that.
New tank ~80000€, compressor ~10000€ and the compressor is replaced recently so it is almost new. A few hundred hours and they last for several thouands.

I have been sleepless tonight wondering if i made the right decision because today i abandoned my plan to have it as spare and bought a trailer for it.. (Same thing, to cheap. Could not resist)

Now i ONLY need to find a driver as good as the two i already got.. Thats What has been keeping my awake. (Don't worry, i have my week of now so i won't be driving anything without sleep ;) )



For example.
Both my local Scania and Volvo repair guys told me that i needed to replace the entire ABS/EBS system on the trailer i have behind the Scania. Price they gave me was between 3000 and 5000€ for parts and labor. Scania took ~800€ for problem searching and i wanted a second opinion so i left it to Volvo and they took ~400€ for telling me my system was unrepairable..

My driver on the Scania took a bottle of contact spray crawled under the trailer cleaned all the connectors, found a really nasty green one and a damaged cable. Suddenly cost went down to a few hours of work.. He did this on a weekend not because i told him, but because he wanted to save me some money..One afternoon he just sent me a text and a picture of the dashboard with all warningloghts off
I have bought a very nice sterero, 24-volt 3-ch amp and nice speakers for his truck for over 1000€ and he got a christmas bonus waiting for him!
This is the kind of driver that could make the difference between succes and failure

My other driver is my old boss that retired and sold the red Volvo to me. After 1 year he could not stand the retirement and wanted to work again :)
He has had a truck company since 1984. He dont to any beginners mistakes, He is still teaching me and my other driver things even tough both of us has been doing this for well ober 10years now. Listen to the old guys, they know things :)

Now i am laying here on the sofa wondering where to find a driver as good as good as the two i have.. We got a lot of work summertime driving lime to lakes (to correct the ph in the lakes) on gravel roads with 60 tons (soon 64 tons, new rules in Sweden. I only need to extend the drawbar on the Scania to get 20,2m between first and last axle, today it is 19,5m). The Volvo trailer is to short so i will "only" get it up to 62tons.
A beginner is not an option, i need somone with experience of gravel roads.

Small mistakes costs big money. I myself have been doing this since 2002 and still make still make stupid mistakes sometimes.. (To often to be honest..) Got stuck on a wet gravel road last monday, 5 hours work with heavy recovery truck. Expensive, but hey nothing broken atleast.
Forgot to turn of the antispinn and got stuck. Was just supposed to reverse down an do it the right way (antispinn off, difflock on BEFORE the road starts to go up..) but made a big fool of myself when i got to close to the edge of the road and it could not take rhe weight so got really stuck..


Spent ~5000€ reparing the diff-lock on the Scania last summer.. Drivers mistake. But i don't know and don't care if it was me, my driver or the previous owners fault, still expemsive and a drivers mistake. Probably turning on the difflock while slipping. Metal parts came out with the oil at service..

My employees drive Volvo XC70 -14 and Audi A4 ~10 and i drive a beat up V70 from -99 (recently purchased for 300€ because I have not had the time to fix my rusty 1992 Mercedes to make inspection... Normal life of a small truck-company owner :)