John The Pear

Hello everyone.  Praise the Lord!

I took three days off from work, in order to go to Louisiana with my wife Gretchen.  Before every weekend, I always turn to kill switch off to the tractor. That Thursday evening was no different. I dropped the trailer, parked the tractor in the line, and turned the kill switch to the "off" position.

The kill switch is a switch on the floorboard or the tractor, which terminates all electrical usage to the batteries. These modern truck tractors has so much electronics in them these days, if you're not going to drive the truck from two or three days, you should turn the kill switch off.

When I came back to work and tried to re-hook my equipment Sunday night, to be ready Monday morning, my truck was dead! I had my dispatcher, Cole Nelson, arrange for the shop to look at it. When I came in Monday, John was jumping the batteries with another truck. John is a "pear-shaped" white man in his thirties.  He is a fairly new tractor mechanic, at least here at our company.

I walked over and talked with him, and ask him what was wrong with the truck. He said the driver left the key in the ignition on the "on" position. I told him that's not the case, I was the last one to use the truck, and I had to kill the switch turned off.  If the Kill switch is turned off, it doesn't matter if the ignition is on or not.

He said that was the case and even took a picture of it! He showed me a picture on his phone with the switch on the "on" position.  That creeped me out!  Why would it take a picture of that? Why was he so ready to show me?  And I knew it wasn't true!

About thirty minutes later, I talked to Cole while he was smoking a cigarette. I told him of the incident, and him taking a picture of  the key! Cole kind of smirked and said, "let's give a chance, he's very productive, and he's willing to work late to get things fixed."

Cole then went on to talk about the past politics of the yard. So I kind of knew that I needed to drop the whole issue.  So I just said okay, and walked away. But that is kind of creepy, thought it was kind of weird, They would take a picture of the key in the truck.

John the mechanic eventually changed out all the batteries, and the truck was good after that.  So the real problem was not the batteries, not the driver, or the key, but it was just bad batteries!  So take that, "John the pear!"

Brother Roop

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