I think she liked to go with me more than she liked car races, but for a number of seasons, Saturday nights would find us at the Meridian Speedway in Meridian, Idaho. The track was earlier advertised as “jalopy races,” but with the dirt track paved, it was just the speedway.
A handful of the drivers moved up to professional race car driving, but for most, it was just an expensive hobby. A story was told about one particular driver. He was very competitive when his race car was running right. The claim was that this fellow was prone to arrive an hour before time trials with his car on his trailer. He would unload it, then pop the hood and try to remember why he either finished poorly or failed to finish the previous weekend’s race. Postponing the needed adjustments and repairs often left him unprepared to race, since the few minutes before he had to be on the track were inadequate time to fix the car. It was worse when he couldn’t remember what the car needed.
How’s your memory? When the last load of corn silage is finally in the truck headed for the pit or pile, and you get the 900-horsepower chopper parked in the shed by supper time – what’s your plan to have it ready before next harvest?
Sometime before I swore off using airplanes for travel, there was an incident. All aboard and ready for the last leg of the trip home, one engine on the jet declined to fire up. The two engines were on either side of the rear of the fuselage, and we were seated in the very back, near the restroom and across from the flight attendants’ rear-facing seats. We could hear the clanging and banging as the mechanical staff dealt with the recalcitrant engine and chatted with the ladies in uniform about the procedure and progress of the repair.
Finally, the engine started. They shut it down and restarted it a couple of times to feel good about the repair, having fixed the problem. The pilot’s voice came over the intercom, assuring us that the issue with the engine was only minor, that it had been fixed and that as soon as the ship’s logbook was back on board, we would finally be underway.
I managed to look out the window to see a handful of guys in reflective coveralls with the logbook. They appeared to be passing it around. I asked the flight attendant seated across from us if she was sure she wanted to stay on board, because it looked to me that the flight mechanics were playing “hot potato” with the logbook, and no one was willing to sign off on the repair. My wife elbowed me in the ribs and told me to behave myself. The flight attendant held a straight face, but I caught her rolling her eyes.
My thoughts are that an operation cannot afford not to have some form of maintenance and repair log for every implement, tractor, truck or pickup essential to its operation. It can be critical to know when and by whom the machine was last used and serviced.
I would require a daily inspection record covering oil and coolant levels as a minimum. I would require a thorough inspection with a written report at the end of the season by the operator or the person doing the routine maintenance.
Computers and spreadsheets are wonderful – but without correct data, these modern tools are useless. Excessive oil consumption remains an indicator of an existing or pending issue. If an operation has a matched fleet of tractors, harvesters, trucks or pickups, and one starts using more oil than the others, there may be a problem. If a machine is a “one-off” for your operation, the dealer should be easily able to tell you what the range of “normal” oil consumption is for that machine.
If a harvester starts using a gallon of oil a day when it had previously needed oil added every two weeks, there is an issue. If no one is recording the fluids added to that harvester, no one will know, and no action will be taken. If it were a sudden onset, my first response would be to examine it for external leaks. My next response would be to check the warranty status of the unit. Again, you will never know you possibly have a repair eligible for a warranty to cover unless someone is recording that the oil consumption is suddenly through the roof.
The warranty people are nobody’s fools either.
There will be a maintenance schedule for that machine, and if the owner cannot document scheduled oil changes and filter replacement, the warranty may be declared void.
Case in point is my pickup. Knowing that I was going to put a mass of miles on it chasing hay across three states, I agreed to an additional warranty. Three years, unlimited mileage. At 191,000 miles and with two months remaining on the warranty, there was an issue with the automatic transmission behind my Cummins turbodiesel. I was helping a friend four states away, so much of the interaction with the dealer warranty station was via the internet.
One message asked about documentation for previous transmission fluid and filter changes. I emailed back to grab my record book from the console on the pickup. I told him from memory the approximate mileage that I had performed this service. His response was that he’d found it, found the page, made a copy and sent it off to Chrysler. He said their response was that a record book like mine was impossible to fabricate and would stand up in a court of law. My transmission was replaced without further incident. The service writer told me he had never seen such a complete service and fuel record book on a pickup. For your information, the pickup now has 522,000 miles on it, and it’s still running strong.
Utilize the wonderful world of computers, as it can work wonders for your operation. Keep detailed records, so that, at the end of the day, end of harvest and before it’s needed next, you know what that machine needs and it’s ready for the field when you need it there.
