[Bill Schwab]

Ok, a few things here....

First, Dan, we have one of the best maintained fleets in our industry, I see to that. And, in all fairness, I have had brand new trucks with master cylinder failures, the GM brakes from years of 88 through 99 were absoultely the biggest garbage placed in any vehicle, with thousands of documented failures...I am not an anti lock brake fan at all...If they were so great we would run them in race cars....
And, as far as insurance goes...We recover the cost of our vehicles over a said amount of time. With our plan, there is no reason for keeping full coverage on any vehicle over 6 years old, or has been fully recovered in cost and depreciated in deductions.
This vehicle happened to be a '91 SuperDuty, with 60,000 original miles. It would bring maybe 10K on the open market, but, you know as well as I do that an insurance company would be hard pressed to give you 5K if it was totaled, that is just what they are, cheats......
It makes no sense to pay $1,500.00 more per year on this unit for full coverage with the chance this truck may be totaled when your odds are better keeping liability, and if it totals, so what, the cost was recovered by usage....

Anyhow, the accident...This driver proceeded 1/2 mile further than he had to as he realized the truck lost it's brakes far back in the road. So, he had a 1/2 mile to:
A), use the emergency brake,
B) rub tires on the B-6-12 curbing along the road,
C) throw the tranny in reverse,
Even if he trashed it, that would still be better than a wreck, NO? When the lady pulled out in front of him, she pulled out about 100 feet in front of him and stopped cold to BS with someone on the sidewalk. If he had used his E brake, or the other methods I mentioned, and stopped long before this area came into view of the truck, this would not be an issue...I commend him on not hitting anyone or getting hurt himself, however, I think defensive emergency driving instruction would have kept the do-do out of his pants long enough so he could have thought clearly and stoped the truck.

It is all back together, painted and running now, with the exception of the new master cylinder, Napa sold me the wrong one, so, when we bleed out the brakes, we will be making money again with this truck. I am going to the Peterbuilt dealer next week and putting a downstroke on a new truck, with a roll off dump, 425HP Cat and 13 speed fuller tranny... In the mean time, this super duty is one heck of a truck!