Virtual Front Porch

I'm lucky, I can shelter in place, my nearest neighbor is over 1/4 mile and the next is one mile. I can limit my trips to town to about one a week and when I do go out trucking, I truck for a customer that is very bio-aware and has been long before Covid.
What has really made my position more tenable is unlike a few years ago, my wife has now retired and as getting a small pension and SS. Without that, I would be in real trouble. I am painfully aware that most truckers don't have one truck that is paid off, never mind more.
Trucking rates and loads have plummeted since this has started. Many will go under, and there is little support for independent owner operators. In theory they should be eligible for the expanded unemployment (in the past they are ineligible) and for PPP loans. In practice it is unlike that they will receive either. Trucker have neither a set income nor often a bank with which they have a loan history. Most trucks are financed through "finance companies" as trucking is seen as "too much a risk" for most banks.
With the median age of trucker around 60, most will not recover from this, and those that loose their trucks via repo or bankruptcy, will likely see their retirement plans gone. At that is if they don't get sick from Covid.
I am winding down my trucking career, and will not likely go back to full time trucking even after this pandemic has past.
I had hoped to sell 1 or 2 of my trucks by now. I am getting too old to do the work on them like I used to and can't find good shops that will take on the work. Doing my own work is what made trucking profitable for me. Even if I am willing to pay for a shop to do the work, I am find few that will take on the jobs I need done.
Having multiple trucks from which to use has been a god send in these times .Having a trailer full of used parts has kept things manageable. I just don't see how trucking is going to make it through this. The young one who go to a "truck driving school" and then hire onto a big company find it no picnic and not what they thought, many do not stay in it long enough to pay off their training. The ones that do, often are so broke they can't afford to move up to owning their own or even changing employers. Often you take a big "hit" in pay when you "jump ship". Unlike hourly workers, your pay is based on things you can't control, and the new guy always get the short end of the stick.
I wonder what will happen to our economy when we do finely get beyond Covid and there isn't the transportation sector robust enough to pick up and go on?
I just keep thanking my lucky stars that this didn't hit years ago, when my wife was battling cancer and I was the sole source of money. I know I would have to be out there banging my head against the wall trying to earn more with few loads and lower rates. It was tough enough then.

Yesterday marked 16 years since I retired. I was with the same company for 35 years.
My wife and I planned for our retirements We are lucky to have our plans work. Having a health system that looks after us has allowed us to arrive here debt free and a few bucks in the bank.
Retirement has been not too bad, but, it has not been all good times either.
Four years of cancer treatment then a pulmonary embolism event each took a bite out of me, physically. I am OK now, but slowed quite a bit.
When I think of other males in my extended family and how long they lived, I have outlived all of them from a few years to more than 20 years. My Dad was dead a week before his 72 birthday, that was 1989.
I drove Dad's restored R120 to his funeral, in Calgary, and hauled the contents of his shop 1000 kilometers to the West Coast.
I have lost well over half of my cousins in the last few years.
I am looking forward to the Provincial Health Officers allowing British Columbia and Alberta to open up and lift the travel bans. It will not be many more years until I am not interested in long drives and there will not be any relatives left to visit anyway.
Meanwhile, our new dog is keeping us entertained. She is a Poodle and very much a clown.
CB89, I am curious about the hourly rate for head banging. Do some walls pay better than other walls? Is this the same brick wall that restricts engine cooling?

I don't know what it is today, but I was leased to a trucking company that paid their company drivers an hourly wage. That is very, very rare. Most are paid by the (book) mile or percent of the gross. Most of the drivers stayed a long time, they were well taken cared of by the industry standards.
Looks like "time for belly rubs" in that picture of the dog.

What hobbies or great passions do some of you have.,

Myself besides running a small business -

I also enjoy , wood working , cabin building , fly fishing , reading ( about fishing )
and tinkering with the old truck..

I don't know what it is today, but I was leased to a trucking company that paid their company drivers an hourly wage. That is very, very rare. Most are paid by the (book) mile or percent of the gross. Most of the drivers stayed a long time, they were well taken cared of by the industry standards.

Looks like "time for belly rubs" in that picture of the dog.

CB89, I may have misunderstood this. Do have have a new job sort of speak or was it in the Past?

No, that was in the late 90's I was leased to a heavy haul company that also had company drivers that they paid hourly. I not sure they are even still in business today, I know the shrunk after I left.
I still did work for them time to time when they got "jammed up" and needed help. Even though I was running under my own authority back then, they would "trip lease" me to help out. Best people in trucking, but trucking has changed so much in the last two decades. I haven't got a call from them in the last 10 years or so.
I'm still running supplement loads for the Hutterites in Montana, and will take a load next week.

I spent today installing a system to detect refrigerant loss in the A/C system before it becomes seriously low.
Most Tx valve A/C systems on cars and trucks only have a pressure switch in the high side that cut off the compressor if the pressure drops below 35 psi on the high side. If the system develops a leak, it will continue to run until it has pumped all the refrigerant and most of the oil out of the system.
With all the trouble I am having finding parts that are 30-50 years old, I wanted something better. I maintain a "binary" pressure switch on the high side for over and back up under, pressure cut off function, but use another system that will detect refrigerant loss long before it trips the pressure switch in the high side, and will shut down and lock off the system until repaired. It uses a pressure switch on the low side with a latching relay. It is more complex than a simple high side switch and if the wires or the switch fail, it will not give an indication of a problem, hence I use both.
With a high side switch and failure in the wiring will shut the system down, as all switches are wired in series with the clutch coil. With a low side switch the relay is in series with the coil but the control wiring for the relay coil is not, so if there is a failure on that, the safety function is lost. That is why I use both.
If anyone wants the wiring if they are adding A/C to their truck, I would be glad to pass it on.

I installed a trinary switch on my Ford.
Trinary switches provide compressor protection against high side pressures that are too high or too low. These switches can also engage a fan clutch or open radiator shutters. Other multi-pressure controls could be utilized. Four Seasons' trinary switch part numbers are 35889 and 35901. Vintage Air sell them.
https://youtu.be/KUDsYKOYwUg

After several failures, I have stopped using trinary switches. I was having trouble getting good quality switches. For that reason, I separated out the fan function to its own switch, cheaper and easier to get, and can be bypassed if it fails on the road.
Binary is like a Trinary without the fan function.
But like I said, the high side pressure switch will allow the system to operate when severely low on refrigerant. Since oil is carried with the refrigerant, low mean oil is low too. Add to that, the compressor relies on the cool refrigerant retuning to cool the compressor. If the system is low, that doesn't happen.
The low side switch system cuts off the compressor while there is still plenty of refrigerant in the system to carry the oil back and still enough to cool the compressor. It is much more sensitive to low refrigerant than a high side switch is.

You say, " the compressor relies on the cool refrigerant retuning to cool the compressor. "
Where does the compressor get the cool refrigerant from?
The refrigerant should be carrying heat from the evaporator when it gets to the compressor. The compressor will naturally raise the refrigerant temperature as it turns the refrigerant gas to a liquid. The condensor is there to remove heat from the hot liquid refrigerant before it returns to the expansion valve in the evaporator.