The brakes went out on the Mail Jeep yesterday.

Pretty much completely.

It wasn’t just a “bad pads are scratching and grooving my rotors” kind of issue….it was a “why am I pumping and pushing the pedal to the floor and I’m still going forward” kind of thing.

So (after a nervous effort to get the thing stopped and off the road) I called work to tell them that I wouldn’t be able to make it in.

I called.

And called.

And….called.

I got the fax machine every time.

What the heck?

Then….because I didn’t have any other numbers, I called a co-worker who was at the PO already and told her what was going on.

I guess that’s as far as it went because later I got a call from management and got blessed out for not letting them know that I wouldn’t be able to make it in a car without brakes.

We stop a lot (because of the mailboxes)…so….(go figure?)…it would be impossible to do the job without killing everybody if I couldn’t stop.

I don’t call in very often.

I try to be as low drama as possible.

Maybe I should call more often so that they’d be used to scrambling to cover my route?

Who knows?

Anyway….it turned out that one of the wheel cylinders had exploded and instead of being a “closed loop” the brake fluid (that is supposed to push everything in the right way when you step on the brake pedal) was just pouring out and soaking the shoes and drum on one side of the vehicle.

That’s not something that you can fix out on the route.

But…I can fix it in the driveway if I have the parts and the sun is shining.

I can fix my own problems….usually.

I guess that it’s nice to be needed.

I’ll call directly next time (if anyone will answer the phone), too.

This “middle man” thing never works very well.