DAAAAAAAAAMMMMMNNNNN! Not very often I hear anyone having to pay a deposit. That's a steep one too. Yea, I can go else where and make more per mile. I normally start around $.33- 34 a mile starting with a company. I can understand the monthly charge for load locks though. I have somewhere between 10-15 of Dick Simon's load lock's that have "Dick Simon Trucking Inc" white and red stickers on them.
With being charged all those extra's, that scare's me away. Thank's for the info T4L.
Kelle's (Dick Simon's kid)
Discussion in 'Report A BAD Trucking Company Here' started by truckedup, Oct 7, 2009.
Page 5 of 11
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OK, here's the original story when it happened along with pictures that are no longer on the internet.
"Truck-crash parallels may aid state's claim
By Matthew Barrows
Bee Staff Writer
(Published April 6, 2001)
A fatal truck accident in Utah three years ago may bolster the effort by the California attorney general's office to get a trucking firm to pay for damages to the Capitol caused by January's big-rig crash.
In both cases, the driver was hired by Salt Lake City-based Dick Simon Trucking Co. despite a history of criminal convictions and mental problems, and despite failing grades from the men who trained them.
In the March 1998 accident, the driver, a Vallejo man named Ronald Purta, flipped his truck in the Price Canyon area of Utah and struck a Nissan Sentra traveling in the opposite direction. The crash killed the driver, Patricia Gallegos, and one of her sons. Another son was left with permanent brain damage.
In January, Mike Bowers rammed his truck into the south portico of the Capitol. The resulting blaze killed Bowers and caused $16.5 million worth of damage to the historic building.
It's that price tag that has California officials interested in the Utah accident.
According to Darryl Doke, supervising deputy attorney general, Dick Simon's insurance carriers are still looking into California's claim for damages and have yet to agree to pay. State officials say there is a chance the insurance providers will conclude that the accident was an intentional act by Bowers, in which case the trucking company would not be liable.
But Doke said the Utah accident, and documents found in a resulting lawsuit on behalf of Gallegos and her surviving son, suggest a pattern of questionable hiring practices by Dick Simon Trucking Co.
He said the state is waiting to see how the insurance carriers react, but is prepared to file its own lawsuit if they refuse to pay.
"We have been in touch with the attorneys involved in that case in Utah," Doke said. "We think there are parallel issues regarding the hiring and retention policies of the company."
One of the issues is how Dick Simon officials missed the lengthy criminal records of both Bowers and Purta.
Bowers passed the company's background check last March despite a string of crimes that included battery, domestic violence, driving under the influence of alcohol and six prison stays.
Purta also was hired despite having been imprisoned for much of his adult life for crimes including domestic abuse, attempted robbery and making a bomb threat to a courthouse.
In a sworn deposition in July, Purta said he was prepared to share his criminal background with Dick Simon officials, but was advised not to by the company's recruiter, Merle Sheffield.
"... I was more than willing to talk about the prior convictions that I was aware of and that I could remember, and I shared that with him," Purta says in his deposition, "and the only thing he was interested in was the documentation of the last offense."
In their own depositions, Dick Simon officials, including Sheffield, denied ever advising an applicant to hide a criminal record.
At the time the company had a policy against hiring drivers with multiple felonies and, as an advocate for the prevention of child abuse, particularly frowned upon applicants who harm children.
Dick Simon's trailers are adorned with blue ribbons signifying its fight against child abuse.
Purta, however, was convicted for felony assault after being charged with abusing his wife and 4-year-old daughter in 1988. And Bowers was cited for violating parole in 1991 when he allegedly beat his live-in girlfriend and her children.
According to a California Highway Patrol investigation completed after the Capitol crash, Bowers' probation report said Bowers had beaten his girlfriend's daughter "so severely that she had gone into convulsions and was covered with bruises from her back to her knees."
Bowers also spent time at three mental institutions in California, and the CHP report describes him as a man struggling with delusions that he was a messenger of God and King of the New World Order.
In his deposition, Purta says he was diagnosed with everything from paranoid schizophrenia to bipolar disorder during various prison sentences.
California officials say they also are interested in Purta's training run with a Dick Simon driver in January 1998 -- a ride that mirrors the harrowing practice run Bowers had with his trainer, Glenn Horn. Both trips ended with the trainers urging Dick Simon officials not to hire the new recruits. In each instance the trainers were ignored.
Horn called Bowers the worst driver he had ever trained, and he asked Dick Simon officials to end the training run an hour and a half into their trip from Utah to Atlanta.
Steve Miller, who trained Purta, said he contacted Dick Simon headquarters a dozen times with concerns about Purta during their run to Portland, Ore.
"I found this man was twitching with his face, moving funny -- making strange gestures, rolling down the window ... talking to himself a lot, out of control," Miller says in a sworn deposition. "I didn't really take it serious until later on when things really started getting bad."
Miller said the training run ended at a weigh station in Idaho where Purta, 52 at the time, bolted from the truck, flagged down an Idaho state trooper and accused Miller of sexually harassing him and tampering with his driver logs.
That officer, Larry Torix, reported there was nothing wrong with the log books, but he recommended that Dick Simon officials re-evaluate Purta. "It didn't seem to me like he was stable enough to drive the truck," Torix wrote in his report.
Less than three weeks after the incident in Idaho -- and against the urging of Miller -- Dick Simon gave Purta his own truck.
According to incident reports in the court record, Purta immediately had problems controlling his rig.
On Jan. 28, 1998, he hit a utility pole while rounding a corner in Carlton, Ga. On Feb. 5, he damaged a city-owned tree in Vallejo, ripping a five-foot hole in his trailer. On Feb. 6, he hit another utility pole while rounding a corner in Santa Cruz. On Feb. 17, he got stuck in a farmer's field in Allegany, N.Y. On March 1, a driver on Interstate 29 in Missouri called Dick Simon headquarters to report that Purta's truck had forced him off the road.
Despite a company policy that says drivers can be terminated for three preventable accidents that occur in the span of a year, Dick Simon officials deemed Purta's incidents as minor. Instead of a pink slip, they gave him counseling, additional training and another chance, according to court testimony.
On March 16, 1998, Purta was back in his truck on a run to Price, Utah. Witnesses that day said they saw Purta's truck cutting curves, passing over the double yellow line and nearly tipping over on a winding road through Price Canyon.
A Utah Highway Patrol officer estimated the truck was traveling at least 77 mph on a curve recommended for 45 mph when the truck overturned, skidded into oncoming traffic and struck a silver Nissan Sentra.
Purta walked away from the accident with slight abrasions to his left leg, but Patricia Gallegos and her son Angelo Sotelo, 5, were killed in the head-on collision. Another son, 8-year-old Anthony Rynes, was found pinned against the dashboard gasping for breath, according to the police report.
The trial in the civil case filed by relatives of Gallegos and Rynes is scheduled to begin in August.
Their attorney, Salt Lake City lawyer Jeffrey Eisenberg accuses Dick Simon Trucking of relaxing its own hiring rules to keep trucks filled with drivers.
Eisenberg said Dick Simon Trucking was struggling with a driver shortage prior to hiring Purta, and he is expected to argue that the company overlooked Purta's criminal record, Miller's evaluation of Purta and Purta's driving incidents in February and March 1998 in order to keep him behind the wheel.
Neither Dick Simon Trucking officials nor their attorneys returned phone calls for this story.
In court testimony, however, company officials said the driver shortage it experienced was not unique to Dick Simon Trucking, but rather was being felt throughout the long-haul trucking industry.
They also said the company did not violate any Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration rules in hiring Purta and Bowers, and they have noted that CHP investigators looking into the Capitol crash found that the company had performed the necessary drug and alcohol tests before hiring Bowers.
Still, Eisenberg said the company appeared to be putting business ahead of safety.
"Why would a company ignore the advice of a trainer, a highway patrol officer and three accidents, and leave a guy like that (Purta) on the road?" he said. "Simon's business circumstances suggest to us that they were desperate to find drivers."
The Bee's Matthew Barrows can be reached at (916) 321-1008 or mbarrows@sacbee.com.
Problems? Suggestions? Let us hear from you. / Copyright © The Sacramento Bee"Attached Files:
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OK, here are the picture's I took at the yard of truck after it was hauled back from Cali.
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Trucking Jobs in 30 seconds
Every month 400 people find a job with the help of TruckersReport.
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