When I first started as an owner op I was leased to a company pulling dry vans. I picked up a loaded trailer and went to the house. I dropped the trailer and the next night around midnight was heading to louisville. I got hooked up to the trailer and done my tug against the trailer to make sure I was hooked. All seemed good. I started down the road about 100 feet and started to turn left. I hear a loud BOOM and some dragging noise. Oh **** I look in my mirror to see my trailer heading right to the front porch of a house across the street. I get stopped right in the middle of the road and luckily the landing gear dug into the pavement and stopped the trailer from smashing through the house. Okay by this time neighbors are coming out to see what just went BOOM. I am sitting there like a deer in headlights wondering what I am going to do now. Darn thing pulled all my wires right out of the back of the sleeper. Luckily my uncle has a semi and lives in the same town. I just hoped he hadn't left out yet. So I call and good thing he wasn't leaving till 4am so he came down and backed under the nose a litte so I could crank the trailer up on some blocks so he could get fully hooked and move it out of the road. Good thing is nobody got hurt and everything was okay. Needless to say I didn't make it to Louisville for my drop/hook and I now had to go buy a new 5th wheel as the guts were out of mine.

Ok, I still feel really bad about this one, and haven't told anyone about it ever, not even my wife.

It was my first solo trip after months with a trainer. I'm happily driving along in my ugly blue "new to me" tore up and abused Pete, pick up the load in Sodus Ny at the Motts plant to deliver to snapple at some town on northern NJ that I don't remember. I get off the freeway at my exit in Jersey (following QC directions) and end up in the far left turn lane turning left off a one way street. I think we all can gues what haopened next, as I turn too narrowly and feel a small bump as the trailor pulls over something, I look in the mirrors and see nothing damaged, and a lot of traffic behind me, with no one looking at me or trying to stop me so I do the typical new "bad" company driver thing and keep rolling, thinking I just went over a high curb and felt the trailer bounce, as if I could be that lucky. A few blocks later I have to pull off to the side of the residential street I'm on investigate the smoke coming from my tandems, find out the air lines are damaged, the axel on the trailer is damaged, and before I can go anywhere I need to call for road maintence. After waiting for a few hours for roadside maintence to arrive (it took him while to get there because "someone" managed to take out a fire hydrant a few blocks away from where I was parked), the maintence guy is baffled by how I managed to damage the axel like that, and baffled by all the strange fire hydrant red paint on the axel and bottom of the trailer.... Oops, oddly enough this one didn't cost me my job, my dispatcher sort of looked the other way on it, everything got fixed and I was able to deliver the load a day late, wih an odd lack of consequences. But I still feel bad about it

ok my first solo run was off all things to queens ny off of a queens service road .....so i follow the directions am going down the service road looking for the turn off ....directions say to turn at so and so ???(don;t remember the name) pull the truck over thinking i missed my turn and lo and behold i did they changed the name of the business so i talk to the cosignee and tell them i need to find somewhere to turn around the rest gets kinda blury got back on one of the highways thought i from the map i could come back around but of course every interchange and exit i needed was closed for construction after four hours a coke driver helped me find my way back ...my dispatcher calls asking wtf i was as the receiver said they talked to me this morning ...low and behold i found the receiver took five peope to block traffic and help me back into one of those indoor garages .....so on the way of the island i am still tripping call my trainer he is laughing so hard he almost pissed himself ....i told him i;m on 476 looks like a straight shot off the island i;m getting the eff outa here ....ya great idea scored a 180 ticket from ny;s finest there are three there at that tunnel 24 hrs aday to write tickets stop trafic and turn you around (had to wait in a line of trucks for your turn ) they did give me directions to the gw bridge might i say 6 years later i still hate the island

Originally Posted by Saienga

All right ladies and gentlemen, hold on to your hats.

I was maybe four loads out of training, running solo.

I dropped a load in Tracy, CA (you know, that place in the 580, 205, 5 triangle), and promptly got a load of lettuce out of San Jose. Sweet!

Well, I got there and they wanted me to scale empty. So I got on the scale...but I needed my tandems all the way back. So I went around and went through the rigamarole of sliding the empty tandems (newbie took extra time for that). Good, got that done, got her scaled. Dropped the trailer. Pick up Trailer 13XXX. Picked it up all right, go to the scale. WAAaaaAAY overweight on the drives.

Did you adjust your tandems, driver?

Yeah, I sure did!...Oh wait. I'd slid the empty tandems, not the loaded tandems (all that work made it feel like I'd done enough sliding of tandems for the day, apparently). So I got off the scale and adjusted those tandems as well.

I scaled out all right and was just happy to get the hell out of there.

I was running low on hours for the day, but my routing took me north on 680 up through San Fran to 80 (I forget where the load was headed). I figured, there'll be a place to park! I'll go and scout one out. This is San Fransisco we speak of. I did not know then what I know know about parking a truck in San Fransisco...like how you can't, so much.

So I'm running north on 680, creeping ever closer to my 11 hour limit. Every exit is either tiny and unparkable, or signed "NO TRUCKS!" Forget about anything resembling a truck stop.

So I'm right up against the 11 hour wall when I see "BENICIA MARTINEZ TOLL BRIDGE...TRUCKS $11.25" Did I mention I was fresh out of training? I'd overlooked the necessity for spare cash-on-hand for tolls. I have NO CASH on this truck.

So I get off at the last possible exit...and it gets a little murky at this point. I know I looked at my map furiously and tried not to kill anybody, and somehow reasoned that taking surface streets to the 4 freeway across to 80 would solve my problem. I think some of you might know the punchline that's coming here.

So I'm navigating surface streets...bombing through downtown suburban San Fransisco, eyes peeled wider than eyes can peel for low clearances. Just about took out a power pole on a right turn, but saved it...thank God. And finally (after what felt like HOURS) I'm onto the 4 westbound...headed for 80. Patted myself on the back for such a creative, on-the-fly save.

Then I got on 80. "CARQUINEZ BRIDGE...TRUCKS $11.25"

Mother F____ER!

Some how in my frantic looking at maps and avoiding street traffic accidents, I didn't notice that EVERY SINGLE N/B BRIDGE OUT OF THE BAY AREA IS A TOLL!

So I'm still out of cash, about 30 minutes outside my 11 hours, and I MUST get off the freeway to find an ATM.

So I take the last exit before the bridge (the one you take to get to C&H sugar, incidentally).

The newbishness continues. Instead of taking a left at the bottom of the ramp so that I could aim myself at the on ramp, I took a right. Immediately I saw my mistake. Taking a right there leads you up a narrow, four-lane surface flanked by a solid wall of rock on the left, and an imposing chain-link fence on the right that keeps you from running off the cliff-like hill side and into the Carquinez Straight.

So I'm like, "F___ I'm going to have to turn this around."

Well, I says to myself, get some cash first, so that if you get out of this, you can at least get across the ###### bridge.

So I mosey down the street to this super posh, quaint, sea-side fish place. The maitre d' is about 30, and he looks at me like I just crawled out of the primordial soup. I'm guessing it was because I was a little beneath dress code for such an establishment. I politely asked if they had an ATM.

He relaxed a little, realizing that I wasn't there to eat or anything horrifying like that, and apologized, saying they didn't have one...but there was a bar down the road a stretch that had one.

So off I go. Past the exit ramp, past a perfect parking spot (had I been smart enough to go left at the bottom of the ramp instead of right) and down a massive hill into town. I find the bar and pop inside. I gun straight for that beautiful ATM, all the while blushing like a schoolgirl and avoiding the curious gaze of all of the locals. $40. Thank you very much, I'm out. I ducked out of there without so much as a word to anybody.

Back UP that massive hill I just walked down.

And now it's time to turn this big b__ch around.

I'm not about to go up the hill, because the road disappears around a bend, am I'm guessing it's just going to get tighter. So I scope out my surroundings.

Solid rock face on my left, so not much play there. Four narrow lanes to work with. And that blasted fence on the right.

Wait...there's a gap in the fence. I can run my trailer back there, get the tandems off the road surface, and stick the overhang into that big hole so that it can swing without hitting anything.

So I gingerly back down this hill, trying to maneuver the [heavy] trailer into this oddly shaped gap.

Got it in. All right, so here comes the ridiculously difficult u-turn. Don't hit the rocks with the tractor. Don't bend the fairing all to hell and gone. Watch the trailer tandems so that they don't run off the hillside and pull you off the cliff to your doom (okay, little dramatic there, but that was how nervous I was).

I waited for traffic to clear and went for it.

Jack the wheel all the way left and go as far a you can. Snuggle up to that rock at tight as you can. All right. Stop, reverse, tighten up the angle to complete it. Watch that fairing. Watch those tandems. Hug the rocks to keep the swing as wide as possible. I think I did it! We're clear...

Oh, no, we're not. My last check of that dang California-legal tail-swing shows a poor, unassuming, perfectly innocent 4x4 post dying a terrible death under my merciless back end.

So, somewhere in Crockett, CA, visitors, passers-through, and residents alike can no longer be notified that there is no soliciting within city limits without a license.

All in all, (after I found a spot to part 2 hours over my 11) the fact that the only damage I did that day was to a simple public notice sign is pretty miraculous.

I learned a lot of stuff about how not to drive that day.

very funny!!!