Taking the plunge. My journey as an O/O.

It is the driver's responsibility to deliver a clean trailer to shippers, with the only exception being shippers who have on-site washouts. Those are typically meat packing plants.

I have NEVER had anyone at Shaffer try to tell me I wash out my trailers too often. I wash 90+% of the trailers I deliver to shippers.

I promise you that Shaffer does not play stupid games and intentionally ask drivers to deliver dirty trailers to shippers.

 

If you have to go out of route for a wash, you can add out of route miles, yes. They do not pay for time spent in line waiting though.

 

Heh.

The difference between that and what I have been saying is that a truck that does not go off-road is easy to keep reasonably clean with a wash every month or two.

A well-maintained truck with a bit of road dust on it is going to make the same money as a chromed truck, with very few exceptions.

 

Well, the last few days have been crap.

Freightliner took several days beyond my home time to do a laundry list of small jobs. Some of which I discovered they didn't actually do, so they kept the truck another night beyond that.

Delivered a short run of about 550 total miles, then went to pick up another load and that trailer was damaged too badly to take off site while loaded, and the shipper could not spare the manpower to move the load to a new trailer.

Load was canceled. Got a new load.

Next AM went to get new load and when I was nearly there, I passed a road that had apparently been renamed.

Kept down the road a ways and found an old closed gas station. Not blocked off. Truck accessible. Room to get the truck going back to where I needed to be.

Pulled in, looked both ways, no vehicles, and pulled out.

When I was about halfway through my turn, there was a horn, and a second or two later, something smashed my trailer hard enough to throw me around a bit and bounce stuff around in the cab.

No injuries, fortunately. I suspect the other driver was either speeding, distracted, or had bad brakes, because in a 35 mph zone when they were not visible for about a quarter mile from me as I started the turn, even loaded nearly to 80k lbs, they should have been able to stop after they came around the corner and saw me.

Here's the approach.

Sorry it's on it's side. The forum is turning it to the wrong orientation, for some reason.



Here's the damages.





You might note that it appears as if I completed my turn. I was changing gears from 2nd to 3rd as I was starting to straighten out when I was hit. I was a bit stunned by the impact and my first thought was to get my ### out of the oncoming traffic lane. Then I realized that I had no idea where tge thing that hit me was, and stopped, shutting down the truck and got out to make sure there were no injuries.

Neither of us was found to be at fault. Of course Crete considers it to have been preventable, which is irritating, but every trucking company considers every accident that isn't truly bizarre to be preventable.

Still. No injuries. My tractor was undamaged. The trailer fuel tank was undamaged, and the trailer was sound enough to travel (empty) to a terminal for repair.

Once I delivered the trailer, I had the shop run a post accident DOT inspection on my tractor, with special attention to 5th wheel and frame components. No structural damage was found, but both steer brake chambers were cracked. The last two original brake chambers.

Right now I am really hoping for a couple good weeks, because the last couple months have been mostly crap.