Fleet Owner horror stories

Do you think you hired them too quickly? Could you have been more selective over longer time frame and done better?

 

There was a thread like this some months back with some doozies. I’ll have to try and find it and repost my response.

 

While inept driver stories have entertained us for eons, ( the boss, not so much) they pale in comparison to ,,( fanfare, please) "Farm Stories",,,here's a couple from my "farm days'. A neighbor/ friend had a rather large dairy farm, and I helped him with repairs and machine operator. He, even 20 years ago, struggled to find help. Once, I come in, the grain truck( converted Roehl tractor into a tri-axle dump) is in the middle of the driveway. Boss says, " can you get the grain truck, I tried to show someone how to drive it, and never made it out the drive, oh, you may need to adjust the clutch too". When I got in, it was in high range, and you could smell the clutch, it was way out. Another time, he had some kid scrape the poop with a skid steer, down the aisles into a big "pond". Boss comes in, hears the skid steer running, but no sign of it. He goes to the "pond", there is the back of the skid steer, running, cab below the surface. They raced to get the machine out, fearing this kid was in there, nothing. Before draining the pond, someone noticed a pile of poopy clothes near the bathroom. Turns out, this kid, was going too fast, couldn't stop and went in. He crawled out, didn't tell anyone, and took his clothes off and left. I laughed, but it wasn't funny.

 

How about Wacky driver's Wives?

I actually felt sorry for the guy.
He was husband #3

Husband #1 left for work and was Killed in an auto crash.

She was so busy trying to know where husband #2 was ALL the time that one afternoon he walked to the corner store for a pack of smokes and NEVER came BACK!

Pre-cell phones; he would take his time coming home and she would call. And call. And call.

He would search and find the copy of my number and destroy it, happened 3 or 4 times before she got it memorized and was the reason I got the early, stand alone, Caller ID unit just to not answer her calls.

So then she would call the state police in al the states he should be coming through [he did a lot of trips to Sanford, ME from NJ] so I would get 2 and 3 am calls from the state police of some New England state looking for information about the husband of the lady crying on their phone.

In 44 years I have come across some truly strange drivers but this guy's wife was the most wackiest ever.

 

After 40+ years i can give you a book full of them.
Long before cellphones a driver whose gf rode with him. Her job was to turn the jake switch on/off. His new truck didn't come with jakes, she got upset and ran off in OKC. He put posters up in truckstops all over the country with our 800#. About 8 months of phone calls later if tapered off. She had just got a bus home.

 

I did the best I could .
With more experience screening them it’s possible I could have found better drivers, but it wasn’t worth the hassle. I was making LESS money with four trucks than with one truck. But I had four times the headache. Well actually about 49 times the headache because most of the problems they had would not have been a problem with me , I could have avoided it in the first place.

dingus would call at 3am
“I’m in Nashville and the battery is dead”
“That sucks, did you leave the lights on?”

“Uhh I guess so, are you gonna call a road service?”

“nope, walk into the restaurant and announce loudly that you have a dead battery and any driver that will jumpstart your truck you will buy them a steak dinner . “
Turn in the receipt, but just this once. If you leave the lights on again, you gotta pay for it next time”

 

Just fired a guy this morning for drinking, did 22 years on the wagon and then no reason why he would get drunk.

He wasn’t drunk enough to drive the truck to the middle of no where back road, see horses and parked the truck on a curve in the middle of the road because he wanted to try to ride one of the horses.

The cops came by on patrol, almost rear ended the truck. They inspected the truck, then saw him try to mount a horse and figured it out.

So as went to bed thinking I would finally get to sleep through the night without a call, I finally fell asleep but then at 2300 I get a call from the Idaho state police about my truck being hooked up to a tow truck and driver who is sitting in a county jail. I wasn’t happy and the cop on the other end of the phone said the driver actually fell off the horse five times trying to get away from them and finally stayed down when they got close.

Well I have to deal with a $3500 tow bill, a clean out and a recovery of the truck and trailer from bfe Idaho which a team is flying out there this evening.

after a long talk with the guy this morning, I hoped he would find a way to recover, he was a hell of a driver, not one problem with him and very self reliable but he said he is going to get drunk more often so he won’t be driving for anyone said it clearly he was just tired of his ******** **** boring life, so he said I had to fire him, and I did.

I’ve had some real winners who during the driving portion of the application process were total screw ups. The last one took out the fence post making a tight turn out of the yard, which will make it the fifth time to be replaced. Last year this time I don’t know how the guy did this, he went to back into the parking spot in the yard in Indiana and got into a bad angle which scrapped both trailers on each side.

 

Drinking ones are always good. A night of drinking/gambling in Mesquite, leave the casino and park in the street in front of the police station. Cop kept laughing while trying to explain why they arrested the driver. But he did drive it back to the casino instead of towing it.

Screwing up during a test drive? Had a new guy hook up a set of flats to see how he did. Did a great job, real quick and then drove out of the lot. Took two weeks before they caught him with an illegal load at the scales.(before de-regulation)

 

That may have been my second x. She'd start methodically just going through our phone book at A.