Fleet Owner horror stories

Uncle owned a construction company. Uses a very large skytrack when sheeting two story houses/roofing.
(Throw a large pallet like platform on it 10ft long 6ft wide stack osb/tools/three guys hoist it in the air, two guys throw sheets one guy nails machine stays moving)
Guy claims to be great at driving a machine turn my back for 5 minutes to deal with the water cooler team and hear a crunch.
There goes the air compressor, he ran over it going forwards.

 

One of my drivers abandoned the tractor at the apartment complex he or his girlfriend or his baby momma lived at, (pretty sure he had all three)
He dropped off the grid. Stopped calling into dispatch , wouldn’t answer phone etc, took a couple of weeks to figure out where the truck might be.

It was at a ghetto apartment complex one block off of MLK drive, so I pay another o/o to come with me and we bring a rope and an air line in case it won’t crank, and I paid another guy who worked for a armed private security company to come and watch our back while we were jump starting it.

 

I was off for scheduled days, or vacation. The owner hired a new guy. Now this guy was suppose to be the "golden mechanic". I most of the time got to help, and choose in the hire/fire dept. Not this one. He worked about 3 shifts. I never to this day have met the guy. Bad snow storm rolls in late evening. Dispatch call me and owner in from home for heavy wreckers. 2nd shift, 3 shift and us two worked all night into the am. Owner ask me to call first shift in early. Snow wasn't letting up and the world is starting to come alive. This tard applied to work at a towing and recovery company. The response I get from him to being called in on his first week is "id man roads are bad, dont think I can make it". I asked him "you do know what we do here right?"

Had radio the owner and tell him this, which everyone else could hear it and his response. When the profanity stopped. I was told to call him back and I should know what to say. So I fired a guy that I never seen or worked with.


Edit. In 3 shifts he told other guys how great he was and a better mechanic than me, and would take my job in the future.

 

We let my neighbor borrow the skid steer, I forget what he wanted to use it for but a few hours later we get a call from him that it's laying on its side (in his thick long Island accent)

This guys yard is completely flat except for like a 2ft drop off/step down and goes back to being flat. He drove right off it and over she went. Didn't hurt anything hardly even a scratch

 

Machinery isn’t something joe blow can do I’ve found out 90% of the time.
The spatial awareness needed is so different then anything like operating a car or even backing a 53ft trailer.

 

Pay/benefits doesn't matter(if it's within reason). If it's only pay/benefits they leave when something higher paying comes along. Biggest thing i've found is doing what they want to do. When they say i like to run ??? and you don't run there, they don't last long. If they don't like what you do they won't ever be happy.

I like the ones that say they want to run WI to CA & back but weekends off.

 

Special.

If i may piggyback your trainer/trainee story, only guy i flat out failed.

Had just picked up some cable reels, secured well and rode nice, little light, we were rolling north through dallas having just picked up south of there, he seemed like he was doing fine (week 2 or 3), im sitting in the passenger seat, called my wife to give her an updaye on when we would be through the house (was our weekend load)

Looked at him, then at the load in the mirror, then vaguely towards the scenery in the distance in front of the truck and to the right. Said hello to my wife, yapped about 30 seconds and subconciously something was wrong. checked the mirror, then the road ahead, we were drifting halfway in another lane, my hand goes out ready to steer us straight, as i turn my head towards him, he has a 35 mm camera taking a picture of the skyline in front of him using both hands to focus the lens...

I grab the wheel, start steering it, and very calmly took the camera out of his hands and tossed it on the bunk in back and asked him what he was doing.

"Oh im just getting a picture of the skyline, its quite pretty"

My god that boy was a dunce

 

I’ll toss one in under the “make your blood boil” category. Had a big concrete pour, 10 trucks, all hands on deck kinda thing (we pour our own concrete). This college kid we hired for the summer decided that sounded like work, and got drunk and no showed instead.

Ok, fine, go pick up your last check.

Nine months later he files for unemployment, listing his termination as “layed off for lack of work”.

I took the opportunity to straighten that out at the state department of labor myself, with some enthusiasm.

 

Here's one I did myself. Did an oil and fuel filters change. Started by draining the oil and moved to the fuel filters so the oil could drain as much as possible. Finished the fuel filters and got about 7 gallons into filling up the oil when I realized I didn't close the drain. Oops.