Fired by safety have 6 months of experience

You are entitled to your opinion. I don't see it that way. Once upon a time, it was no big deal to park on the shoulder. People for the most part paid attention to the road. I mean, sure he could have gone ofnthe highway. I personally would have. He caught somewhat of a bad break. I only say somewhat because him parking on the shoulder isn't the reason he got hit. You talk like he invited the accident, "Come on truck, please hit me!" Lol I'm sorry, I place greater blame, far greater blame on the driver that hit him.

 

Well there is the small matter of it being illegal most places, especially on interstates.

 

No one is letting the idiot who hit him off the hook. If he were in the thread, we'd be eviscerating him. What we do have is a driver who made a series of bad choices, doesn't understand why they were bad, and doesn't understand why Western termed him immediately/why companies are going to be hesitant to hire him.

 

Don’t all recent new trucks just say you keep driving to clean the DPF. You can be parked at even have DPF manual regen needed warning. If you don’t want to sit just drive the truck it will regen going down the road as the emissions heats up.

 

For me, that's besides the point. The driver that hit him is the one yall should be killing. I mean.....the driver hit a stationary object. An unprovoked accident....I mean think about it. You either have to slow down or move over if a vehicle of any kind is stopped on the side of the road. That's what my trainer taught me. Road manners I guess.

Here's the thing. I've seem many of you talk about how in the olden days, drivers would pull over to see if they could help a driver that's on the side of the road. Now you're killing a driver that's on the side of the road. It doesn't matter that he could have overridden the regen. I fail to see where the OP terribly screwed up. I think he caught a bad break, and I don't think that was a reason for him to lose his job, and potentially have trouble finding another one.

 

I get it, I'm not even saying that his moves were the best moves. It was ill-advised to stop where he stopped. He made a rookie mistake. I mean Jesus, we all made that mistake as rookies. People have no rolm for error anymore, now you just get fired. I coils see a write up, or a meeting with safety or something like that, but geez, folks go all the way to the extreme. I personally don't think that's a reason to get termed.

 

Yup....keep it in cruise going down the highway and it'll do just what you said.

 

The OP cost Western between $40,000 and $200,000 - depending on the cargo and IF they can collect from the schmuck who hit them. And that's a BIG 'if' - in most states this is a 'shared liability' situation. How many guys do you see with their triangles out properly - maybe 1 in 5? Improper triangles means diminished liability. Then move on to 'why were on the shoulder in the first place?' Collecting from the other party is going to be an uphill battle. But that's not the real problem.

The problem is "what's his next mistake and what's it going to cost us?" Say 6 months from now the OP gets into another incident like the Werner case in Texas. He didn't do anything to cause the incident and responded as well as anyone could have, but the lawyers get to bring the first incident into the trial as evidence of the OPs 'poor decision making and lack of qualification'.

We're also assuming that this is the OPs only issue. He could have been skating on thin ice to begin with and this was a no-brainer term.

 

Fair points, but I feel like all of what you’re saying points to a bigger problem, like a broken system. People catch bad breaks in the trucking industry. He could have very well been skating on thin ice. It does feel like Western is trying to clean up some things as of late. They've seemingly become more choosy as to who they hire.

 

So, 25-30 years ago, I had a problem with JB Hunt's safety department; I was running a regular automotive run from a factory only a mile from where I lived; it was supposedly a 5-times a week run of 350 miles each way, Mon-Fri (I think you can see where this became another problem, but that is a different story..). I lives a block away from an industrial area, and trucks of all types were often parked on the street. The street was wide, there were no curb-cuts west of my street, and visibility was unhindered. Add to that I parked just past a rise for a railroad spur crossing, and the fact that JB Hunt trailers has BIG, YELLOW DOORS meant that
1) Nobody should be driving fast over the railroad crossing, and
2) Even legally blind people could see my parked trailer a mile away. there was even a mercury-vapor street light just behind the trailer, lighting up my big, yellow doors!
My run was loaded headed out, and carrying empty racks returning.

So, forward to one cold, icy, snowy night. Drunk driver with his drunk father as passenger decided to drive recklessly about 50 mph in a 30 mph zone. They were both deaf, and were conversing in ASL at the time, according to the police report. "Junior" didn't notice the rise at the railroad crossing, braked hard, slid, hit the tracks at an oblique angle still going 50, caught air, hit my trailer (bending the bejeezus out of the DOT bumper..), then spinning and rolling. The driver was seriously injured, the father died. I was awoken due to the sirens and emergency lights, then went out to see what happened.

Well, the cops tried to write me a ticket for not having my triangles out; I countered that the truck was legally parked (I HAD checked city laws before), and as long as I moved the truck before 24 hours, I was legal. I took pictures, got a report number, and called safety.

Well, a couple of days later, my terminal manager had safety on the phone. I prepared myself with copies of the city parking regulations, as well as bringing my driver's handbook to the meeting. They wanted me suspended, tried to write me up. I asked them what law or regulation I broke, and they had none. They still wanted to suspend me, and I replied "If you do that, my first visit after leaving here will be to the department of labor. My senond visit will be to {insert name of local labor attorney i slightly knew}, and they backed-down REEEEEAL fast.

Well, things were never 'great' between me an JB Hunt Transport, Inc., but since I was one of the few experienced with running Canada (especially Quebec..), I guess they let me stay. But it was a royal pain from that day forward to either have to pay to park for the weekend south of the city at a truckstop, or to drive the 90 miles to and from the terminal each weekend. I ended up just stopping by the house for a few minutes in the daytime to shower and drop off dirty clothes; never parked overnight there again for the next 2 years....