Why does it seem like no one Pretrips?

Hey driver, hop out and roll under your truck do your Pretrip proper and you will have your answer. Make sure you have a shower ticket handy. Myself i do a thorough walk around and if something catches my attention to go under the truck, I will find a less polluted area to do it. Creeper is nice if you can navigate through all the ziplock bags, jugs, garbage, and dodge the splatter from the truck next door.

 

Are you still in the shop or did they issue another truck to get ready for the auction ?

 

Truck drivers are just plain lazy.When I was at kb maybe 5 of us out of like 27 drivers only did pretrips.They figure a pretrp is done when they get a pm and that'll be good enough till the next service is due.Ray does'nt get the same trk every day and many times he puts like 2 or 3 gallons of oil in and a gallon of antifreeze.Drivers drive without headlites tail lites on trailers,blinkers don't work ect ect.He tells the boss,nothing ever gets done.I use to go directly to the person who had the trk before me and ask them why they didn't inspect the trk before they took it.

 

I was at a rest area doing my 30 minutes and watched a Western Express driver do a thorough pretrip. He even climbed underneath to check the 5th wheel jaws. He was a big ol' boy too, so I was pretty impressed by that.

Same trip, I met a driver coming from Pittsburgh in Columbus, Oh to relay our loads. We drop and swap, and he jumps in the truck and takes off without a single glance at the trailer or load securement. I'm not so trusting. The trailer he brought me had a flat tire and another so low it might as well have been. At least my breakdown pay starts immediately, and I used the three hours waiting for the service tech to redo the piss poor tarp job the dude stuck me with.

 

Trucks like that tend to make me feel like a guinea pig.. yes i pre and post tho pre trips get more detail

 

When I was solo I did pretrips/walk around pretty regularly. Now that I train I definitely make sure I get out and check everything each time we stop and after each hook and drop to recheck everything student does. At a rest area now on a 30 minute break about to check everything before we start again. Getting student into the habit of doing this as well.

 

pretrips prevent problems.

 

I use the Zonar 2010. That system is on almost half of all school buses in the US. The mechanics instruct us not to enter any defects into it, just tell them there is an issue that needs their attention.

I call it the CYA gun. The very last screen on the thing starts out, "I certify that the information entered is...." It is a mechanism to document vehicle condition for litigation purposes if there is an incident. It is a big CYA for the company as it puts the monkey on the driver, everyday.

 

All time spent prior to a trip ?