What would you do

You don't have a job; you have a habit, and habits are hard to break.

 

Buy tape at a truckstop put It on.

 

Sounds to me that this isn't really about the tape at all, its just the last straw that broke the camels back?
Just remember that to be a good leader you have to first be a servant. Your the boss and what you say goes when it comes to that truck moving, period. Me personally I think I would have just purchased the tape and put it on but, if they were pissing me off for the last 10 years, maybe not so much.

Just my 2 cents.
Dave

 

Here is what I did in a similar situation, and it worked. I was sent to do a drop & hook at a location 60 miles from the company terminal. When I got to the shipper I saw that the trailer I was picking up had a bent mudflap hanger that was pushed forward. The metal part of the hanger wasn't touching the tire. But it was putting a lot of pressure on the mudflap against the tire. What I'm trying to say is that the mudflap wasn't simply touching the tire, it was being pressed against it by the bent hanger. So I called the shop and told them the situation. They told me to bring the trailer to the shop and they would fix it there. But with a weigh station between me and the shop, I refused. That's when all hell broke loose and I was threatened with being fired if I didn't take the trailer "as is" and go on. The shop said they were calling the owner of the company and would have him call me to order me to take the load. While this was happening, I called Safety and told them what was going on. Sure enough the owner of this 400 truck company calls me up, ####### about being woken up out of bed to deal with this situation and telling me to bring the trailer back to the shop for repair. My response to that changed everything when I said, "Sir, Ann in Safety told me not to take this trailer anywhere until it was road ready, are you telling me to ignore Safety and take it anyway?". The owner then said, "Well you're gonna be sitting there about 3 hours waiting on our service truck to come fix it but its your call". I stood my ground, refusing to take the trailer as it was. About 15 minutes later I get a call from dispatch telling me the shipper is going to offload that trailer and put the freight on the empty that I had brought with me for the drop & hook. Total delay time was 75 minutes from when I arrived. As I was leaving the shipper, our company's service truck pulled in at the shipper to repair the trailer (so much for the 3 hr wait I was told). From that day forward whenever I called the shop and they threatened to call the owner at 2:00am, I would say, "Fine, you call the owner and I'll call Safety". Even the owner of the company would not go against whatever Safety said I should do. And I never got fired or saw reduced miles or anything like that.

Now, if I picked up a trailer with a flat tire and there was a truckstop 2 miles up the road, I didn't sit there and wait 3 hrs on road service, I went to the truckstop for repair (doing this is highly dependent on location, I'd never do this in Jersey or any place with a weigh station between me and the truckstop). And I always kept an extra mudflap (usually 2) in the truck and made that repair myself if need be. I also keep a box full of spare fuses, spare bulbs, spare lights, and the tools to install them with. Because time is money and if I can make a repair myself in 15 minutes then I'm not waiting 3-6 hrs on road service to show up. And yes, I have waited 6 f'n hours before on road service in Alma, MI when a brake chamber blew and I couldn't maintain air pressure.

Bottom line, you have to protect your license and CSA score. Trucking companies start looking for your replacement the minute you leave with your first load. They couldn't care less if you rack up 81 points at a roadside inspection and get placed out of service by the DOT. Because if that happens then its all on you! The points are on you. If the load is late, that's on you too. And if you get too many points then they just replace you with fresh meat and the process starts all over again. Hope this helps.

 

Not true, the company acquires points as well, but they are computed differently. If the owner does not care about his own points he sure the hell is not going to care about yours.

It sure seems to me that the FMCSA pinned us against our employers forcing us to be enforcement officers.
I don't have much of an issue with broken trucks, in the end they are machinery and they are going to break sooner or later but IF I am forced to enforce all of the safety rules I should be making a hell of a lot more money for it and I #### sure am not going to listen to their $10 an hour so called mechanic tell me about my job when he don't know his own or is just too lazy to do it.

I get so sick and tired of listening to winy cry baby mechanics who think way too much of themselves and are know it all's. If I say the truck is unsafe, legally the truck is unsafe rather or not they agree with it period and end of conversation about it, fix your #### truck if I want to fix trucks and trailers I'll go buy one like they did.


KM4FAE we have both been out here too long to listen to these people tell us what is safe and what isn't. I see a lot of guys on here with 2 years or less talking about job hopping when I have CB radios older than they are. Not bashing the young guys or nothing but I #### sure am not going to listen to them bashing other drivers for being job hoppers when they have no idea yet what kind of scum bag trucking company owners are out there and what they are capable of doing to your life.

 

Yes the company gets hit with points too. But the only time trucking companies care about their points is when their customers care about it. The way the system is supposed to work is that the DOT is supposed to crack down on companies with excessive "company points". But the larger companies flat out own the DOT in their area. I used to haul coal in Harlan County, every load was 10k to 12k lbs overweight. About once a month my boss would call me and tell me, "There's gonna be a surprise DOT checkpoint setup tomorrow at such and such location, complete with portable scales". So we always had advance notice and on those days we ran legal. The next day it was business as usual, back to hauling 72k lbs of coal in a 36' dump bucket. If a small company is in bed with the local DOT then you know the larger companies own them outright. Companies with a reputation to protect usually have their own fleet of trucks and play by the rules. General freight companies have a customer base who only care about the cheapest rates and the on time delivery percentages. Most customers don't even know what CSA is, because it doesn't effect them. I've personally seen a driver with 920 points get hired by a company with 400 trucks. I've seen that same driver get busted for talking on a cell phone while driving. Instead of the mandatory $2750 fine to the driver, he only paid $800, to his lawyer. And the company, which was supposed to pay an $11,000 fine, paid nothing. And they didn't even fire the driver! He simply stayed home for a few weeks until the case was swept under the rug and then he was back behind the wheel. The only thing I've seen from the entire CSA program is that it gives companies an excuse to start drivers out at a reduced cpm if the driver has a high score.

 

amen to that brother!