Dropped a trailer after hooking it

Sounds like good advice.

This happened to me not after driving the truck for "about a year" or even six months, but after less than two weeks with no follow-on training with another driver after graduating from my CDL school. School ended in August 2008 and I was hired as a trailer spotter at company in June 2009. After first couple of times of hooking up to trailers, taking them to the drop lot and bringing empties back, I got to be pretty good at spotting the trailer at the dock. Even the other regular drivers, dispatcher, and manager said they were very surprised at how quickly I had learned to do it. The dock was described as being one that was hard to back into due to the small amount of room and other trucks/vehicles around. The manager that hired me knew that I had no experience apart from my CDL school.

I just wish I had requested some time to work alongside another driver, learning the routine of the job and getting more practice in my skills before being sent out on my own. Why I didn't? I don't know, but I can tell you one thing, the day this happened, I started at 2:30 am and the mishap occurred around 5:30 am while we were trying to finish up loading the trailers so the regular driver could be gone by 7:00 am. Doing too much, too early, and too quickly, I got careless.

 

Thanks for the tip. Although I did remember this from class and had started out doing it all the time but then would skip checking the jaws occasionally, including this particular time. I'm a pretty thorough guy and found that my inspections and hooking up and dropping seem to be taking a lot longer time than others that were doing it with me, so I would tug with the tractor after hooking up not once but twice to check for a good hook.

One regular driver that morning even told me about using the Johnson bar and said that if the fifth wheel's not locked then you'll know it.

I guess that with spotting trailers, it's even more important to check every time because of hooking up to different trailers each time, so I should have taken the time to do it.

 

Luckily this one was empty not loaded, but the trailer dropped as I made a 90 degree left out of the parking lot. Even though I didn't visually check to see if the jaws locked, I did do a pull test...not once but twice immediately after hooking up, after hearing the sound of the click.

My only concerns are these...One, should I have been given keys to a truck and immediately told to start spotting trailers with no indoctrination or orientation or training or driver-shadowing or whatever prior to doing it on my own, and, two, should I have been fired for dropping a trailer in the parking lot without given a chance to "learn from it and move on"?

BTW, I even offered to pay for the damage to the hoses and glad hands.

 

Damage to trailer, from my limited knowledge, was to trailer glad hands being sheared off, air hoses stretched out, and electrical hose disconnected with no visible damage.

Yeah, this was a real team effort getting this one moved out of the traffic lane, so the rest of the world could carry on with their business while mechanics repaired the damage. Since the glad hands were broke, air couldn't get to the trailer for the brakes to release. I, along with help from two other drivers on the ground, ended up pushing it out of the way after lowering the gear and getting under the trailer nose from the side. What made it worse, the trailer was on a slight hill, so trying to get under it from the front wasn't an option.

One of the drivers told me that he also dropped a trailer at the drop lot of this company. He said his trailer dropped even after doing a tug test AND driving around the drop lot a couple of times. I think it happened as he was exiting the lot onto the road making a turn. He told me that "it happens to everyone". I have a friend of mine who said it happened to him after driving for over 15 years.

The manager wasn't too happy about it though...he fired me. Made a big deal about it and told me that I should have shown remorse about it. Said, "this doesn't happen to everybody" and that he only knew of one other driver that has ever done it. I also told him that if it was going to happen, I'm glad that it happened in the parking lot and not on the roadway. With a bewildered look he said, "I'm concerned that you said you were glad it happened in the parking lot. Well, I wish it had NEVER happened in the first place!"

Yeah, no kidding. Guess he missed my point entirely.

 

One other thing...that other "I also dropped one before" driver said that this company has a lot of trouble with the locking mechanisms on their fifth wheels.

I told him, "Gee, you know that information... really would've been more useful to me yesterday." (say it like Adam Sandler as Robbie Hart in The Wedding Singer)

FHB