Schneider

Stay away from the big uglies they are big and they are ugly !!!!

 

According to the the dude who ran the tanker school, they were strict on high hook, or improper hook cause a van driver had high hooked, driven 50 or so miles then made a last minute exit, we’ll the truck did, trailer went straight then dollys hit and collapsed and trailer overturned and landed on a car, killing the family.
So they came up with their hook/unhook rules and if you follow their law, that won’t happen again

 

In this particular example we have one particularly salient detail - he did it in front of a gaggle of trainees and safety critters.

Firing him impresses the importance of following coupling procedures and may avoid any of them doing something similar. As the French said in WWI - "pour les encouragment des autres".

In the grander scheme of things - if he is being so lazy that he won't visually check the jaws, what else isn't he doing? He presents a clear risk to the company. The next time he might damage something, or worse get out on the road and kill someone. Two years ago we had a driver make it from his parking spot and out on the road. On his third right hand turn, the trailer came free. 2 more blocks and he would have been on the interstate.

It's the same reason we track hard brakes and stability control events - drivers who are popping those off are significantly more likely to be in a dot reportable accident. We can ignore these things, but think about the reputation megas have. If we didn't cull the obviously lazy and incompetents, how much worse would it be?

 

No, because he has followed policy to the letter.

For clarity we're talking about two different types of incidents - jumping the kingpin and dropping a trailer.

Jumping the kingpin isn't necessarily an automatic firing - provided you didn't tear things up too badly and you have a decent attitude about it (ie own your actions, avoid the phrase "it's not my fault", and don't lie).

Dropping a trailer is an automatic firing. Even if there is no damage (a big if), dropping a trailer shows the driver is being careless. If they can't be bothered to step under and check the jaws, what else aren't they doing?

Usually, the dropped trailer is the straw the breaks the pumpkins stem. The driver usually has a long list of other minor stuff - hard brakes, backing/slow maneuvering incidents, late loads, hos violations etc. It can seem petty to document all the little things, until you start looking at the larger picture. Say a guy blows a tire on a curb. Couple hundred dollars, annoying but not that big of an issue. It happens. Now say a couple of months later customer calls to complain he ran over their petunias. How long until he does this:


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Then he does this:

For those keeping score at home, the driver has now blow 3 tires, destroyed 2 rims, damaged a spring mount, destroyed a dot bumper and taken out some petunias- all from right hand turns. Obviously this guy isn't thinking or paying attention, so how long do you want to keep him around?

Now say that when you look at all your drivers, you find that 80% of those who blow a tire on a curb go on to be like this guy. How long before you start firing guys for blowing a tire on a curb?

Thought experiments aside - remember that Don Schneider almost lost the company when a driver dropped his trailer on the highway. Is it any wonder the company doesn't play about coupling?

 

Very likely to backfire and cost you the job