Taking a Mid Trip inspection

Listen to this guy. Don't F the good ones over the handful of trouble ones. I'm willing to bet it's only a handful of bad apples causing your company to take this stance

 

Just my experience, but getting anything thing done at a Truckstop Shop is a Pain. How is your Road side inspection record? . We do pre trip and post trip, we do mid trip walk around we stop we for whatever, we check the truck out. No paperwork involved, it's just something drivers do. I bet your drivers do the same thing.

 

1. You have yourself a crop of bad or lazy drivers.

2. A mid trip inspection isn't going to solve bad nor lazy drivers. Sorry.

3. Require a DVIR (Driver Vehicle Inspection Report) as part your log system. This will help identify the bad or lazy drivers WITHOUT paying outside mechanics to walk right past bad tires or air leaks without seeing them (or caring).

Please understand something. In most truck stop shops, the shops and mechanics are SOO burned out on reporting problems just to have the responsible carrier fight and argue about the repair bill or tell the mechanic flat out "It ain't DOT inspectable so we ain't fixing it!", they no longer report issues unless the issue at hand is likely to flat out kill someone. You can blame the large ATA carriers for this.

Also understand, you are a carrier of whatever size. The quality of your equipment depends on two things: Equipment spacing, and quality of driver using that equipment. GOOD drivers are darned thin on the ground these days. Most company drivers (in my experience) flat out don't care about company equipment. Which becomes both funny ans scary when those same company drivers decide to hop onto lease or buy a truck.

I'm a recent O/O. Last year, I was a company driver. I did my best to keep my company owned equipment fixed, maintained, and clean. DESPITE my company fighting me on every little repair (fix the little things and the big things last a lot longer). Honestly, it was the common company attitude towards maintenance that finally drove me into buying my own truck! I may be up to my ears in debt, but I have no fear of the DOT man putting me out of service, boy howdy!

I wish you the best of luck. I do. Bit with the quality of driver being unleashed on this industry by both the "training" schools and the "training" carriers, there is no solution I can see. You can't fix lazy, and you danged sure can't fix stupid. All you can do is.start searching for better drivers. Warning, though....us good drivers don't come cheap!

 

Everytime you stopped and pulled the maxi’s and got out you look around at everything before you leave the truck. Than you walk about 40 yards and stop turn around and look again. If it’s a really long walk you might do that 2 or 3 more times. Thats just leaving it. Than you do all the things you said while coming back to it. It’s a “take ownership and have pride” thing that has been lost by many youngsters or new to trucking oldsters out there these days.

 

I was thinking the other day how hilarious it would be if everyone did proper pre trips and post trips including testing both horns. Trying to sleep at a truck stop would be a pain. Lol

 

My warehouse now is between Fed-Ex frieght ( the old Watkins terminal) and SouthEastern that just built a new big one 1/4 mile down the rd. next to the north/ south UP rail line. I hear horns from their shops all day long. Plus My backyard is 1/4 mile from the UP east/west line so I hear Loud horns all night long. You get used to it.

 

There is a bit of a difference between being a 1/4 mile from the horns and having trucks all around you blowing their horns tho

 

Stevens Transport (a mega company) once tried getting their drivers to get a DOT inspection done on the trailer every 3 months. After a year, the program was already dead. I remember one of the guys at the Breakdown department told me over the phone that the company was getting ripped off by TA/Petro, at least in some locations. The other problem I suspect is that many drivers didn’t want to take the trailer to a shop, mostly because we were not paid. The times I got the inspection done was during my 10-hr breaks, and frankly I lost sleep every time I had to get one done.