Have you had a Rollover accident? Have you succeeded in Trucking after an accident?

Well I had almost 3 years OTR but all INTRASTATE meaning I had never left the state of Illinois right before my fatal accident. So I was kind of a dream hire for the boss I went with. A smaller mom and pop place near me that my dad knew the owner from years before. I started with the crappiest truck in the fleet and within 3 months had the queen of the fleet for my own. Why when he asked I delivered the goods and did what he needed. Like the time in March when I thought I had the weekend off boss called me up personally and said I need you in Ferdonia NY by 7AM EST. Well I went to the yard grabbed Rose the queen of the fleet and headed to the shipper. I got loaded at 11PM CST and had just 7 hours to make a 550 mile run and 2 55 MPH states I had to get thru. I was there on time just do not ask how. Get back to the yard Monday night boss goes rip your logsheets out of the comic book hand me all your receipts and tolls from both trips out and in. He burned them and repaid me in cash that night and said you had the WEEKEND OFF.

I was there making decent money until we lost our largest shipper in July so about 10 months. Then I had to leave when that happened and went to Florilli which when I started there was a decent carrier by the time I left and Mr I Screwed the Bosses Daughter for my Promotion took it over it had become a Bottom Feeder about on the level of CR England.

 

I was blown over 2 weeks into a new job once. The tornado warning went off as the ambulance arrived. Didn't get fired amazingly.

 

I guess it depends on the situation. If you roll a truck just going too fast around a corner it looks real bad. If Mother Nature is involved you probably got some leeway. I remember one day I saw Conway with a set of wiggle wagons stuck in the grass right in the center median somewhere along sixty-fo’ in VA. This guy looked triggered to put it mildly but it was a laugher because it just looked like he was parked there chillin. Somehow he just ran it off the road but kept it right side up at least.

 

Fell asleep behind the wheel back in October of 2007 after a little over a year on the road. Couldn't work anywhere reputable for about three years. Apart from dealing with living back home and indecisiveness with career plans(always struggled with academics and was back to failing/repeating college courses while working security jobs again), my mental health took a pretty big hit during those years and I was back in that care circuit due to some incidents.

Fast forward to 2010 and just as I'm finding some footing with non-academic/vocational ed classes like welding, I put in an app with Western Express and got back on the road by November 2010. I've been driving ever since then, with a small break in 2012. Of course I've been strictly tankers since July 2012 as well. Only thing I kind of regret about returning to driving was finally finding my niche in the college certificate/degree game right before I was good to go back on the road. I imagine if the Western Express thing didn't happen, I probably would've finished off the welding certificate and got into some railroad subcontractor job or some other welder-hungry industry.

 

With all the layoffs in the RR industry right now your better off. I have several friends that are employees of Class one RR's several have 20+ years in with railroads like the BNSF and UP one is with the NS. All except the one's with the BNSF were furloughed this year due to the railroads implementing PSR or Precision Scheduled Railroading where they cut everything to the bone then wonder why it takes days to move anything across the USA.

 

So much for trying to live that dream. Trains are still cool though and I try to act like some know-it-all when it comes to abandoned stations and repair facilities. I really pulled a fast one back in 2015 when I was hanging out at the Albuquerque railyards and started giving some random tourists an impromptu lecture about what the gargantuan engine house was used for.

That said, seems like the only thing the railroads might have going for them now are limited maintenance and operations positions. All white collar stuff might be extremely limited as well and just isn't the same as say, sitting in the cab of some GEVO unit and staying awake for that run!!

Apart from that, truck driving isn't my end-all/be-all. But more like the placeholder job until whenever I could find some other career field that I could tolerate, both education and job environment wise.

 

I had a buddy who rolled over a truck just carelessly, wasn't even paying attention. Happened in Morristown, TN last year and surprisingly there was no ticket cited, but the company reported it on his PSP and DAC. He was going around a curve a little too fast wasn't paying attention and layed it right in the ditch. I'd say he went 4 months without a job due to that and he found a job at the Bush Beans factory in Sevierville, TN as a yard driver. So I'd say he did pretty well as far as succeeding after that and maybe he got a little lucky too.