What would you do?

Nice part about the old R model, you got to look out the back window first...

Now we have 7 yard tractors and 5 tractors that all pull empty trailers and containers.

4 are split into 2 shifts a 2 different customers.and may pull and re-load over 150 doors each on a shift. The other 3 rove around different customers, as needed inside a circle of 4 adjoining towns delivering loaded containers from the drop yard and pulling empties. We have 4 new TICO switchers that outshine the old Ottawa and Champion yard dogs.

All of them have road experience followed by multiple years driving switchers.

Now our port guys will drop them anywhere and anyway, blocking fire lanes and such and in an hour those 3 switchers can shuffle things around and make things right.

My company guys switch from trailer to container and back so often that high hooks and overshot 5th wheel plates are very rare and anyone, company or owner operator knows that a yard dog will be by soon and will pull it out and hold it off the ground while the other driver
adjusts the legs.

Sometimes it is nice to have 98% of your units operating inside a 4 county box. The new changes to the 100 air mile extension helps us by adding 2 more hours to the regular day and the boost to 150 air mile radius makes 99.9% of our units don't need ELDs.

 

Same thing. I still won't engage.

 

I have a very simply system, and it’s never failed me yet. I get the gauging distance and feeling the trailer and lift etc, this is 99% GTG, but I want 100%. So I line up, set my break and get out and LOOK, it takes like 6-8 seconds. Imagine that! Lol

 

That's more than most. I would add (its how I do it), back under the trailer, set the brakes, get out and raise the gear until all of the weight is on the fifth wheel. (watch it on less than flat ground), then back under to hook. All of the weight is on the fifth wheel and its "grease on grease".. its hard to miss that way, and if its a bad connection, and you get to "exuberant" on the tug test and the trailer comes loose.. it falls about a quarter of an inch.. instead of on the tires and frame of the tractor.. or worse.

 

Who else locks both drives when you're hooking to a loaded trailer? Seems to be easier on the drive line that way.

 

Ours do.

We have three docks where if you crank the landing gear down to just over the ground, the yard truck will barely get under it, but when the yard jockey puts it in the drop lot it will easily be 6 inches too high.

In the winter the yard trucks don't always have the traction to get under the trailer or out from underneath it, so they give a few cranks.

 

Are you reading my diary? This actually happend in February. One of my former guys that I shouldn't have passed, and if he was going otr I wouldn't have, but the local account could both hold his hand and hold him accountable.

He got thru January with no real issues, but one morning I'm getting my paperwork and he comes in and tells me he high hooked. I show him how to get out of it. Then I remind him of our coupling procedure and to never put the front drive under the trailer until you've gotten out and verified the 5th wheel is in contact with the trailer. A week later the yard jockey told me the idiot high hooked again.

At that point I dropped a dime on him. Turns out he gave his notice, so we let him quit instead of firing his moronic posterior. The funny part is that he quit on day 90, and the sign on bonus pays out AFTER 90 days. If he had worked one more day, he would have been paid $1,000.

The real kicker though is JB Hunt fired him for high hooking.

I'll help anyone out once, and many more times if they have the right attitude. But if they can't learn, they need to go.

 

I feel safe working from the assumption that a fellow driver has not cranked up the landing gear sky high since the driver that does so would soon have the distinct pleasure of either high hooking or having the kingpin go over the 5th wheel plate.

And its only been at shippers and consignees that don't have yard dogs where I have never had to deal with a trailer that was dropped too high.

Obviously, not all yard dogs are engaged in the nefarious activity of dropping trailers too high in order to satisfy some notion of revenge or simply being careless. But, I have picked up many trailers that have been damaged while being switched as there isn't much chance that sort of damage would go unnoticed at the check in trailer inspection.

That being said, I do appreciate the job that you guys do. And with little comfort; no a/c or heat or even a radio. And I remember learning from yard dogs by watching them backing when I was a new driver.

A busy clothing shipper in Ohio I picked up from once had a grassy hill that overlooked the docks on one side of the building. From atop the hill, I gained a great vantage point to observe the basic mechanics of backing into a dock. 'Twas a good way to learn.

 

I’ll take you a picture of the kllm trailers that are so you can almost walk under that a otr driver left. Then you can say they didn’t do that again. Some are 6-8” higher than the yard dog. Idk why they do it well I do too they don’t know what they are doing that’s why. If you think I’m going to raise the legs up your a fool. I don’t even get off the truck. Well I did get off and lower one the other day it was so high. It was pushing 10” to high.

 

Bigfoot? Space aliens? Who is dropping these trailers too high?

Bless your soul for lowering that trailer. As a driver, I certainly do appreciate that.