stupidest thing u have done or seen a rookie do?

Well I was heading south on the 295 beltway, and I glance at the routing. I295, R_US50, L_I395.

Guess where all the signage to 395 took me...



Somehow I got totally lost at 2AM on a Sunday morning in Washington DC, ending up right next to the Capitol with a 53' trailer... This was Pre-9/11.

The police were very nice and even gave me an escort to 395! No tickets or even a warning.

Do that today, and no one will ever see you again!

Then there was the time a hit a bridge in West Haven, CT. It was marked 13' 9". But it was 13' 4"... Cracked my tractor fairing and popped a marker lens off the trailer.

Then there was the time in Virginia Beach. I locked down the truck, and hit the sack. But something malfunctioned, and the truck rolled into a Dodge Colt that didn't even get bent. (T2's have a plastic nose.) Spent 30 hours at the Freightliner shop while they basically rebuilt the brake system on the truck. Talk about overdoing it!

During training, is was in a W900L and backing into a drop spot in Calera, AL my flap hangar scratched a new T600 in the black (unpainted) plastic skirt. 1/16th of an inch wide and 5' long! And where was my trainer? Passed out in the sleeper!

 

Ok, I will admit that I did not read every post, for cryin out loud there's 24 pages, but I thing I can top most of them. I was pulling a load of frozen french fries in Mo. back in the 70's and had the fifth wheel all streched out. Some one on the radio said the coop was open up the road and I needed to slide the 5th wheel to get legal. I got off the freeway and pulled into a Walmart or Kmart parking lot and hit the air slide button, but instead of the 5th wheel unlocking the air line going to the cylinder popped off. So I figure that I can drop the trailer and pull foward and reattach the air line, no problem at all. First mistake, OK you guys can figure out what happened, yep, the landing gear went roght thru the blacktop like butter. Wait it gets better, I call a tow company and they send out a truck to lift the trailer out. In the mean time I have gotten to be on a first name basis with the store manager who is none to pleased about the 2 big holes in his lot. The tow truck shows up and he backs up to the front of the trailer and spreads his booms to get on the corners of the trailer. So, heres the plan, we lift it up and slide some timbers under the gear and everything will be golden. We run into a little problem when the asphalt starts to pull up as he's lifting. No problem, we just go a little higher than we planned, right. So, while my trailer is dangleing, one of the cables decides to break and my trailer flops over on its side. Yep, I rolled a load of french fries in a parking lot. I am only 100 miles from the customer, so I leased a reefer and hired all the kids getting off work from the Walmart/Kmart to hand unload/reload the whole mess. Took 6 hours and a few of the boxes were a little dented, but what the heck, can you really damage a french fry by dropping it? I delivered on time, I had to pay the store manager $100 to fix his parking lot and about $300 to the kids for all the labor. Don't offhand remember what the rental was for the leased reefer trailer, but the tow truck owner was great, he did'nt charge me anything for flipping my trailer over. Pulled that trailer for 2 more years and I could not find a thing wrong with it, except a couple scrapes on the side. Every time I see french fries I think of that day, I order a lot of cole slaw.

 

I live in a coastal town. All shoulders are made of deep sand with a light covering of grass. A semi with a 48' trailer tried to do a u-turn on a 2 lane road aptly named River Rd. Cars get stuck unless they are 4 wheel drive. When I came on the scene the trailer was 90 degrees to the travel lanes blocking all traffic and the drive axles were buried to the frame. That in itself was dumb enough, but when I drove around in my 4x4 suv, I saw the driver trying to dig the truck out with a round jack handle. He asked me if I had a tow chain. I told him i had a tow strap rated at 20k. He asked me to back my suv up to him and pull him out! I said know way and walked away to keep from laughing in is face. I found a 1x6 board by the road and brought that to him. He thanked me and as I walked away the sheriff debuty pulled up and started asking me questions. After I told him I wasn't the driver, I told him all that I just mentioned. He fell to one knee laughing. We exchanged a few jokes and we laughed till we had tears in our eyes. Then the deputy asked me to leave so that he could "put my serious face on" and write the ticket.

 

No one likes to tell of their rookie mistakes, but I'll tell mine. Story is about 20 years old and I was with JB Hunt. The trainer and I had trucked from Ga. to cali I10-I8. Well, we were headed over the mountain with the trainer asleep. I got to the top and didn't realize I needed to be in much lower gears for the 40+K load we had. We didn't have a jake brake. Well, I got to top of hill and I managed to get it into 8th on a 9 spd. Next thing I know, we are headed down on my first-ever descent of a mountain.

I tried to feather the brakes as best I could to try to slow the truck down. My knuckles went white, but I remained calm. Down we went. Smoke started spewing from the brakes and it was like a cloud surrounding the truck when I looked out my mirrors. Went all the way down like that--a big huge cloud with the truck in the middle. Other trucks were giving me room, lol. The brakes were heating up and the pedal was starting to go spongy. The trainer wakes up, because the smell of burnt brake dust is everywhere-including the cab. He asks what is going on and gets in passenger seat. We continue on a little bit and we are somewhat close to the bottom. The trainer told me to leave the brakes alone and let it roll, So I did. Thankfully, there was no traffic in front of me.

That experience has left me wary of mountains and the need to prepare before you start the descent. Sometimes, I may even over-do my carefulness according to some. I never want to get close to this kind of experience again. I can laugh now, but that experience will always be on instant-recall.
Temptinfates

 

According to the Dr at the ER, he says that most ER visitors are there because they did something really stupid.

He says this as he is looking at my left eye.

He asks what happened and I told him he already knew. Why bother with the details?

Two weeks of Eye Therapy at Loma Linda. Fully healed. Lucky.

 

Take too long to tell all. About 2 weeks in with PAM I had all my turn and 4 ways quit. Got sent to a TA where after some head scratching they said it needs to go to Freightliner. Get it to FL and have to park outside of gate.

My BIG mistake was asking if I could drop the trailer to run to a truck stop to get ice etc.

They said take trailer to TS so you can T-Call it. At about 9PM there generally ain't much parking. Also the axles were full back for weight.

I drug the dang trailer across the nose of a Volvo.

I've done my share of other bonehead stuff but that got me probation...

High hooked (pin over and in front of fifth)
Wanged into the landing gear of a drop deck van because the fifth was too far forward.
Stupid U Turns because there was no other choice.

ETC.

 

been there done that

 

The only thing real bad I thing I done when is when I first started. I was up in Vermont and had to blind back into a dock at the end of a parking lot. Normally they had a pullup where you could get to it easy. But with a foot of snow on the ground, they had piles of snow filling the pullup hole. I blind backed pretty good but overshot the nose of the trailer into an old ragged out Ford fairmont parked right past the dock line. I put a two inch long dent in the metal between the back window and side window. He had the car for sale too. My company bought it for $800, lol.

The funniest thing I saw was a JB Hunt driver driving down the interstate with his landing gear still down. It was dark thirty and it put on an impressive spark show. People were yelling on the CB and I guess he didn't have one. I was going the other way so I didn't find out the outcome.

 

left the pigtail hooked to trailer and pulled away!

 

Well, not me, but I was involved.

My guy and I met up behind a retailer to participate in some adult activities. I was bobtail, but he was hauling a heavy trailer. We opted to visit in his truck. Neither of us realized he had forgotten to pull the air brake until his trailer was up on the lawn. It's kind of an eerie feeling to be in the sleeper berth, feel the truck moving and look at each other as if to say, "Are you driving?" "No, I thought you were..." No damage, no foul...but the drivers in those other two trucks probably got a good giggle out of it.

And he may never live this one down. At least, not if I have anything to do with it...