My letter to WiseOne about JB Hunt and DAC

just a quick FYI, the company you are refering to is actually D.A.C. services.

The use of "preventable" accident by the trucking industry is a joke. In my first year driving I was backing to a warehouse from a street filled with school kids at 7:30 in the morning. The hasp holding a trailer door broke and the door swung behind the trailer, out of my view. I then crunched the door against the building. THAT, according to safety, was preventable. I should have been watching that mirror apparently, and they couldn't tell me if that meant if I ran over a child while not watching my other mirrors, that THAT would have been ok, LOL!
Good luck with the issue - I certainly don't envy your desire to run NYC, we need more like you!

 

it's unfair and should be illege we need to talk about this more and hear more story like this so we can find a way to fight and beat this

 

I'm very confused by the way these companies react to these very minor incidents. Every day I see trucks in my area where the trailors are a mess. They have long dents and scratches on the sides and tops of their trucks. Oviously they don't run right out and fix them. It's not like they are working hard to keep their reputations up and keep their trucks looking a certain way.

And yet, are we to believe they fired all the drivers making all these separate scratches and dents that obviously happened in a few separate incidents/accidents?

Are they really trying to avoid keeping certain people on because they believe they believe they are a higher liability and that more accidents are to follow?

Doesn't just about everyone have a few accidents at first while they are learning the ropes? I don't know about anyone else. But I've learned something important from any accidents I have had.

Suzi

 

Crazymama - one big part of how a company operates its safety division and makes decisions regarding preventable accidents, is if they are self-insured.
Most of the larger firms are self insured and to maintain a safety rating that allows them to keep the insurance, they have to comply with many rules set by the insurance firm (or maybe some type of insurance cartel?)itself. I'm not really sure how self-insurance works to be honest.
As a result, they are much stricter and are REQUIRED to take certain action such as releasing a driver who has commited a certain violation, whether it be a ticket or bumping a taillight against a post.
When I started with CR England, I did have my learning curve. One of their rules was they wanted drivers to park alongside other England trucks whenever possible, I think that was to eliminate the need for a police report and an insurance report because it could then be handled in-house.
At the end of my first year at England I had my first and only motor vehicle accident (as opposed to hitting a fixed object which occured a couple of times my first year driving 53' trailers for Crete)
I was cited in the accident for reckless driving, failure to control my vehicle after a 4 wheeler veered into the left land and slammed on her brakes to avoid traffic backed up in the 3 right lanes (which I had already done).
It was a bogus charge but I was fired within 24 hours for what was a relatively minor accident (me, a torn front fender, the car in front of me, a dented fender, broken taillight and crumpled trunk lid). The ticket was dismissed when I took it to court.
I was then told that the accident itself would prevent me from being hired by a bigger firm because of the self insurance issue - it was a rule set in stone by the insurance firm, not the trucking company ( I think the no-no was that it was a rear-end accident)
Luckily I was recruited a month later and the company agreed to bend that rule and hire me after I signed an agreement to work as a temporary employee on probationary status until the one year anniversary of my accident date.
As far as I've seen over the years, most minor damage comes from parking lots and warehouse - the damage you see is probably the scores left along side a trailer by the large hinges on the back of another trailer. One guy gets too close to another when backing and of course if he doesn't get out and look, he risks rubbing up against the other guy as he pivots into a parking space. He doesn't know he is hitting the other guy until he has already done a bit of damage. Typically, the offending driver then leaves without taking responsibility, so the damage gets reported to the company shop instead of to the police resulting in an insurance claim.
Werner may simply enforce a strict no accident rule no matter what type of accident it may be.
I'm with you, and so was my recruiter, he knew from talking to me about the accident that I had learned from it and if anything, I would be a safer driver because of it, not more likely to wreck a 2nd time.

 

Now that I've talked with all of you I feel really bad about something I did one day driving my Schwan's truck. I had been on duty about 10 hours and had at least 2-3 more hours to go before I could even head back to the depot. I was sitting in the right hand lane at a light. The lady in front of me decided to change lanes and didn't look behind her to see a semi coming up beside me in the left lane. He was actually still a little behind my truck and as tall as my truck was I was probably blocking the view of the semi. She moved about a foot out and saw him coming. But, she was not quick enough to back up and all in one swift move I saw the semi coming up next to me and clipping her left front fender. He just peeled that fender right off her car. He was breaking hard for the entire length of my truck and a little before even. I have to admit that I didn't stay put. I knew that the police would be called and I didn't want to stay and talk to the police for fear that it would take way too long. So I backed up slightly and high tailed it out of there on the shoulder. Now I wish that I had stayed behind to testify that the truck was not going too fast and there was nothing he could have done.

Suzi