Stupid mistake

After locking my key in the truck while in the dock at a receiver, I put a spare in the engine compartment. Luckily there was a freightliner nearby, called with my vin, had a new key 30 minutes, $25 later.

 

I made a lot of copies of my keys that I keep in different places.

 

I have a spare key that is kept in a place on the outside of my truck just in case.

 

This actually speaks good of the trucking community. I know there's alot of thieft but it's not that common in the trucking industry and we have keys to each other's trucks. I know I still have a spare key at the house to every truck I was assigned. I'm reading these as I'm setting here waiting for a fellow driver to bring me a key from the terminal cause I locked myself out and only had this truck 2days and hadn't got a spare made yet. Guess what I'm doing in the morning.

 

In the much older tractor there is one particular trick that saved me once, punch the door 4 inches above the handle. Bang. Opened.

Then the old trucker who taught me that one, showed me another similar model with his friend outside polishing wheels. BANG his door opened. He had a fit. We calmed him down.

Engineers took care of that over time. But sometimes there are ways in you wont believe. One of which involves a knife and those huge rubber gaskets around the large windshield panes. Peel the strip right out, hop in, reinstall window and off you go. Im not sure if you can do that today, but Im thinking you can still do it in some trucks. But not that you want to.

There is a key in the truck at all times, one in the chain drive wallet and a third somewhere on the tractor, visually checked daily, several times a day. We had a oil spinner in the old days, kept mine in that one tied to it's innards with a wire. He he he.