After 34 yrs, I made a Rookie Mistake

Don't feel that bad, I dropped a trailer this week in the yard. The only thing that saved my butt with safety was a senior driver saw me do both a tug test and get under and look at the jaws before I did it. Shop checked the fifth wheel, no problems. Why it unhooked I have no idea.

 

sheet happens.

most the time getting in a hurry makes you take longer. don't beat yourself up too bad about it. every once in a while we all need a reminder of that.

 

wished it woulda taken me 50 minutes to replace my damaged line this afternoon. i had a rubber hose to which natrually, there's no proper sized splicers to repair. had to replace with them plastci truckstop lines. with the headache rack right in front of the hole. and the line won't bend to properly align the threads. and trying to get the line to twist around to get the threads started.

i was this close to have the headache rack removed.

 

I did that awhile back at a customer that made me swap out trailers at their dock. When I dropped the empty I relaized I didn't bump the dock all the way. So I just reconnected the red air line and pushed the trailer back a couple of inches. So I dropped the landing gear and pulled out my fifth wheel. When I pulled away from the dock I heard a thud and it was my red air line all stretch out behind me.

 

I always do it in the same order.
Picking up a trailer, make sure jaws locked good.
Air lines.
Landing gear up.

Dropping off a trailer - reverse the order.

Glad it's only the air lines you forgot and not the landing gear ..........

 

The air lines should just disconnect without breaking. I have forgetten to disconnect mine many times but have yet to break one of them.

 

Couple years back one of our guys hooked up to a loaded trailer full of produce, and of course being it was 1 am and he was in a hurry didnt open the doors to check the destination of the first pallets off. Turns out he had the wrong wagon and didnt realize it til he was 2 hours away and the driver who was supposed to have it called him bc he couldnt find it. Haste makes waste, a quick 20 second check of the load wouldve saved a whole bunch of fuel and headaches.

glad to hear your fix was relatively quick and easy

 

A driver here where I work did that and drove over 500 miles before realizing he had the wrong trailer. I guess he had to pay for the fuel. We got the big news story over the Q/C. I laughed all day about it.