Are you an operator or just a driver

I just showed a man who has been driving for 30 years how to slide his freaking 5th wheel with a loaded trailer. Cheyenne Wyoming of all places. So tell me again show my generation is incompetent and yours is perfect.

Theres good and bad in each generation. Some people act like trucking is rocket science.

 

I think a lot of the point is being missed here. You should know enough about the truck to know what a item does and to evaluate problems so it can get fix. Know when the truck should be shut down or go on to the repair shop. Being able to answer the mechanic intelligently over the phone for a call out is a great help. It saves you time and money. It's a whole lot better than to answer the "big noisy thing under the hood is making a funny noise".

I don't believe for one second that ALL new drivers do not know what they are looking at. Nor do I believe that making a statement that EVERYONE in a certain group posses the same level of knowledge. Everyone is different and everyone does things a little different than the other. You can find an ignorance level in all groups of drivers. What a lot of people fail to recognize is that drivers do not do everything there is to do in this industry. A driver might pull logs of a mountain but never pull triples OTR. The companies today operate differently that yesteryear. When a truck broke down years ago you fixed it or stayed there. Things are different now and it seems like it's plug and play. Before they would fix your truck and you would continue on. Nowadays they pull out the broke tractor and in with the new.

So for the savings in cost the schools or companies do not need to teach the new driver on the workings so much. It seems to me that today a company will just fix, say a turbo, and move on. Before, the bosses want to know when the turbo was going out. It's what I've seen anyhow.

Another point that gets mixed here is a driver does not recognize the savings he or she could make if they did know what was going on. I don't care if the company says you are not allowed to touch a part. If you see a turbo just leaking a drop or two of oil you can see that it gets fixed before it dies. Another bad habit some have gotten into is leave the problem to the next gay. That would drive me up the wall. I'd come to work and have a major problem and I knew the driver knew before hand. That's some of the problems that I have seen change over the years. I'm sure the old times have seen the same and can add a lot more. That's the point, to teach what you know to help.

 

Well one thing has remained the same through the years..... The amount we get paid per mile. Lol.

 

Layton-

I can understand, on the broader view, why you may have this perception about the "younger generation", but, to just generalize I think is a little short-sighted.

I'm 22 years old and was taught by veterans. I never went to a truck-driving school, I never believed in them. Each of the drivers who taught me had over 30-years of driving experience, a couple of them almost half a century of driving.

And, I was taught to think about things mechanically. Come off the mountain slower towing that Landoll because the drums behind that 17.5-inch rim heat up quicker, back out of it running across the open highway in the middle of the day with that Landoll, too. Don't want a blow-out because the tire got hot.

I've been taught to drive a set of sticks, both 5x4 and 6x4.

And, I've learned plenty about the older equipment, as well. Yes, I can spot a small-bore Cummins versus a square-bore by the small-bore's external fuel-lines, or how the PT-pump replace the disc-pump partially because of the lubrication problems the disc-pump had. No, it doesn't surprise me when a 40 or 50 year old truck doesn't have any brakes on the steer axle, or if it does, it has a switch up on the dash. I've seen wig-wags, Eldorado air-ride seats, driven full mechanical engines, I've even driven an old GMC 620 with a massive gasser under the hood.

Hell, I was running an old two-stroke Detroit recently when the throttle got stuck wide-open. Knowing the two-strokes had a habit of running away and burning their own oil, I was getting ready to choke the air-cleaner when I got it shut off...

I won't say I know everything about a truck or driving. There's always something new you can learn, whether it's your first week or your fiftieth year behind the wheel. The moment you think you know everything about this industry is the moment to get out of it. But, I would like to think that I know more than just how to put the pen on the log and hold a steering wheel...

Not all of the "newbies" out there are the trucking-school, steering wheel holder types, so please don't pigeon-hole 'em...