I BLEW IT...and ended my career!!!

marmonman, This ↑↑↑↑↑↑ IMO, is one of the best and most accurate posts on TTR ever. It sums up my feeling to a "T".

Altho I've been driving B class CMV's for much of my 59 year life, I just entered the world of Class A a couple of years ago.
I had thought my biggest disappointment would be the starting pay, and I had prepared for that, BUT the reality is...
My biggest disappointment was personally witnessing the extremely low standards of "qualified drivers" and the abysmal training & licensing standards.

I was truly sickened to see such low standards and piss-poor training. I was ashamed to be getting my Class A CDL, instead of my pre-CDL Class A views of being in a select occupational class of true safety orientated and highly skilled professionals.
Don't get me wrong tho. With only 2 years Class A under my belt, I am not anywhere close to being a perfect driver, and occasional mistakes can/have happened, but they were very, very minor comparatively to the others I hear about. But I have NEVER considered making mistakes an acceptable part of the learning process. To do so is having severely flawed thinking.

If DOT and FMCSA want to get serious about nationwide truck safety, they would do best to stop their misguided attempts of improving "truck safety" (changing HOS, tightening medical restrictions, etc) and get to the core of the safety problem, which is... the low standards of drivers and training.
They are allowing far too many new drivers handling 80k lb CMVs on the roads, who in fact, are incapable of safely driving a 2k lb Ford minivan.

 

You have a fairly decent MV printout, little or no moving violation. That's an advantage you must exploit. At this stage in my life, I believe financially successful people cheat, lie, and steal to get ahead in life. Good example are companies who offer reverse mortgage. Elderly retirees are unaware if they take an extended vacation or in the hospital for more than 3 weeks, they're no longer physically residing at their home, so mortgage company demands every penny they paid plus interest, or they take elderly's home of 50 years and leave her homeless on the streets. Honest work doesn't pay, which is why I have no compunctions to criminal activity (sell drugs, stolen goods, operate unlicensed & unregistered business, hire illegal aliens to reduce labor cost & increase my profit margin, not pay them overtime pay, evade taxes etc…)
If I were in your shoes, this is what I'd do. When filling out the job application, DO NOT mention the previous employers who would give you a bad reference. On those periods, you were either unemployed and living with your parents (playing video games all day), have a trusted friend or relative claim you worked for him/her in their family business. So if this trusted friend/relative is in the restaurant business, say you were a busboy, cook, dishwasher, waiter, etc…. or was an employee in your parent's family business. The point is to show you were gainfully employed and not in jail or prison for committing a crime. Playing video games all day might cause you to loose points, but it shows you're not a person with questionable morale character who will break the seal on the trailer and pilfer the freight you're suppose to deliver.

Another option is to find a Hispanic drug dealer, tell him you're in this country illegally and you need a fake social security card, fake birth certificate, pay his 411 fee to get contact info on sellers of fake documents, then go to another state and use these to apply for a state ID card. Not your present home state; your thumbprint or fingerprint is in their database, so go to a trusted freind's or distant relative in another state. Use their address as your home residence. When the state ID card arrives(forwarded to you by your trusted friend or relative), wait maybe 3 to 6 month, then go through a trucking school at that state and upgrade the ID card to a commercial class-A license. This is how illegal aliens become intra-state CDL drivers, so why not exploit the same loophole illegal aliens use to become CDL class-A drivers. You'll be assuming a new name, new identification, with a clean MV printout.

When you were causing equipment damage, how much sleep have you gotten the previous 24 hours. FYI -- when you drive all night and not get enough sleep, your mind is "diminished capacity," no different than a DUI driver. This is why you had caused equipment damage. Don't drive all night to meet an early 7am delivery. Stop and get some rest along your route. When you see minor traffic delay, say you come on minor slow down because drivers were rubber necking, exaggerate the delay. If you lost 15 minutes in traffic delay, say you lost 3 hours. That covers your excuse why the load was 3 hours late, not because you stopped to sleep.

 

I've had a clean MVR since 2006. That last ticket was exceeding the truck speed limit while mt going down I-70 towards Denver. I had it reduced to non-moving violation. I have never had a chargeable accident, ever. I do the best job I can, and try to be safe. When I'm about to get in a situation, I stop and take a few deep breathes; that helps me to think more clearly and avoid impulse decision-making that brings Murphy into my life.

The "incidents" I'm refering to are the minor damages everyone, who is honest, has had and will continue to have when they are driving as much as we do. Most of these were minor damages to public and private property when force dispatched into very difficult places.

I've learned to refuse deliver for some of those and a few loads have been taken to public warehouses and had small LTLs deliver it later at their cost, since there was not a legal route and/or safe site to make delivery to. Many of those places have been talked into coming to me at a close location to transfer the load onto their box truck.

I take pics and send them to managment to help establish my case for refusing to go in.

By no means am I a premadonna with perfect performance looking back at my professional development like so many like to frame themselves. It has been a long, slow learning process.

I will continue to have incidents, I'm sure. Sometimes I will have to roll slow over a curb to get it in, and yes that curb may crack and that owner may file a claim. I may back into a dock and bust a taillight on a bumper. Crap happens like this, but I'm real enough to admit it.

If some think this is unacceptable, I just say I'm human -- not a god like some like to think they are.

 

OP, If you ever take passingtruckers advice, please don't get a fake identification/CDL with MY name on it. smh

 

Good point,I thought maybe ppl call what they did s an incident trying to make them look like it wasn't their fault.

 

Slacker.

 

yep, I delivered to a place in the LA area that was designed for box trucks, when I got there I saw the docks and thought wtf is this so I put my flashers on and went and found someone in charge. "I need you to put it in dock bla bla" ummm say what? "another 53 made it work before" after about 45min going over parking curbs, getting some dumpsters moved etc I finally got the thing jack knifed into the dock enough where the ramp could be lowered enough to unload and got to see the side of my trailer from my window. That was just one of my fun deliveries in the past year. Since last month im on a dedicated and its true most routes are easier to get used to but there are some stores I deliver to in the LA area where I have to take a lot of precaution still and use Goal often...

The biggest tip for anyone is patience, take the time to be ready for the place your going to.

 

Here is some quick advice although it may be too late for it now. NEVER EVER go solely by your GPS alone. ALWAYS call for directions if you don't understand directions on the qualcomm.
Even qualcomm directions are not always accurate. Plan ahead and pay attention so you can prevent these incidents in the future. Your career is not totally over,but it will take some time for the accidents to drop off before you can get rehired again. Time will usually fix this. It usually isn't a complete career end unless you abandoned the truck,caused a fatality,or tested positive for a drug test. What you are describing are minor incidents. Pay attention and always use common sense. Never just follow your GPS.

 

There's virtually no such thing as an accident. Virtually every time a motor vehicle incident occurs willful negligence is a factor ("willful misconduct" as the FHWA phrases it), so they aren't "accidents".

Few things are more common and obvious than the willful negligence of the vast majority of motorists and steering agents, and there is no greater substantiation of the Dunning-Kruger effect. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect

 

No dedicated here. Yesterday spent the day picking up multiple stops in Brooklynn, Long Island and the Bronx in NY. Had to navigate around multiple parked 4 wheelers very narrow streets back into places that weren't meant for our trucks, and not one incident. So why don't you climb into the cab of us "perfect drivers" and we'll show you how it's done son.