Adventures in Trucking

Up here a guy i trained said the tester wanted him to "qoute the book as writen" in other words "next im going to check my slacks for 1 inch or less of play" is a fail. "Next im going to pull on my slack ajusters to insure there is no more than 1 inch of slack, if it is close i will re check with a tape mesure, anything within a 1/4 inch of failing and i will oos the truck for service" would be acceptable....... FFS

 

At least with the psyco he got......

 

There are jerkwad testers everywhere. It's not the test, it's the jerk GIVING the test. Anyone not a rookie here knows how to do a pre-trip the right way. Knowing bushings from "The things that keep that thing from falling off" is good enough in my book.

 

At least it broke where it did driver and your allright

 

All that is required during a pre-trip is you the driver are satisfied that certain parts and accessories are in good working order. That's all the FMCSR's say. see 392.7.

However, we all know the more you do the better the truck. The cost for the repairs are not your fault and you should worry about that so much. Yes, be concerned but not freaking out. The two days you sat there not making any money is what you should be worried with the most. You know what to look for from school and the CDL tests. They go beyond what is required but that's fine.

One thing that I do that has help me is using a flash light even during the day. I've have drivers look at me and think I was crazy but they were the same drivers that during their pre-trip they would walk around the truck kick a couple of tires and pull on a couple of straps and was good to go in their mind. It took me at least 30 minutes to do a pre-trip but we would check the entire truck over and we had more gear on for off loading so it took longer. On a regular truck it took me 15 minutes.

 

My friend had a tie rod break in half while on I40 in West Memphis during the construction. Basically all he could do was brace for impact and try to keep his truck upright.

Turns out it was a defective part. Wouldn't have been something you would have been able to spot easily.

 

Warning - I am not attacking you personally but I am not going to sugar coat this.

OMG stop trying to split hairs.

Hate?

This is the reason why people fail at their jobs.

Stop that hate crap, because I can tell you this that if you hit a car and hurt someone, you would lost your job. IF killed someone, you would be losing a lot more. If they have a lawyer like mine, they would own you. Many of us are concerned about being a victim of an idiot driver while we are on the road and others like me extend that to everyone.

It is all about being safe and being professional, not cutting corners and attracting more attention to our industry be ignoring safety.

You can cite regulations but YOU are totally responsible for that truck and you are supposed to grab the tie rod and try to move it to see if there is freeplay in it NOT LOOK AT IT. You should have learned this when you got your CDL (the tests are way way too easy) and your "trainer" should have reinforced this, he should be fired for this crap.

As an owner, I make sure my trucks are fixed if they need to be fixed but outside of scheduled downtime for maintenance, I solely depend on that driver of that truck to tell me what is wrong and I not only expect him/her to do a thorough pretrip the right way but to refuse to drive the truck if there is a serious problem.

As a temp driver, I do a pretrip checking everything, I go right down the list and it takes me 20 minutes. I am hauling anywhere from 20k to 120k on a truck so I don't want to have an issue. I have refused to drive a truck until it was fixed, my company backs my decisions without asking me to change my mind. I have run across marginal tie rod ends in my time, the last one was Thursday, the regular driver never did a pretrip on the truck I got, he may be fired. I refused to drive the truck until it was fixed and it was within 2 hours.

I do all of this because I don't want to cause an accident and hurt someone. I care, I take the time to deal with these things as a professional and expect others to do so - if not I speak up because it may be me or someone I know who may get hurt because of the laziness of a driver.

By the way, tie rod ends don't have bushings, they are balls that ride within a socket and crimped. The wear takes place because of a number of reasons, one is a ripped rubber boot which allows dirt and sand to get into the grease that wear the ball and socket down, the other is a lack of lubrication which causes wear - all of which allow the ball to move freely and beat the crap out of the crimp which eventually lets the ball out of the socket - broken tie rod end! You grab the tie rod, yank on it to see if it is lose. You check the boot to see if it is ripped by feeling around the boot with a bare finger.

 

So your the type of person that has to revert to violence when you don't like what people are saying to you?

 

Wow ,that was a close call. That will definitely put the fear in ya. Glad your ok. Thanks for sharing your story. I always check that ball joint at the drag link and pitman arm really good and that u joint at the gearbox, always had bad visual i could be going down the road and loose my steering.