Venting......

Right now, I am so angry I cannot see or think straight and need to vent and get some advice. If this sounds scattered, I apologize.


First, let me make sure you all understand that i am a rookie driver, almost at the 9 month total mark, but I don't think that should discount my concerns in this matter. Unfortunately, i do not have enough clean experience to be able to jump ship after a bad series of preventables with my last carrier and need to put in a couple more months incident free after the last one.

My current carrier took me in and placed me with a trainer for a couple of months(who has since quit), but did make me a solo driver a few weeks ago.

The first truck I was assigned had no apparent issues until I drove it for almost 10 hours before it started overheating. I was lucky enough to get the last parking space in a safe location to shut down for the night. That accomplished, I left a message for the company mechanic who called me in the morning and had me try a couple of things before instructing me to drive it back almost 300 miles, which I started to do; however, I started to overheat within the first 50 miles, so i called him back and convinced him to let me take it for repair on the road. They diagnosed an easy fix and sent me on my way or so we thought until I started to overheat again within 20 miles or so and called him back. My instructions were to continue the return trip, but i was stopping for 30 minutes every 10 - 15 miles to let it cool down. At that rate it would take 12 hours or more to complete the 275 or so remaining miles and i stopped again for another diagnosis revealing a more serious problem and the repair was denied forcing me to wait until after dark to return. Fortunately i was able to complete the trip as it was flat without incident to trade trucks.


I trade for another truck and it developed a problem where it was only taking fuel from one side and overflowing to the other. When the one tank was empty, it thought that it was truly empty, but only one side was. I get authorization to stop for diagnosis, but they claimed that it would require both tanks drained and they weren't allowed to do that, charged us for a non diagnosis and sent us to a dealer who either diagnosed part of the problem, or the wrong problem and fixed it, only the underlying issue remained. Two days after this repair, i pull into a scalehouse and get put out of service for an overflow leak (or so we thought), we were able to get a local mechanic to quick fix it so i could go to another dealer for rediagnosis. They find the one tank has been damaged and had holes in it(WTH? I had not added any fuel to that tank aside from the overflow yet it remained full since), this was somehow missed by the first dealer and I am being blamed for it.... yet I hit nothing that would cause the leak. Something tells me a prior driver hit several things based on the body damage and didn't fess up and something he hit caused the initial damage that got worse over time until i was in the seat. So not only am I in trouble for taking it to a different shop on route without approval, somehow the actual leak is my fault? WTF?

Now to add injury to insult, my dispatcher gives me 2 choices; either continue another 5 hours, knowing the truck is unsafe and has been put out of service for it, or wait for another driver to join me to return to home base, leading me to believe i would be terminated for refusing to continue... i told him i would continue, but after my 10 hour reset... he gave me the same two choices knowing i had less than 30 MINUTES available to me and my log book (we are using paper) would not be fudged to look legit, it would have to be a complete fabrication!

I caved, but I also did what I did not want to do and filed a complaint with the FMCSA people. Am I wrong to be so angry? Were any of my actions unreasonable?


Thanks for reading.