LOOK. IN. YOUR. MIRRORS!!!

Everyone should be looking in your mirrors. All truckers need to be constantly aware of what is going on behind you, but flat deckers ESPECIALLY need to be aware of what is going on with your load.

Today I was driving from Houston to Laredo, following an empty flatbed with a couple of tarps strapped to the deck. We went through some traffic lights in a small town on US-59 and as we got back to the 75 mph speed limit on a two lane highway with a sign noting that there was a passing lane in two miles, I noticed that the flatbed had a strap flapping around on his passenger side. The strap seemed to be long enough to catch in his trailer tires.

I hung back until the passing lane, then attempted to catch up to him, but a 4-wheeler decided to pass me and then slow to block my pass. I waited again for the next passing lane and finally was able to punch it to 80 mph and slowed as I came even with the driver, blew my air horn repeatedly to get his attention and tried to hand signal him to pull over.

He was clueless and apparently didn't have his CB on.

I raced ahead and finally found a wide paved area to pull over. Put on my 4-ways, got out and started waving my arms over my head at the driver.

Fortunately he got the message and pulled over a couple of truck lengths ahead of me. I ran up and started pulling the strap from in front of his passenger side trailer wheels. He sat in his cab and looked at me in his mirror with a puzzled look on his face, until I raised the loose strap above my head to show him the problem.

Finally he came out and walked around, staggering as if emotional. "I lost my ladder!", he said.

"Was it yellow?

"Yes!???"

"Well I passed a crumpled up yellow aluminum ladder about 20 miles ago!"

The only strap on his dunnage rack that also secured his 8' ladder had come off, allowing the end of the strap to catch under his trailer tire and yank the ladder off the dunnage rack. Had the strap caught just right in his tires again it could have caused ALL his dunnage to be yanked out. Only two rubber bungies held over 100 lbs of 2x4's and 4x4's on the rack, and both of them seemed like they weren't up to the task.

LOOK. IN. YOUR. MIRRORS.

If another trucker is blasting an air horn as he/she passes you and is motioning to pull over, THEN PULL OVER.

During this 10 mile escapade to get this trucker safely to the side of the road at least FOUR idiots in pickup trucks saw fit to tailgate him. God only knows how THAT would have ended up if his dunnage had been yanked out of the rack.

 

I felt naked and blind without my CB after it got torn off by ice laden tree branches last winter. Never run flat deck without a CB.

That being said, the driver spoke broken English. So I'm not sure if he would have understood me. I have a LOT of experience and PATIENCE with those that speak English as a second language. My wife is Korean. But it is always good to at LEAST be in communication.

One thing that I wondered about in today's incident, the driver was doing "Yankee Doodle" steering as I was behind him. I hoped it was because he was looking in his mirrors and was trying to gauge the extent of the problem. That wasn't the case. As I passed him he had only one hand one the wheel at 12 o'clock. A sure sign to me that he wasn't in full control of his rig.