Safety Management

[1} most mega do they even pay a safty bonus for safe driving. [2] Should be able to report any safety issue as the company is liable. [3] Depends on company policy, however most of us have learnt at the school of hard knocks.

 

Your best avenue to learn what we do and how we do it is read the regulations. Then ask questions.

 

To compare the depth and breadth of the safety culture in the 2 industries is a real stretch. But there are many companies that already cater to those in the trucking industry that wish to initiate a positive safety environment. For you to do so would require designing a completely different approach than you currently use in aviation. There are so many differences between the regulations and attitudes I don't think you expertise in one translates to the other.

 

You cannot talk to trucking industry about safety the way aviation takes it seriously. Ive actually got a little bit of ground school and some hours in the air. I nav better than I can fly because of my ham fisted hands.

When I was young, Orientation featured pretty suits with wonderful video tape of trucker earl doing safety related problems of trucking. It isnt very long before a profane dispatcher told me stop worrying about that[badword] BS, get going. Yer late.

All concept of the fine living as it were within the regs went out the window. Sometimes if you are caught you pay the money to the DOT. Sometimes the Company pays and fire you for it.

To me personally with the recent march of ELD systems among other problems being imposed on the entire Industry it is finally being dragged kicking and screaming into some kind of compliance under Uncle Sam's Clubbing. People actually bought exempt tractors too old to take computers to work around the ELD regulations and RUN HARD on Paper logs as before. Those are finally pending to be regulated out of existence. In essence Banned in the future.

You cannot move from Aviation to Trucking without spending time around various Trucking Companies, talking to people of all kinds and actually doing the job of a trucker under the regulations on one hand and unreasonable delivery or loading appointments promises made by people you will NEVER see in your life.

Drivers are disposable. The moment Mr Driver Goodytwo shoes causes a customer to lose his million dollar load because he or she is out of hours 1 hour away down the road and intends to sit for 34 hours.... Someone within that company will fire Goodytwo shoes before the Angry customer moneybags fire the entire trucking company. Follow me?

If you recall, there was a aviation company called Down East running small planes. They kept flouting regulations with company policy of less than permissible Inner Marker approach visibility ceilings lower than legally allowed. Eventually they lost peoples lives and were run properly out of business.

Trucking is like that sometimes. Regulations on one hand and money on the other. Money talks first to those intent on making the entire industry work. Regulations are viewed as inconvenient BS piles of paper designed to prevent free flow of freight and more importantly money.

Now...

Appearances are difficult, I sounded like a old bitter grouch who intends to break the law everywhere. That is not so. The more I push back and cite regulations, the easier it is for the company to take my load, give it to someone else and then tell me to sit.

It might be 6 weeks before they find work for me to do while I sit running out of savings. Because I made things difficult. You follow me?

 

I have been killed. About 8 of 9 times. Each of those situations developed to where I have a few moments left in all of my life to decide to live or die if I screw up I am dead. Or someone dies. This is me personally.

I strongly believe in my hearts of hearts what I don't see coming will kill me. That is a good thing. Because I have a tendancy to go out with my boots on making decision while there is a scrap of time left to take a action.

I cannot tell you the dozens upon dozens of public people doing stupid things that I have had to do something with that 18 wheeler bearing down on them fixing to kill them in about 10 seconds. Sometimes there is less than half that time and not enough for any one solution So you ######ig and combine something together really quickly and hope that it works without hitting or killing or hurting them.

Ive been lucky. Livestock and animals are common kills. Even a couple were mercy instakills on the steel bumper. Those are not the issue.

You learn the first rule in trucking school. Do not kill anyone. Do not hurt anyone. Do not hit them either. I still have a occasional night mare from a handful of really close situations involving children who have no say in if they get to live or die if I did something right, they get to live. That is the one thing that gets me more than anything in life.

Another kind of situation would be in a inner city dock overnight during winter. You might find a homeless man under your engine block staying warm sleeping. You are fixing to pull out to go somewhere and it would have killed him. Bumpty bumpty. And there you are sitting rotting in jail for what. Because you did not check that truck.

Can you imagine hopping into a 1960 beech without checking over that thing very carefully? People will hop into a semi punch off the breaks and go without checking a #### thing all the time. Then things happen. Like falling trailers off a 5th wheel pulled on them while they were in a hurry to get lunch. By a stabatoer from the same company who was fired for instance.

My spelling goes bad when I get emotional about something important from time to time. Aviation is a beautiful world of safety because everyone plays generally by expectations and rules etc. But Trucking? HA... you are going to get the nasty as well as the professional.

 

Companies expect drivers to work maximum hours and to turn on and off light a ####ing light switch creating havoc with their sleep patterns and creating a dangerous situation.
Majority are not compensated fairly for their time
Myself been working the 35 hour week on linehaul for decades but could use less work.
Europeans got it right!

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