Trucker gets it from both ends...

At least he’s old enough to retire

 

Someone needs to call the ST. CHRISTOPERS FUND. I donate to that.

 

It's quite possible that he's unfit to drive truck but yet not disabled . doctor might feel he's capable of doing something other than trucking to earn a living.
So no disability.

 

if a person has already compromised health the doctors may be doing a favor , trucking is not easy on the body, stress with always changing sleep patterns and all that good food takes a toll on the body.

 

Short term disability insurance is for when you medically can't do the job. Doctor won't certify him to drive, so the doctor should sign off on short term disability.

 

And that disability insurance you paid into all your working life is designed to take years of fighting to get, you have to get a lawyer if you ever want to get it. They make it so we really never get it if you a poor working stiff but if rich, they get it because the can pay the lawyers.

 

I want to caution from my end anyone thinking the lawyering up for disability. DO NOT.

I'll share why.

The State of Arkansas evaluated me physically to see where or what is possible for me as a valid worker producing and supporting our Society after I finished trucking medically. They ended up sending someones (A very small team for that purpose) to the Administrative Judge with me the day I had to show and answer questions and talk about myself a little bit before he ruled in my favor. The state had someone who was familiar enough with my situation at my table already, something I did not know about until I arrived. I was working on the SS situation on my own, forms, evidence, interviews etc, took 14 months. It was brutal in those years.

If I had gone the easy route and got a lawyer, I would have had to pay him or her or them a retainer or retainers plural (Something like 3000 dollars to start) and then once SS approved them to plea or process my case before them, they also must have gotten approval from SS in my time (Keep this in mind, things have changed since 2002 time period and greatly chanced since my deaf school years..) the lawyer would be paid 45% of whatever I would be paid in back pay due to 14 months processing me and then paid 35% of each check for a fixed time of years. Without going into too much detail, the State and their Department of Labor specifically objective to rehabilitating workers unable to continue what they once did for a lifetime or years to relearn new skills or whatever. They had other people availible at their expense to assist quietly in the background with none of the parasite fees that I would have been assessed by any old street laywer looking at disability. (They probably would have taken between 8000 to around 30,000 dollars in a number of the first few years time really easily. SS laid a paper in front of me showing a 10 year budget for my benefits as Congress had set pending several challenges or medical reviews to continue. I have been successful with the reviews so far. HOWEVER. The medical battles on my end almost 20 years later after the initial approval and the problems i had then that was enough to be denied DOT medical and then get grandfathered by Arkanasas to keep CDL without medical card for a number of years. That became useful as a crew boss with a team of 20 to 30 CDL temps of varying experience and ages to make sure the auction big truck sales go off without a hitch on everything in that lot. My own old iron experiences came in handy so it was not a complete loss or waste of my time. The money? Just as long i made more than the cost of round trip daily gas to work and one meal I put something into the household bank account which made wife happy.

Anyway, The doctors should sign that short term disability. There has to be some sort of Grievance process involved when they refuse to sign. I think that driver needs to contact the people or board of directors in charge of that particular short term program and initilate a action against the specific doctors who wont certify him Medically to continue trucking and wont sign his disability because by defination he is disabled until someone can get him fixed up medically and pass a DOT enough to get going again.

Some like myself are truckers until the day we die. And when we are put to pasture with doctors telling us No this no that and no no no etc it can be a form of combat that is not pretty. Unfortunately I find myself fighting for a future at least where I can continue to function. There is not a large number of people who will need my help themselves when the doctors get a hold of them.

It's getting really CRAZY out there.

As far as the back roads.. Yes we did the same thing in Maryland quite a bit. However the Maryland State police was not stupid and had had conversations at my work place with my car parked next to their cruiser when they came in for good coffee and at the same time try to put some teaching into me about where, what and so on as far as getting from A to B quickly.

As good as I was, I remember another who took a series of really small roads that were essentially paved lanes for about a 14 mile 110+ mile flat run in a actual ice storm, the kind that left a inch of really gritty ice on the roads and ground. That gave the hard compound michelins tires I had on something to bite on from here to there that night. But man what a run. I wont do it. But I rode it with someone crazy good enough to make it happen. What a night.

That pretty much set my decisions in buying tires with a eye towards winter weather for the rest of my life and that was a good thing.

 

Every state has a medical board.

I looked into contacting ours when one of my doctors went wild with his insurance billing turning what I believed to be a minor series of needles into a full blown outpatient surgery with a complete crew and crash cart etc.

With that remembered, you can always google your state's medical board which every State Government has that manages and keeps a track of doctors who prescribe medicines for example or do things to people under their license.

You can always make a complaint directly to that State medical board against a particular doctor who refuses to certify you medically for DOT trucking that you do as a main livelhood because of so called medical problems but yet refuses to sign a short term disability.

If you explain to the medical board at the state government level via email and maybe in person with your evidence they will put some investigation into your formal complaint. That might be enough to get action or something out of him. If not that, they will drill down and find out WHY that doctor wont sign your short term. If it is a result that is useful to you then you proceed further in some way.

When my arkansas board explained the process to me, I told them thank you for your time and would be more careful on what things I allow doctors to do to me to keep the billing to a minimum because they, Arkansas the people as well as the USA pay a large part of what I incur to do things that need fixing under insurance.

I would need a doctor to seriously screw up or do things that are harmful before I would want to involve the board. It could be enough that particular situation on your end about the refusal to sign what is defacto truth, short term disability.