Suspended upon further investigation...

Glad to hear they are keeping you. I always use chains for coils, the only exception is the coils I pull off the rail, or put on the rail, chains and binders on rail decks are a no-no with the railroads. I always use chains and binders and switch them to straps when I drop it at the rail, or when I pick one up off the rail.
For those that have not dealt with raildecks, no bungees on tarped loads, have to use 1" tie down, no chains, no binders, and almost everything is tarped. If your tarp gets loose, it put the train into an emergency stop, which will cost you or your employer about $5k, and they will disconnect the offending railcar onto a side track and leave it. Now you get to go find it in the middle of nowhere, fix the oops, and schedule it to be picked back up.

 

Man, that's the kind of thing I talked about in other threads. Good thing the trailer stopped the coil, you might be looking at a hospital stay instead of suspension, or worse. Didn't anyone train you how to secure coils and if not I would say the company should share in the liability.

 

That's insane, your lucky things didn't turn out a lot worse. No training, boggles my mind.

 

Maybe not you but there's a lot of companies out there that throw people with no experience into situations they should never be thrown into without training and cowardly always take the way out it's the "driver's responsibility".
F### that, A lot of new drivers working for these "figure it out as you go" no training companies are just desperate for work and don't want to say I don't know how to do this. These companies need to start being forced to take responsibility for the people they put on the road with no training.
I've worked for a lot of these companies when I started fortunately I never had an incident but I remember Alaska industrial telling me to pull a b train, double side dumps when I had only been driving a tractor trailer for about a week. Of course in Alaska people care way less about safety. Up here the word "safety" is not as big of a ad campaign that it seems to be in the lower 48.

 

Yeah I realize that but here is the thing - reality sucks, you as a driver no matter who you want to blame is the one who is responsible.

If those who don't want that responsibility or deal with the outcome of an accident or an incident like that, they should think very hard about getting into this as a job/career/profession/what ever you want to call it at all. NO excuse that they were not trained, no one stops them from looking for the right information at all, especially when it is all over the internet.

I have been on and off the road since the late 70's, nothing has changed, drivers doing stupid crap blaming everyone else for their lack of knowledge.

Hell I've seen people chain up steel coils with a single grade 30 3/8" chain and when the coil rolled off the trailer and crushed a car, they used the same excuse - no one taught me anything else.

 

In this day and age where companies are shoving inexperienced drivers in the seat just to get the job done.Things have changed, I've been in the seat since 75' and granted I'll take responsibility for anything that happens and God knows I've been through a lot, but to send a new driver from a new generation to pick up a steel coil without giving him or her the knowledge of what to do is insanity.Granted the driver was in over his head, but c'mon that is totally irresponsible of that company, they should know better, after all they're going to get the bill when something goes wrong and there's a lot of things money can't fix. Just boggles my mind.

 

I also get what you're saying and I agree with most of it. Obviously I'm not saying the driver bears no responsibility, they definitely do.
I'm just saying that there's a lot of crappy companies out there that should be made to take some responsibility for the untrained and possibly in some cases retarded people they're putting out on the road.

 

How long does it take to properly secure your load?

I’m a betting man and i bet you can do it in under an hour. I’ll also bet you can breakdown & put back up everything in under an hour.

Ok...that’s $20/hr. How much do you think your job is worth? Remember before you answer, Swift has a flatbed division.

$20/hr is not bad money. Many local truckers make much less per hour. Just saying.