A preventable "incident" on my PSP....

I'm curious about how other drivers see this.

About a year and a half ago I was forced to do a 34 at a Loves in frozenville Ohio. The night I got there there was a blizzard and my trailer was first in the row from the direction the snow was blowing in so my trailer literally got buried. You couldn't see the trailer except for the logo on the front.

34 hours later I clear the snow away and pretrip the trailer. Everything looks good. I pull away and check my mirrors and see both sets of tandems on the front axle spinning normally. I turned slightly to the driver side to see the rear axle spinning as well. I couldn't do that to the passenger side because I would have hit a curb. I put the truck in neutral to see how far it coasts to make sure the trailer is good and it coasts normally.

I pull out onto the interstate and blow two tires on the passenger side in the BACK because they were not spinning. They didn't give any rolling resistance because it was an icy parking lot so they were just sliding.

I found out my past employer marked it as "preventable." I argued and argued with him today and he kept it on. I have a lawyer that will be calling me tomorrow about taking this a step further. My argument is that in a normal DOT pretrip inspection dragging the trailer around to check that the tires are spinning is not a normal pretrip item. The trailer passed the pretrip beautifully AND I even visually checked both front axles AND did the coast test and it passed both. In this case, I don't feel that frozen tires are the fault of the driver. Sometimes things just HAPPEN. If the item that failed is not DOT pretrip criteria then I would argue it's mechanical failure (brakes failing to disengage from the drum) and that's not the fault of the driver. It's not required that drivers put duct tape on tires or anything else. (good idea maybe, but not required) If it's not required it can't be the drivers fault. Its never happened to me before or since, even when I grabbed a trailer in 2 feet of snow that had been sitting there for 3 months. All 4 sets of trailer duals spun normally on THAT trailer.

What say you?

If anyone is wondering why I engaged the trailer brakes when I parked, I didn't. The air leaked out of the truck while I was sitting and so the brakes engaged on their own.

 

.If that's the case then any mechanical failure you have is your fault.How is a driver supposed to see the tires on the BACK of his trailer spinning? Put the truck in gear and hop out and run behind it to check? I mean I did more than I saw anyone else do who left that day. Where in the DOT pretrip checklist does it say "Pull trailer to ensure all axles spin"?

And I'll keep the name of the company confidential right now until legal proceedings have finished. But it wasn't a mega. A 700 truck company. I guess you could call that a mini-mega.

 

I do not feel its my fault that my trailer had a mechanical failure caused by weather. That is not on me. And hopefully my lawyer will agree and I'll see my old company in court.