an inexperienced trucker scraped/chipped our building

Im sorry. Your personal (Collective each American engaged in work for wages) situation is not the problem or concern. You provide a portion of your pay every time so that eventually if you run into a calamity your savings will carry you through, weeks, months or years.

When 9-11 happened, it destroyed the payroll company and people. We were told either go to unemployment and sit home with support until god knows when they rebuild or replace payroll (Weeks? Months?) we said no we had savings for the two of us as a team. (In addition to paying 9000 dollars to replace a storm damaged bathroom) we ran almost two months without pay.

Bin Laden hurt us, but he did not stop that medicine from rolling because we had savings.

The old saw about the poor baby worker not having anything in a week or two to live on is no excuse.

There is nothing about manning up in this particular situation. The damage was done and unfortunately the lady and her husband was faced with verbal abuse towards possibly valid physical violence from the driver that did the damage. It's appalling.

Ive had drivers fresh from school come into my business for which I am responsible for, do thousands in damage and when they understand the severity of the losses, they cry. It's ok to cry, we wont abuse them. The law is called, document everything collect all information turn over to Owner of business to take on the newbie's trucking company and they will decide like they have done thousands of times before.

Ive done some damage, curbs included. Sometimes the company fires me, other times it becomes a story and we move on. Once in a while it comes out of my check. It does not bother me. It happens. It's the violence and excessive .. aggression displayed by the intruder who chipped that building.

Barring new information I fear this will be a broken record repeating itself.

 

This threads really getting carried away with speculation.
Maybe the driver was upset, thinking he may be fired because he put a chip in a concrete block and now he'll lose his health insurance he needs for his disabled wife and the new company insurance won't kick in for 90 days and then maybe won't cover his wife's disability because it's a pre-existing condition.

 

Yeah, thats it lol.

 

Maybe he was high and didnt want to have to take a drug test? Who knows

 

Driver got hostile?

Edit

 

Driver killed hockey players last year? What does that mean? If he is still driving, that means that he was found not guilty by jury trial and didn’t lose his cdl

 

Exactly right. I've worked for some good companies and very seldom was a driver ever fired for a little mistake like the OP is reporting.
But...if they lied about it or tried to cover it up they were history.
A liar is a liar, no matter what kind of face they put on it.
That includes people who advocate covering up damage and hoping the boss doesn't notice.
You can't trust liars and if you can't trust a guy why even have him around.
And for what it's worth I've had my share of bumps and scrapes. When it happend I'd turn it in. I never got fired for any of them.

 

I think you will find that such a driver carrying the burden of medical trouble within family or problems back home would do whatever is necessary not to get into a confrontation or screw up where possible in the first instance.

If kids new to trucking are posting here scared they will be fired for rubbing a telephone pole or breaking a mudflap this industry has finally reached or has reached long ago a point at which drivers do not have any job assurances, any time they can be gone sometimes for good for the smallest of stuff.

This is not the Military where sometimes you can engage in a situation and as long the brass does not find out no one will be the wiser.

If it was my company and I found out some way it was my driver that did that block scrape then yelled and apparently showed hostility etc, I would offer driver two choices. Pay up the full damages out of check or be fired.

Either way that business owner would be paid for their blocks either from me or driver.

Keep in mind there are laws in employment that allows for dismissal as discipline for actions stated above by OP from a driver who apparently has made a minor situation quite the trouble. If he paid up then it's over, forgotten etc. If he didnt well. I'll have to pay and find another driver.

 

Chinatown takes a position that I actually half agree with. I just have to stick to my guns and go down.

If this industry ever thinks of the damage done by disposing of drivers after what it takes to "Make" a truck driver on both the trucker's and company part a little bit of compassion and teaching would raise em up rather than indiscriminate firing.

However. Feelings and softies don't count for much when dealing with the damage plus the resulting trouble. Much. Most of you wont know it but I am sometimes in a position that if I let a little bit of softie decide a issue say in Chinatown's favor, we would have to have changes in this industry. Something I think might never happen.

The closest I can get is " You scraped that block wall. Pay me." Thank you Driver. Go home 1 week, come back with this load to such a such. (To a very tough shipper and receiver I can come up with as punishment)