Can you be a really good truck driver and still be bad?

I feel that megacarriers especially thrive on finding incidents to peg drivers with, so their options become limited once they have enough experience to job shop.

A Schneider driver called in on me because I got CLOSE to a trailer at the Gary Operating Center as a rookie.

1. I didn't hit it.
2. To the driver that called in, what kind of a MAN are you?
3. They spent a full week investigating an incident that had no evidence, just to tag me with something. In the end they had to admit they didn't have anything (because nothing happened, other than a rookie getting close to a trailer, seeing it in time, and fixing it).

They know they aren't gonna keep drivers with amazing pay, so companies make them choose between staying there or working for Western Express, I guess.

 

Nothing is rigged to keep anyone anywhere they don’t want to be. The driver wasn’t taken out over a technicality. There’s nothing on his “record”. If he chooses to apply at a company that doesn’t use Dac they will never know about his $1200 incident. People choose where to work, they choose what they’re willing to put up with for the job they do.

 

Getting a blemish doesn’t equal a bad driver. It just means you are human and can screw up.

Bad drivers have bad following them around.
1. Job hopping
2. Need a cash advance the day after payday, every payday.
3. Have to be watched on a piss test, every piss test.
4. Has the wife/old lady contacting dispatch or asking questions on TTR, saying how her husband is a good driver but having rotten luck.
5. Has lots of blemishes on record but not his fault according to him or his wife.

 

I just chalk up that incident to things happen. Safety guy sees a close-call incident slightly on the preventable side of the scale, while your fruend sees it slightly on the non-preventable side of the scale.

Lastly, few people are so brutally honest about every description such that they are the villain in stories as often as they are heroes. You only know one side of the story, his, and maybe didn't see the video. Maybe your friend made up the barrier or the truck pinning him in. Maybe the truck beside him was almost passed him and a moderate early braking could have gotten your friend into the space behind the truck beside him. I don't know. We don't know. Maybe ypur friend is the best driver in the country and the Safety guy is ignorant. That's why it's vital to have safe habits & a clean record so in the very few no-win situations your reputation helps decide in your favor.

 

I hit a tire in the middle of the road a couple years back. It was right outside of NYC and rush hour. I was in the second lane and was running 60-65. I could not stop in time and could not move to any side so I hit it. It tore my air line in my trailer and locked up my trailer tires, tires was almost new as well. Luckily I was able to get out of the road without getting hit but cost me new tires on the trailer all the way around. I run my own truck and trailer so no one to report it to but it happens to the best of us.

 

Unavoidable is unavoidable. This is why I get so pissed at drivers taking low pay jobs...what we do is dangerous on the BEST day.

 

If that’s the worst incident that happens in a truck, feel lucky. It's 40 tons or more of rolling iron.

 

And to have your own drivecam running at all times, there camera is not on your side.