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

I do too, but blocking the lane on a two lane. I'll do what's fast and move to do the repair.

 

In the minds of people who have never driven, yes. But in reality, no.

 

I once asked a safety manager to come out and show me how quickly he could move left or right in heavy traffic to avoid road debris without causing an accident.
A year later I asked him again, to show me how to safely move 4 lanes over to the only burm with an air line blown/ripped off one set locked and only seconds till the other 3 sets locked up without becoming a battering ram on the back side, and without wasting a tire or two. I also asked what cost less those tires and a roadside, or a tow from the middle of a busy highway while I held up traffic and several of our other trucks.
Both times he refused and they didn't affect me. Never got an answer for the last question.
3 months later he was gone, back to his old job making waves harassing lift drivers in a warehouse down the street. Turned out he never drove a truck a day in his life and the ruckus I created with upper management got him called out and he was asked to show he at least could drive a yard truck (his claim to fame as I was told). I wasn't there to watch but from what I was told it was a laugh fest to watch.

 

Company cubicle dwellers deal with words and numbers on a computer screen. They have 10 people around them to ask when they don't know what to do. They are trained that the world is cut and dried and if something isn't cut and dried then ask someone to decide for you. The video stuff may even count the number of microseconds or video frames which will be called enough for a normal reaction time and not enough for a normal reaction time. If the camera sees the item X frames before impact then it should have been avoided. If the video shows the item X-1 frame before impact then it was unavoidable. None of us have a frame counter on the windshield and none of us get told in 3 seconds something important will happen. Every person sitting down to view the video knows "I wouldn't be watching this video if nothing was going to happen."

 

There is no driver shortage. There are exactly the number of drivers attracted to this work as the pay and conditions attract for this work. Imagine an alcoholic saying there is an alcohol shortage. Just wanting more of something doesn't mean there is a shortage or someone is preventing more of that something from being available to you right now. If teenage boys signed a petition and that petition said there was a pretty girl shortage, did the girls suddenly become ugly, or do the boys just want to see more pretty girls? Does wanting something mean someone else must provide that something?

 

Most safety people (but not quite all) and dispatch people would fit in really well for the cast of the movie "Office Space".....

Which....by the way....is a ver-ry good pictorial explanation for why I became a truck driver -- in the first place.

-- L

 

Not even in jest...lol

 

Yes a driver can be great and have a bad day, or have bad luck. Think about it like this: for all you football fans out there, has there ever been a team in the modern era go unbeaten and win the Super Bowl? As many great teams as there have been, they all run into buzz saws from time to time, and your friend ran into a buzz saw. Sure, your friend getting pinged with a preventable is unfair. 1 preventable doesn't diminish his greatness, nor does it diminish what you describe as a successful career. Things happen. More often than not, we aren't going to agree with certain calls that are made. It's 1 preventable. Hopefully, he has a short memory and just chalked it to the game and moved on. He's had a successful career and it would be silly for him to dwell on this. A driver that experienced, I guarantee you, he is not even worried about this incident. He's got bigger fish to fry.

 

Wow

 

I guess I'm about as close to robot as it comes. My company almost never hears a gripe out of me. I go wherever they send me. I solve a lot of problems without them holding my hand. Even if things don't go my way, i.e. getting home at the time I need to, I still don't gripe. I just take the L, readjust, and move on. My friend tells me I have steel in my heart because I take so many things in stride. Drivers need to learn that the industry doesn't adjust to them, they need to adjust to the industry.