Dropped a trailer after hooking it

In Vegas... I needed my A/C or something fixed on my truck. The shop said go drop your trailer back there & we can get you now in this bay over here... Ecstatic that a shop was ready to take me in so quickly & I was only there a couple minutes.... I quickly drove around back... Dropped my dollies, unlocked the fifth wheel, climbed back into the truck & pulled away. Just a few seconds I heard snap, bang, boom. WTF!!! I stop, get out, And see that my air hoses & electrical lines were stretched beyond belief & my emergency line was busted to hell....

Try explaining that one to shop as you go back in & say... "Hey do you think you can fix this also". When did that happen? "Just now!"


edited to say... These story that get told are to prove to the new driver's that the veteran driver's aren't perfect either. We all make mistakes everyday. It's how we handle those mistakes & learn from those mistake that makes us all true professionals in the trucking industry. We just give you new guys #### about your mistakes to see if you can handle the heat!

 

Sounds like good advice.

This happened to me not after driving the truck for "about a year" or even six months, but after less than two weeks with no follow-on training with another driver after graduating from my CDL school. School ended in August 2008 and I was hired as a trailer spotter at company in June 2009. After first couple of times of hooking up to trailers, taking them to the drop lot and bringing empties back, I got to be pretty good at spotting the trailer at the dock. Even the other regular drivers, dispatcher, and manager said they were very surprised at how quickly I had learned to do it. The dock was described as being one that was hard to back into due to the small amount of room and other trucks/vehicles around. The manager that hired me knew that I had no experience apart from my CDL school.

I just wish I had requested some time to work alongside another driver, learning the routine of the job and getting more practice in my skills before being sent out on my own. Why I didn't? I don't know, but I can tell you one thing, the day this happened, I started at 2:30 am and the mishap occurred around 5:30 am while we were trying to finish up loading the trailers so the regular driver could be gone by 7:00 am. Doing too much, too early, and too quickly, I got careless.

 

Thanks for the tip. Although I did remember this from class and had started out doing it all the time but then would skip checking the jaws occasionally, including this particular time. I'm a pretty thorough guy and found that my inspections and hooking up and dropping seem to be taking a lot longer time than others that were doing it with me, so I would tug with the tractor after hooking up not once but twice to check for a good hook.

One regular driver that morning even told me about using the Johnson bar and said that if the fifth wheel's not locked then you'll know it.

I guess that with spotting trailers, it's even more important to check every time because of hooking up to different trailers each time, so I should have taken the time to do it.

 

Luckily this one was empty not loaded, but the trailer dropped as I made a 90 degree left out of the parking lot. Even though I didn't visually check to see if the jaws locked, I did do a pull test...not once but twice immediately after hooking up, after hearing the sound of the click.

My only concerns are these...One, should I have been given keys to a truck and immediately told to start spotting trailers with no indoctrination or orientation or training or driver-shadowing or whatever prior to doing it on my own, and, two, should I have been fired for dropping a trailer in the parking lot without given a chance to "learn from it and move on"?

BTW, I even offered to pay for the damage to the hoses and glad hands.

 

Oh boy, seen it happen many times. With drivers of various years of experience.
Luckily, in none of the instances that I witnessed, the drivers stopped before the trailer came completely off the tractor.
But, we would tag team in an effort to get the landing gear down. With heavily loaded trailers, it can get tiresome trying to get the trailer up high enough to get the truck back under it.
On the other hand, we had trouble with our yard truck dropping trucks. Turned out be a problem with the locking mechanism.

Did it damage the trailer, Freight Hawlin' Bosn?

 

Damage to trailer, from my limited knowledge, was to trailer glad hands being sheared off, air hoses stretched out, and electrical hose disconnected with no visible damage.

Yeah, this was a real team effort getting this one moved out of the traffic lane, so the rest of the world could carry on with their business while mechanics repaired the damage. Since the glad hands were broke, air couldn't get to the trailer for the brakes to release. I, along with help from two other drivers on the ground, ended up pushing it out of the way after lowering the gear and getting under the trailer nose from the side. What made it worse, the trailer was on a slight hill, so trying to get under it from the front wasn't an option.

One of the drivers told me that he also dropped a trailer at the drop lot of this company. He said his trailer dropped even after doing a tug test AND driving around the drop lot a couple of times. I think it happened as he was exiting the lot onto the road making a turn. He told me that "it happens to everyone". I have a friend of mine who said it happened to him after driving for over 15 years.

The manager wasn't too happy about it though...he fired me. Made a big deal about it and told me that I should have shown remorse about it. Said, "this doesn't happen to everybody" and that he only knew of one other driver that has ever done it. I also told him that if it was going to happen, I'm glad that it happened in the parking lot and not on the roadway. With a bewildered look he said, "I'm concerned that you said you were glad it happened in the parking lot. Well, I wish it had NEVER happened in the first place!"

Yeah, no kidding. Guess he missed my point entirely.

 

One other thing...that other "I also dropped one before" driver said that this company has a lot of trouble with the locking mechanisms on their fifth wheels.

I told him, "Gee, you know that information... really would've been more useful to me yesterday." (say it like Adam Sandler as Robbie Hart in The Wedding Singer)

FHB

 

ive been spotting trailers for almost 2 years.....never dropped one but i have backed it into the door, unhooked airline and then dropped it without lowering 5th wheel and have also jumped the kingpin once, and scraped 1 trailer (no damage besides scratches)

freight hawlin bosn are u using a yard jockey truck or what?

 

I had a trailer NEARLY drop, it landed on the back end of the frame, it really messed up my electrical hook up. Now I always do a tug test, and double check visually that the jaws are around the kingpin, sometimes I do it twice if I even think I forgot to check it.

Luckily like others, I was able to lower the landing gear, and drop the suspension and get it back on the truck before anyone saw me