Give me your opinion

Some have made the comment about trusting each other and the fellow driver.
That is exactly what the company management does with each driver they hire.
The company trusts each driver to work by the rules set out, and agreed to by us drivers,
to follow company policy.

The driver that dropped the trailer broke 3 rules.
1) Padlock a loaded trailer
2) Don't drop a loaded trailer
3) If you drop a trailer put kingpin lock on it.

Them 3 rules seem pretty easy to follow and they don't take much effort to accomplish.

Question! You are in a parking lot. You see a driver leaving and he has a tire running flat. You try to reach him on radio. You honk horn at him when he drives by. No reaction from driver.
The driver turns out the lot towards an open weight station, You know its open because you just drove by them on your way to this truckstop.
You easily read the company phone number and the truck number on the side of truck.

Do you ignore what you just seen. Or do you give a quick call to the company to let them know their truck is about to get a ticket. Maybe they can reach the driver before he gets to far and get him to fix tire. Before crossing the scale.

Do you call the company or not? I have, not to "snitch" but to help them prevent a ticket and maybe an OOS violation.

When you own equipment and rely on others to "help" protect those assets. Really, where ever that help comes from. As an owner it is welcome.
Depends on the quality of driver if this dropped trailer incident was anything at all. Other than a simple oversight from the driver. Or is it continuing problem. If it is not reported to management they will never know until its too late.

As stated before, an incident like this could put a small company out of business. Then truly how does this affect rest of the employees and owners.

Really the only place "snitches get stitches" I ever see is in the movies. Play grounds of grade school.

Turn the other way and ignore it. This is the attitude the thieves want us to react with. Ohhh none of my business.
That's what you have insurance for. Yep and that insurance company will fight you tooth and nail to pay a claim, if they have any idea there was negligence involved.
There are a lot of variables in this story.
Did the driver report a dropped trailer to the truck stop before he left?
Does he do this often?

Good luck

 

I hear ya, driver. It's what I do. I'm actually trying to think of the last time I pulled a load that was less than a mil. 14 wide isn't big, but it is big enough that you need two spots in most parkinglots. On the high end loads, usually the customer will open up their doors and roll out the red carpet. I've called the customers and they tell their security people to let me in, drop the trailer (if we are waiting for a crane), even take me to dinner. Even if they dont, I still rather get the load to the customers. Once the load is safe, the worry is gone. The hard part is over.

 

It’s been several years ago and I don’t remember all the deatails, but on the $5m load, it was a lot more than the $5m replacement cost, it was loss of production and other charges if machine was damaged. I do know the extra insurance was a little over $6k cost to me.

I about had a stroke when the insurance company quoted it, but I passed it on to the customer and they were fine with it.