I screwed up :(

I had to get my truck winched out from the shoulder of a highway today! Now, I'm going to be a little vague here for the obvious reason, but....

My truck initiated the stop engine sequence for no apparent reason, meaning i had about 10 seconds to stop or it would make me stop. Well, there was a paved shoulder, no truckstops around, so i stopped on the shoulder for a minute. Could not find a cause for the shutdown, so i fired it back up and it ran perfectly with no lights or anything. I guess it was just a fluke. (and yes, i checked fluids). The road was fine but the shoulder was a bit icy, so i put it in a little bit higher starting gear than normal. Well, the truck slid sideways, rigtht off the pavement, into mud. My passenger steer tire was up to the top lugnuts in the mud. Infact, the tow truck operator was worried that he wasnt going to be able to get me out! He got me out, no damage to the truck, except for part of the plastic bumper cover...which was already broken. And knocked the truck out of alignment, but it was already out of alignment. And now my qualcomm "incoming message" display on the dashboard doesnt work, but that actually stopped working about an hour before i got stuck. Weird.

I still have a job at the moment. I continued to shipper, and picked up my load. Its a really #### load tahts 100 miles and delivers in the morning (im out of my 70 and cant take a 34 cause im going home this weekend), so it wasnt pulled from me or anything. I called weekend dispatch to ask if i was going to get in trouble, and they said probably not and even if i did itd probably be a writeup...but also, nobody on the weekend actually has the authority to do disciplinary action.

Im totally freaked out. I never even knew you could just slide off the road like that. This week is the first time ive ever driven an 18 wheeler in winter weather. I feel like i've wrecked my lifestyle. I feel like I could essentially be replaced by any warm body the way this industry is these days!

if they fire me i hope they atleast get me to indianapolis so i can get a ride home and get all my stuff out of this truck. I kind of accumulated a lot!

 

Thats what i figured, but i've had a really crappy year and getting fired would completely wreck another year for me. Lost everything i owned because of a trucking company this year.. This is the first problem i've had with this company besides log violations, none of which were given any acting upon besides automatic written warnings.

There were two good things about this incident though. It didn't screw me out of any money, because i didnt have any to make today anyway (LOL, makes up for yesterday's high miles), and i didnt get a ticket. A penna state trooper came to the scene but seemed to be a very cool officer. I saw him and was like, "OH NOES THE FUZZ!". he came up to me, and said, "You cant park here!", with a grin on his face. I pointed to the tire tracks in the slush, and said, "well...you see what happened, dont you?", and he said "yup.". Asked if i had a wrecker on the way and then i asked him, "so am i gonna be in trouble with you?", he said nope and left. Seemed like he just wanted to make sure i was alright. I bet he's seen it happen before, pennsylvania and all. I suspect someone probably called the cops thinking it was an actual accident..that was the only officer i saw all day! The truck and trailer were at an odd angle because only the tractor slid, so unless you looked at it closely, it looked like i jackknifed.

 

Eh, its werner. A quick look at my posting history would reveal that anyway, i post about them a lot. It's not that they did anything to make me feel like i was getting fired, I just tend to expect the worst from trucking companies.

Honestly, i feel like the whole problem couldve been avoided with a big bag of salt. But i didnt have any, so..what was i gonna do.