Is hauling modular buildings a starter job for OSOW?

Yep, you are what you do.

 

Just delivered half of a new CDL classroom to Knight. Not on setup crew yet, so just spotted one of them. Not that long ago I was in CDL school myself.

 

Well, the tire thing is coming true. I'm sort of appalled that a large corporation that claims to be safety focused would release a building to go a few hundred miles with old tires on it, especially since they just refurbed everything else.

 

Speed limit for buildings in AZ is 55. I was in a convoy and the driver behind me said a deputy followed me for many miles waiting for me to speed up after passing him sitting, but I was paid hourly.

The tires they use are a joke to begin with, maybe $30 for rim and tire made overseas in a slave country, if they bother to put new ones on, sometimes the building gets pulled out of a lot where it sat for years and the tires are missing strips of casing or tread but they wanted it moved "just up the road".

One trick with tires is to run low inflation, the cheap tires heat up and most of them come with 120 PSI off the new pile. Starting with half of that helped, but at a rest stop they'd be up in the 80's-90's again from being cheap hysteresis-prone tires. At 80 mph they would be a public hazard. If two or more blow at once the whole building could slew around the road violently or roll.

Sometimes the prep crew forgets to tighten the suspension up and a whole axle shifts over a bump and locks tires together. Some drivers don't pin the doors shut and they could fly open, inside is often the hardware for anchoring them, which is heavy iron parts.

I always thought from watching them as a kid that the process looked stupid and after I did it I found that my initial impression was correct, the people I worked for were ignorant about DOT rules or safety, didn't know or care how to inspect a tractor.

It's all about production and cost cutting and who cares if the driver is lying on the roadside under a building changing a tire, because they underbid and got the run. They'd run without permits, with known faulty equipment, kept going because of cost-cutting. If I ran a state DOT I'd inspect every one of those haulers.

What I did learn was to take 60 x 14' down a busy two-lane. through construction zones, and into a dirt lot and situate it on marks. And I made a mental note that I'd be happy to work OSOW if it was a safe company. But buildings, my advice is keep your distance from those halfarses.

And remember when you go to pass them you'll blow the rear away from you and that will pull the front toward you as you reach it, so expect a swerve toward you as you pass and leave extra room.

At the time I worked for the "best" company in the area who serviced the largest building company in the game, everyone had 30 years plus. Can't imagine what it's like at an "unsafe" company.