Just some questions came up after the I70 crash in CO.

The Americans who matter aren't on the highways. Haven’t been since airline de-reg in late 1970s. The road is for The Disposables.

Howsithangin’ buttwipe?

 

You’re going to upset the Bleeders.

 

Not to mention the stupid pay still offered at .35 a mile. The same it's been offered 40 years straight.

Best I could do is close to .50 which was 20 years ago. Or $7.46 per hour when converted to HOS style hours.

Our minimum wage is set to go to 9.25 this year and 11.00 in two years. That means companies should offer me at least .75 to be equal to the .50 20 years ago.

There is simply no room for .75 in 2.00 mile freight. Because you need more than 1.25 to beat the nut on all your expenses that month to the truck.

 

This kid hated trucking. One of the many lessons here is if you don’t like and respect a job enough to do it right, then GTF out.

 

I think you’re not far off. He started with this company a week before the accident and was intrastate in TX for his entire driving “career” before this. With only a week outside of Texas it might have been his first time down a mountain

 

When i was running a manual instead of this stupid auto.. The way id downshift on a downgrade is stab break all the way down to the low-mid speed of the next lowest gear... So for exaple lets say 7th gear the bottom end is around 40mph and the top is around 50mph.. So if ur in 8th going 55 and gaining to much speed and want to drop a gear.. Hit the breaks nice and firm get it down to 40-45 , grab the clutch rev rpm up and bring er in to 7th gear. By the time u get it in to gear it should be around the mid-upper range of that gear and engine brake should take u all the way down.... It always worked for me, not sure if that answered your question or not

 

Sometimes I take it down to 800 that way you can slap engine a little and get into next more quickly. But I don't recommend underdriving RPM range while shifting for those who have no finesse.

 

Colorado is my stomping grounds, been driving for 5 years, over 500,000 miles here and in Wyoming. I was trained in these mountains, properly by my trainer.

You have to be in the right gear and your jakes on high. Proper gear is 5th or 6th. If I’m lighter, I can get away with 7th gear in a manual.

Going down Vail and Eisenhower in either direction, and that final grade down to Morrison (mm 259), I might touch my brakes three times maximum on each, if that. Most times I never have to touch them. If I do it’s because of some four wheeler. Not a difficult stretch to navigate in dry conditions if you know what you are doing. Winter conditions are a whole different animal and require more technical driving abilities and chain-up knowledge and abilities.

Lately, there’s been so many nasty bad trucking accidents up there, I’m starting to think Colorado needs to mandate some sort of mountain driving training and endorsement. It needs to include dry weather, rain and snow training. The number of spinouts, accidents and truckers who don’t know how to navigate up and down an icy/snowpacked grade or how to chain up is becoming a burden to the state’s resources and law enforcement personnel.

Furthermore, these accidents and spinouts are 100% preventable and unnecessary.

Having been out and trained by a competent trainer when I was with Werner, I was told repeatedly by my Driver Manager to get off the truck before I had completed my 270 hour regimen. I refused and had words with my terminal manager who got her to back off. I completed my 270 hours (approximately 7 weeks).

Additionally, most of these megas that drivers get started with have ridiculous expectations for student drivers. May trucking (when I went through their orientation before I started with Werner after May couldn’t provide me with a female trainer in a timely manner (males cant train females at May) spends 2-4 weeks on a driver (going off what I was told by the Denver terminal manager at the time). If the driver doesn’t get it by then, they’ll never get it.

That said, I don’t think 2-4 weeks is even near sufficient for a new driver to fully learn and grasp the enormous responsibility of driving a commercial motor vehicle. 80,000 lbs moving at 65 mph is equivalent to 5.2 million ft/lbs of force on any object that it strikes. A driver can do a helluva lot of damage with that kind of force.

To be blatantly honest, I don’t feel my 7 weeks was sufficient for myself, because I had 3 preventables my first 6 months after completing training and getting my own truck. I wished I had had maybe 4-5 weeks more. I’m fortunate my preventables were small in nature and involved no one else. Cost me a lot of embarrassment but relatively small damage in cost. A dented fairing, a tandem tire stuck in the mud and a dented bumper of a truck I backed into at a consignee. Thankfully, I learned from my mistakes and havent had any more since (except for some unlucky antelope that ran out in front of me) then.

Finally, there seems to be NO standardized requirements for training a student, no mandated curriculum that a trainer has to follow and no checks and balances.

A student is only good as the training they receive. I’m of the opinion it is time for a training curriculum to be developed and indoctrinated, all trainers have to follow it, sign off on each thing, students must display competence in each thing. Falsification is grounds for loss of the ability to train. Trainers should have to attend a specialized training course they have to attend and pass and be certified to train.

If a student learns fast and does everything satisfactorily, they pass their training. Length of training depends on the rate at which they learn. They don’t get off the truck until they complete EVERYTHING on the training curriculum list.

Minimum 8 weeks but maximum 16.

Commercial airline pilots and train engineers all are required to have way more training than a truck driver does. But as an aggregate, truckers do entirely way more damage than train and airplane wrecks do combined on an annual basis.

At some point it has to stop. Last week’s accident was avoidable, preventable and did not need to happen. Those people did not have to die.

That young man didn’t have proper mountain training. Wasn’t taught how to descend a grade properly, gear down or utilize his jakes. He most likely couldn’t read those runaway truck signs and signs warning of steep grades and sharp curves since he isn’t English literate (which is a requirement of the FMCSA to hold a CDL in America.)

Also his company has numerous brake and mechanical violations, failed inspections and driver fitness violations. That truck shouldn’t have been on the road. That driver had no business in those mountains without proper training. That company had no business being in service with all the violations. 100% preventable.

As much stupidity as I see out there on a day to day basis, I’m fed up with drivers who have been substandardly trained and allowed to skate on certain aspects of trucking (lack of chain-up training, backing training, and the other more difficult aspects of trucking) and then put out on the road to be a danger to everyone else.

 

Agree except:
1. There is no evidence that the driver was illiterate in English in fact there has been reports to the contrary

2. It’s difficult to say that truck -trailer shouldn’t have been on the road for its brake problems since we don’t know the condition of the brakes that day. If you’re saying they should’ve had their authority revoked for safety and that’s why it should’ve been off the road then yeah I can get behind that