Longhaul is this typical or a bad driver?

You sound like a guy I used to work with...complaining about how he hadn't had a single day off in 3+ weeks while chastising me for showing more than 15 minutes on duty for loading and unloading because I showed the actual time it took. If I work 70 hours M-F, I sure as hell don't want to have to work the weekend because I falsified my log to only show 40 hours during the week (which was his problem). Nope. I was on line 3 or 4 from the time I left the house until I got back home...and if I couldn't make ends meet working M-F, working the weekend wasn't going to solve the problem. Quickest way to end the conversation with dispatch in their attempt to get you to work the weekend is to say "I'm out of hours." If you try explaining that you have family in town, your kid's birthday, or anything else you've been planning for months to do, "work comes first" is their response and "working the weekends is part of the job." Not if I don't have the hours, it isn't!

I chase money, not miles. I also work to live, not the other way around. M-F is for work. Weekend is for family.

 

His EZPass did not make a peep. No signal means the same as a red signal, time to go in.



They couldn't have picked a worse guy to make a trucking documentary about. It was almost like he was trying to break the record for most tickets in 3 months. This was pre CSA time so tickets like he got didn't matter as much to your record or jeopardize a trucker's job the same as it would today.

He kept saying the company dispatches him on broke down trailers, maybe so in those days because the company did not have to worry about CSA but still I have to believe they had procedures in place to send a breakdown message or call to take the equipment to the nearest repair place to get it fixed on the road. If they refused you simply took it to the weigh station and volunteered for an inspection thereby forcing the company to pay someone to come out to fix it, Again no CSA in those days so drivers did not take a hit for doing this like they would today.

All the log falsification he was doing and showing on camera just speaks to him hamming it up for the audience. Case in point was the fact he didn't know how to absorb or hide 18 extra miles into his paper logs or that 12,300 on his steers is OK. I'm sure a video like this is the genesis of CSA and ELD we are under today if some politically connected type saw it.

My take on it is the video is full of rookie mistakes and errors. Any modern day trucker watching this can point out all the wrong things and even the wrong wording and descriptions of things he's saying. The problem is 20 - 25 years down the line when trucking is all automated, people at that time watching this video will think this is the actual way it was out here.

That video is an embarrassment to all truckers. But it won't matter 100, 500 or 5000 years from now, the video will be hailed as something historic and something special to be preserved for all time.

 

The machines will look back and be glad that they overthrew their human overlords.

 

Thanks I was thinking while I was watching it why would he still be a truck driver with so many tickets because from my understanding some companies would fire drivers if you get 2 tickets before you can go to court. As a new driver still waiting to pick a Company to go to I am concern about the statement he made saying that the DOT can find anything wrong with the tractor trailer if they want. Is statement he made accurate at all or is he just horrible I doing pre-trips?

 

His statement is pure anxiety and he's just repeating crap he heard at some truck stop lunch counter. That said, yes they can find anything they want anytime they want. Chances are pretty low though, although I was once put out of service for a tiny piece of old hazmat placard that was wrong for my load. Scraped it off in less than 60 seconds and was put back in service. But the CSA report really hurt. First the points for improper placard plus 2 points for being out of service. I guess you could say that officer is saving frikken lives that day.

But here is your typical inspection experience caught on film--

 

I think I managed a little over 40K with a certain company for a little less than that time period. It worked out on paper. But I hate to think of the fines I would incur if the scales were awake to my operation. Memphis actually asked me to correct my 7 days on one of my very last trips home to Little Rock and I managed to do it by mapping out a toll road going back a few days and deducing 20% miles.

In this day and age of GPS miles that would not fly for a moment. But Memphis thought it was ok and that was all that mattered. But no one was happy because we all knew that particular 7 day log had problems.

 

DOT can find something. However if you are doing your best and your truck has new parts put on by the shop showing a progress in maintaince and so forth DOT will be less inclined to get really bad against you.

I have had one of my first encounters with DOT and handed him literally my first week's log ever and he glanced at it. It might as well have been written in Sanskrit and filled with violations. He told my trainer to take me to log school while he contemplates the tickets that might be written after this smoke if we are still around.

BYE!

The trainer had me in the passenger seat 3 weeks doing nothing but logs. I think we went through about 100 dollars in logbooks in that time period. 1.40 at a time. Probably the Keller ones. Then two logbooks, then three. And back to one. Then prelogging. Marking what will happen the following day provided you are rolling at exactly when that line is from sleeper, to pretrip to driving at 4:15 or something. That saved the extra few minutes fiddling with paperwork when there is only 45 minutes left in your 70.

 

That is one good driver... he probably is one heck of a lease owner now

 

Or maybe he got promoted to intermodal in Chicago