Maverick Driver general bs thread

Small? I made almost a couple thousand $ on the mpg bonus last year. That's why I am concerned with mpg.

 

I'm going to get my CDL soon and right now I'm stuck with deciding between maverick and TMC

 

On 20 coming out of Birmingham your not going to get great fuel milage at least I don't and i live in Birmingham but east of Atlanta of I20 is smooth sailing.

 

Keep doing your research, you'll get unstuck.

 

Yesterday I'm loading at Arcelor Mittal in Columbus, OH. Very nice guy running the shipping department by the way. I'm picking up a 47,520 pound coil. Just ahead of me (we're inside the building) is a guy pulling for a company that will remain nameless to protect the stupid. Ok, I'll give you their initials BTC. I come out of the shipping dept. and he is setting up. He has no coil pad, two racks and two 8' timbers. The coil racks are spaced 6' apart. So I just have to ask, what ya pickin' up? he tells me 47 thousand and something coil. So here I stand scratching my head and biting my tongue trying to figure out how to proceed. So I ease into it buy asking him what his coil racks are rated for. He doesn't know. So I explain to him that his timbers are going to break or bow, then his chains will go loose, then binders will release and so on. And additionally I added (while I had the pulpit) If you get a full DOT inspection they are going to put you out of service, your carrier will have to get another truck and a crane to properly load the coil. You will be out of a job. I thought that would be enough so I left out the part about if your load comes off and you kill someone.......

Now understand I gave this education in what I thought was a friendly manner, just trying to help out a fellow driver. He knowingly nods and then goes off on the company for awhile and I go back to doing my thing (six coil racks by the way). He goes ahead and loads just as he was. So this puts me in an interesting position. I've already talked to the driver so that's useless, do I tell Arcelor Mittal, do I call the carrier, alert the DOT?

What would you do or what have you done in the past? I chose to do nothing more than write this blog and pray for the young man. I think I should have done more.

???????

 

Perhaps ASK him if he would mind "err'ing on the side of caution" for you and placing a few more coil racks down, alluding to the fact that it is always better to be safe than sorry, and that you are just trying to make sure that he gets home safe and nobody gets hurt? If that didn't work, perhaps looking up your point in the DOT handbook we keep in our trucks. And then, I would alert the plant... I think.... Thats tough, but, d@m#! Its drivers like that who are the ones in the stories about their load coming off their trailer and..............

 

My financial security is entirely dependent upon my company's. Don't bite the hand that feeds.