mistakes that let everyone know youre a rookie

Exactly!! Nail on the head buddy...

 

I learned an interesting lesson the other day at Coors in Golden Co, what a hellish nightmare that place can be...

You older drivers have already learned this one, and probably the hard way.

(wonder who will spot where i went wrong before it gets too obvious)

I back under the trailer, hook everything up, do my inspection and pull out of the spot.
So far so good, as I am crawling far enough out of the way so as not to block the path to the scales, my husband starts hollering at me that I need to strap the load before I move...something I have never done here. I always strap after scaling out and getting my paperwork so I of course, holler back to leave me alone, I know what I am doing, I've done this a thousand times yada yada yada....

Jump out, grab my straps and head to the back...muttering under my breath all the while about him telling me how to do my job. Get to the back, open the doors and what do I see?

You guessed it...beer, EVERYWHERE. All I can do at first is stare stupidly at it as if staring will make it go back to the way it was.

So now I have to go back up there and not only tell him he was (cringe here) right, I also have to tell him that I have dumped a load of beer over.

12 hours later, extra $ from the company to re-stack the beer, we were on our way.
We did finally manage to determine that I had not actually dumped the beer over, but Coors policy is once you attach to the trailer...its yours and they will NOT touch it. Regardless of whether it was their mistake or not. A policy like that seems to indicate that this kind of thing happens a lot and they want the individual carriers to eat the cost of their yard dogs slinging those trailers around like they are empty.

Long story short, I will never again move a trailer or even hook up to it without looking in the back if possible.

I was positive I was gonna get fired for that lol. I mean honestly...how do you explain that you dumped a load of beer while going 3 mph through a parking lot? Thank God we figured out that I had not done it.

 

Hmm, I got a bit more experience now, but I made mistakes in my day.

Made a wrong turn and ended up in a residential neighborhood not big enough for a truck. Oh, that was fun!

when dropping a trailer, lowered the gear, pulled the kingpin, but pulled out with hoses and electrical attached.

Go to fuel and realize one of my hoses isn't long enough to reach my tank. (big rookie mistake...there is no hiding having to get in your truck to line up the blindside tank better)

Backed up to a loading dock and thought i did perfect, but then realized I was quite crooked and there was 5 inch behind my trailer on the one side. (us flat beders rarely back up to a dock, we norm back into a bay {with sides} or into a building so they can side load).

Drove to the wrong destination because I used the qualcom address and not the BOL address. (didn't check that they matched)

Went through a closed weigh station because I forgot if the sign said open or closed

tried to start in 5L instead of 1st (13 speed trans), tried to downshift into 8th instead of 4th

lost gears on uphill downshift and had to come to complete stop. (no hiding that road hazard)

Delivered an hour late because i thought the delivery was in central time, not eastern

Stepped off my trailer to quick while wearing a fall protection harness (it catches you before you step on the ground lol)

Backed up to a curb and ripped of my mudflaps (split axel with weights that hang low)

 

Pulled over onto a paved shoulder of a 2 lane country road in the "wee" hours to .... "wee". Got back in the cab to break out the thermos of hot water to make another cup of coffee. As I'm starting to pour the hot water a couple of trucks pass me, really rocking the truck.

"Geez!", I think, "Those trucks must have really been moving fast to make my truck rock like that!"

Then I hear another truck approach and my cab rocks again. I duck down to look out the windshield to get the identity of the speeder...

... and see nothing but grass.

I'd forgotten to set the parking brakes.

The truck was doing a slow motion dive down off the roadway. Fortunately the ground was hard and only the steer wheels were off the pavement by the time I set the brakes. I jumped into the driver's seat and backed back up onto the shoulder. Took me a while to clean up the spilled coffee... I didn't really need coffee after that, I was wide awake.

 

More 'rookie' mistakes:

Taking all day to back into a relatively easy dock

Not knowing how and when to use the sleeper provision

Quit one bottom feeder to drive for another bottom feeder

Not knowing which way to slide the tandems/5th wheel when the drive axle(s) is overweight

 

I wasn't paying attition and blew the scales in Mississippi. My prepass never when off. so i didn't even know it was there

 

Were you on I-55?

 

Do you not read signs?..... Not trying to be mean, but man that's pretty important.

 

It's difficult to read signs when you are replying to 300 Qualcomm messages about safety from your company....

 

Oh, it has several times.
I was just being facetious.