Newbie Diary

Boy, time is flyin' by.

A bit to tell from this last week, because... Well, because I make mistakes, and that's when we learn things, like "What not to do"

Let's take a few moments, to recap what we've all been taught about hooking up trailers, after you hook up the trailer, check it. Now, having hooked up many trailers in my now 5 months of solo driving, I'd gotten used to... "glancing" into the 5th wheel, to spot the jaws locking the kingpin into place.
Turns out, sometimes, "Glancing" isn't adequate, which I discovered on a Sunday morning. Because my trailer wasn't nearly as hooked up as I thought it was. So, my trailer slides on out of my 5th Wheel as I'm pulling it out and turning right, I hear something odd, so I stop. The kingpin slid out, and down the frame-rail of my tractor, and after I stopped, it leaned to the side, and rested it's drivers' side front corner on my drive tires.

There's really nothing quite like staring at an 7 foot tall load of large steel pipe strapped to a flatbed, leaning at a 45 degree angle, to really make you appriciate someone else's skill at load securement. I take a walk over to maintenance-type folk, point at my trailer and say "BAH!" Appearently, this either happens frequently, or incredibly rarely, at Marshfield, because I get a small crowd of maintenance at my trailer, marvelling at my artistic gravity-sculpture. and someone runs off to find the action plan for what to do when good trailers, do bad things.

Turns out the plan is: A) FIX IT! and B) Call Everyone with an extention in Marshfield and tell them! We fix the trailer, through the cunning use of the landing gear, coupled with me lowering drive suspension. and then they inspect the trailer for defects, and put my tractor into the shop for a similar inspection.

The purpose of the inspections, is to make sure that there is no mechanical reason for the disconnect to have occured.

One thing I'd like to say about the Maintenance folk of Roehl, In Gary, if you have a problem, you get that subliminal feeling that they're thinking: "Oh, man... Now I have to do something? Crap.. I was doing just fine doin' nothin' But now I have to do something, and it's going to screw up my break..." But, conversely, in Marshfield, you get something along the lines of "OH Thank God! We were bored out of our minds over here.. finally something to do!"

They replace 3, out of 6 of my brake chambers, because they were busted. wasn't from the trailer, they've been having those particular models, appearently. fixed an assortment of things on my truck.. just because it was there, I'm not sure, but I think they may have actually did an Oompa-Loompa-Esque song-and-dance number, when I wasn't paying too much attention...

But, they finish, and my Tractor is not to blame, the trailer is not to blame. That leaves *me*. My fault, my responsibility, my problem. They let my pick up my trailer and go. It was a multi-stop load, I finish up Monday afternoon. I've now been kicking myself about it for 30 hours. and my Dispatcher wants to talk to me. "The Talk" right now, revolves around "What could have happened" I could have dumped a trailer on the interstate, I could have had the trailer plow into a church, I could have dumped the load onto a short-bus of retarded children in wheelchairs!! what would I have done then? Huh?!

The answer he didn't want to hear? turns out was "Uh.. I would have Called Highway Watch and told them I'd stopped a group of dwarf terrorists?" THAT ISN'T FUNNY! "then you're not imagining someone trying to speak Farsi with a lisp."

But, it ends with I'm going to end up back in Marshfield, and work with someone on drop & hooks, and some version of administrative punishment that they'll think of later.

I'll continue this story after I've taken a nap.