noob mistake with 8 years exp.

About a week ago I made the mistake of backing up too far and the kingpin was in front of the 5th wheel smh.
Luckily I was still in the yard so the guy (the one that moves trailers around) was able to lift the trailer so I could drive out from under it.

 

...and on some trucks the hand brake is actually designed to remain applied if you fully apply it. Drive a frameless end dump and you use that feature every time you dump off a load. It's also handy for sliding trailer tandems & 5th wheels. The supply line to my air-slide 5th wheel is even routed through the hand valve....gotta flip the switch AND have the trailer service brakes applied with the hand valve before the pins release to slide the 5th wheel.

 

im driving a prostar. when i push the trolley down it stays down.. on the columbia i was driving and all other trucks i can rmemeber if i lowered it it would automatically come back up. and i was able to move a lil bit if i spun the wheels a lil to get going. I had a heavy load. i did have to force it into a dock so the customer could get his stuff off the trailer. thats when i searched for the issue. im no mechanic and i didnt even know what i was looking for but i was really looking around for nothing the whole time

 

Older Freightliners do not spring back up. That's how I used to check my brake lights during a Pretrip.

 

On my very first stop I only had to drop a friggin trailer...I get there and the 5th wheel release mechanism on this truck was different than the others I've driven and I can't figure out how to lock the arm...I spend a long time before calling our shop upon which they sent out road service...He gets there, grabs the handle, pulls it out and wallah...I said, "WTF did you do?"...He showed me and sunofabiatch, you had to lift it to lock it...I was so embarrassed and told him I'll never hear the end of this...He said he'd take care of that and told them something small broke charged them $50 and drove off...

 

yea i drove a old fld condo years ago and thats how i also check my brake lights. other trucks that didnt stay down i usually wedged something to keep it down. or if i was in a rush i just didnt check them at all.

 

lol walstib, yea i felt embarrassed too. i just felt bad for rroad service to have to come all the way out for nothing. i had a feeling too that it was prolly something really dumb. plus all day long i kept telln myself "i coulda been at this stop by now....., or i coulda been home by now...######" i know for sure tho next time something locked up thats the first thing im checkin

 

lol this has also happened to me. I just kept pulling and pulling and pulling. Nothing would happen it would just go right back. So I asked a lady Co worker to help me and she went under and BOOM unlocked smh. After I disconnected I later found out about pulling then lifting it to that slot... Slightly embarrassed..

 

I too pulled on it like it was a lawn mower!...I even went as far as to set my flip-video cam on the bumper so it could record whether or not the locking mechanism was even opening! LOL

 

The Air Force sent me to Mizzou for Grad School. I got my PhD there in Physics. I was use to the pace of schooling at the Air Force Academy and could not believe how much free time I had. Free time for me is a bad thing. I suffer from depression and free time just causes problems. Therefore, I took a job with the railroad while going to school. The job I had was as a carman. Those are the guys who repair the railcars. It is great experience in trucking as the brakes are the same systems. Air brakes are air brakes. Just bigger on railcars. Hoppers, freight cars. Everything is the same. Mistakes also.

When I first started, I had to work with that woman. The one girl who worked for the railroad in our shop. Jees. They know I think women have no place in the work force. But they gave her to me anyway. Or me to her. She had been there three years and I was brand new.

The car we were working on was a plug door box car. The door had come off in a derailment. In order to rehang the door we had to put a new door rail on. The door rail is made by us from a piece of flat steel. About 3/8s thick and four inches tall. It is 20 foot long or so. There are hangers that attach it to the railcar using bolts. The bolts called for are 3 1/2 inch long. We got all but the last bolt attached. We being I. She sat on her a s s in the break room for the entire four hours until lunch. The last bolt would not thread. The damage from the derailment left the side of the car bent too much. We had to some how flatten the side of the metal so it would let us get the nut enough of a bite to start the threading process. I heated the metal with a torch. I got C clamps out. I used 100 ton press jacks to compress the metal. I got 8 other guys over there helping me. We used sledge hammers, we got fork trucks pushing. We did everything we could possibly think of but NOOOOOOOO. Nothing worked. We had no way to finish the job. Finally, MS. Carman decides she has spent enough time reading the paper and graces us with her presences. After all it is lunchtime and she needs me to take her out to the diner for lunch. She takes one look at what we had be trying to do for four hours and says, "Jeff, why don't you use a longer bolt." The place got so quiet.

I still think women belong in the kitchen. But okay, she had a point. Size does matter.