Owner operators our dangerous part 3 wtheck is up with closing the thread

See this is what gets me. Tonight I'm waiting for a door at a chicken plant in Sumter, SC and I see a guy bobtail in with an older FL Columbia to pick up a drop trailer. After he hooks it, I guess he needed to check something under the hood. He releases the hood latches and flings the hood open by the fender and lets the cables catch it from hitting the front bumper. "Leased to" is all over the doors.

Maybe he owns it and don't care? Maybe he's a paid driver and don't care? Point is, who really knows. I've got two trucks, one in much better exterior condition that the other. And I don't abuse either one of them. Even the uglier one costs big bucks to fix stuff I break from being less than careful with it. That one has a mashed in driver's headlight area due to someone backing into it. Even with the hood bruised up and looking pretty bad, I pull it open from the front and let it gently come to rest on the cables. Don't need to repair any more than I already need to.

Just because there's a big name on the side (or not) doesn't tell you squat. There's some companies out there putting some nice iron out on the road, and a lot of others rolling crap on wheels. Neither one really identifies an owner versus an employee.

 

Folks, im not going to lie! im an owner operator and sometimes im afraid of opening the hood for a pti, im afraid that my stress level will shoot up if i see something crack or a peeling belt. I know, there are consecuences for not opening that hood but again, leaving those hood release hatches alone will avoid something that i dont want to see!

 

dont ask, dont tell doesnt work in trucking

because if you dont find it, DOT will and it will cost you five times as much (at least this is what i tell myself when i dont want to open the hood)

 

Of all the level 1 inspections I have had, only Wyoming had me open the hood and look to see if there was an engine in there. That is out of 6.

 

If you were hauling great money loads,Managing your profits ,maintanence is the ''least'' of your worries and stress in the big picture.

 

Even with money set aside, you still don't like to spend it if you don't have to.

 

With company driving the repairs are, of course, free for you the driver. However you have almost zero control over where, or how long the repairs will take when they are done. You've got to put up with irate and often incompetent shop people who sometimes take hours to do a repair you could have done yourself with the right tools. They're on hourly after all.

My last company had a safety rating in the top 10 of the nation for maintenance, but honestly any time I found anything wrong with my truck I seriously had to think about whether to report it. I reported a marker light out on my trailer once, and waited 3 hours watching the two most rookie guys in my shop bumble over how to repair it.

With that company I was always on such a tight schedule that I'd most likely get a service failure if I bothered with stuff like that. Trailers are the worst because with all the dropping and hooking, company drivers tend to let stuff go for the next guy to deal with. I got quite a few trailers with defects I'm sure my predecessor either knew about or should have caught.

The company doesn't have to pay me if I'm not rolling, so what do they care? I may not actually have to pay the repairs, but if I get routed to a shop that's backed up, I may later find that the lost income from sitting might have been more than the cost of the repair anyway.

 

Really?

And what is that basedon, because its not personal experience.

 

I wonder if its a permanent ban or a time out for carkool..............

 

I like my governed 62 mph truck and drivers being run over in trk stops is a lack of observing there surroundings by both parties involved.