Pre-Trip & Post-trip Survey

Greetings;
Great stuff here!
Kinda new here, & would like to make a couple of comments.
I'm presently an O/O pulling company trailers (chemical & petroleum tankers), early retired from a company that slip seated at one terminal I worked. This terminal hauled crude oil, on our south Louisiana roads and cow trails. Trucks really get beat up in this operation, try to trade at 500,000 mi., as at that time a truck starts seeing a lot of shop time. I could fill a book with the UNUSUAL things that have happened shortly after a pre trip. Some are clearly driver error; (failure to spot a defect). Others were difficult to see, and not a common failure, so that area wasn't checked perhaps as thoroughly as it should have been.

Watched an interesting accident investigation show on television awhile back;
A couple in a Chevrolet Blazer were killed in a collision with a big rig, just a short distance from the terminal. All the truck driver could say was that he lost control, couldn't explain why. The investigation showed a broken frame rail on the truck, where the steering box bolted to the frame. The steering box hid the defect, until the break was large enough to allow the steer box to move out of place, hince the loss of control. Hard to believe, but they found the driver not responsible.

The previous poster who commented about writing up trucks cause the clutch was out of adjustment reminded me of my start at the above mentioned terminal; I wrote up a truck for the clutch, (it was borderline on the adjustment). Mechanic and the senior driver of that truck pointed out that different clutches have their "sweet spots", and the two previous trucks he drove had not had a clutch replacement in the 500,000 mi. time.
Normal clutch life was about 300K to 400K for us. That truck became a spare truck that I normally drove, being a spare driver, relief dispatcher, and mechanic helper. Because that old spare truck was so dependable, they kept it till 695,000 mi., with that same "out of adjustment" clutch.
Sorry for the long post, and once again, thanks for excellent reading!

 

Ref you remarks on the crash due to the steering sector concealing the broken frame.
I was co driver on a H63 Mack in 1958. We left out 1st trip, he drove about 80 mile (got us over in the MS delta-Flat cotton fields for soft landing) and stopped. Told me it woud be a good time for me to learn to use the 2 lever Mack system. I took off a ways and crossed a RR track in hi 2nd. Steering shook like a wet dog. He said:"You will have to stop dead still before it will clear up. Shop can't find anything wrong". We went and came to CA several trips. Learned to play bus driver and nearly stop at a
RR crossing.
We blew a head gasket near Casa Grande, AZ and limped it in to the Mack place in Phoenix. Cab tilted up for the head job. Mechanic on it turned and asked me: "Ya want to replace the u-joint while we are on it?" Told him had no problem with the u-joints-Truck ran and pulled smooth as silk.
He said no, reached out and shook the telescoping steer column's u-joint at the sector. Thing would flop a half inch each way-Nicely greased tho..
They replaced it and we could do the tracks crossways doing 60 then with no problem.
So many things can cause wrecks that driver and company shop are not able to pinpoint. Like with doctors, 2nd opinions are good.

 

I see lots of guys doing the "advanced" pre-trip... got tires? Yup. Got fuel? Yup. Ok, let's go.

I do a solid pretrip every morning, several walkarounds during the day, but do not do a post trip at night, since I will be pre-trip'ing that same truck in the morning.

 

For a while I was driving night shift on a dedicated route. 4 laps and park it. At the end of the night we have to fill the trucks up with fuel and record the amount of fuel used. Well that would normally be around 75-80 gallons. We have a small automotive style fuel nozzle at work that despenses the fuel. It takes a long time to fill the truck up. So during this time I would do a decent post trip. The I would park the truck and clean the windshield. I can't stand a dirty windshield. I would then do the rest of the post trip. I would always do a real good pretrip including the "duckwalk" under the trailer. I have uniforms to wear at work so to me it does not matter what I roll around it. Now we have/had a lot of trucks that would see no more than 4000 miles on them in a year. On those trucks I would do a quick pre trip since those trucks don't really pull trailers. When I do a short trip like 10 miles I really don't do a thorough pretrip. Just oil and lights. Because the truck is most likley coming out of the shop, and well you all know how employees and gather around something and start BSing, well some of them are actually doing something while they are standing there. The are looking at the trucks finding little things, such as a small nail in the tire. If something is broke on the trucks all I have to do is call the boss up and say hey this is broke, we need to replace it and bam it is done the next day usually by the driver/mechanic. When I am on trips I do both pre trip and post trip inspections and that is about once a month.