Schneider

Hired for bulk tanker division in CA. First got on with no training on deliveries and routes. Just sent me to the railyard to pick up certain chasis and trailers. I hit the ground blind and went through hell to figure things out. Never quit. Finally started getting the hang of it.

Then they wanted me to park a tank in a certain spot that had barely any room to back into. It's 2am pitch black. I backed up and ding a trailer next to me. Small damage to the metal wheel guard fender. Goes on my record as an accident 3 weeks later.

Since then there's been many crazy days in which their equipment was malfunctioning and just causing whole work days of pure stress. I neve quit and just fought through it all. Never hear a word from management.

Now I'm about 2 months after the little backing incident. Somehow I hooked to a chasis and the king pin went into the handle of the 5th wheel release arm. Causing it to bend. Was gonna take it to repair shop to fix it the next day. But my driver leader tells me she scheduled extra training for me because of the little backing incident from 2 months ago.

The trainer comes in from Houston and notices my 5th wheel release arm. He says I high hooked and now I have to call accidents.

I call accidents and now it's a whole big deal.

Safety department, my driver leader and another higher up all on a conference call letting me know it's a serious offense and asking for details.

I hung up the phone. Didn't finish the discussion. Figured I'd be fired anyways. It's technically 2 accidents on my record already and I've only been driving for 4 months.

So I hung up and said "F em"

The good news is I've read that those accidents are not recordable on my DOT record.

But it still sucks big time to have no income for however long it takes to find another job.

So I'm back to looking for another job.

 

Thanks I'm glad you asked. I honestly 100% don't believe I high hooked, because I got out and lowered the chasis down to make sure it wasn't too high.

As far as going off to the side, The empty chasis is a little tricky. I can't line my tires up exactly where the side end of the chasis is because it misses the king pin. So I decided to back in to where my tires were just 1 inch underneath the side end of the chasis if that makes sense. Kind of hard to explain. Anyways I backed up. Gave it a tug and noticed it wasn't hooked. I then pulled forward, moved over and attempted to back into it again. For some reason it just wouldn't connect. I then got out to check and noticed the handle of the release arm completely bent straight. It's one of those things where I really don't know how it happened. I could have very well high hooked. The only reason I'm in denial is because I remember lowering the chasis before I hooked and looking to make sure it was low enough. So that could have been a miss judgement on my part.

 

Yeah that's kind of eating me up. Another driver told me the same, that it's possible I wasn't going to be fired. But he also told me previously that high hooking was a fireable offense. Well if somehow they call me back and want to continue, I'll stay on forsure until I find something else.

 

Sorry about that. I was trying to move the post from the other thread to this thread.