Scraped trailer

And this is why they have the policy to count stuff like ripped off mud flaps as a wreck.
It makes the driver afraid to report it by buying a new mud flap.
It's 100% designed to push business expenses to the driver. It's not quite illegal, but it's immoral as hell.

 

Yep, that's right, a 170,000 dollar Pete with a custom paint job, that's on it's first run,driven by a big burly biker that the only thing he loves more than his bike is his truck. As he climbs out and approaches the left side of your truck you notice that he has just pulled the top off of an extra large can of whoopa$$!
Yep running into things out here can be quite hazardous to your health.

 

I agree. Every driver I know has put a dent or a scrape in something. That includes me and that includes everyone in management in our company since they were all drivers at one time.

Mudflaps? We have a stack of them in the shop. If you tear one off you get one out of the stack and put it on.

We don't have an escrow program to pay for driver's mistakes. Usually if a driver makes a mistake...a crumpled fender, a bent bumper, sidewall damage to a tire... it will be a long time before he makes another. That makes him a better driver. Why charge him money or fire him? He'll get grumbled at and the guys in the shop might hang the damaged part on the "wall of shame". In most cases that's enough.
We can't grab a guy off the street or put some truck driving school grad into one of our trucks and expect the level of performance we need to keep us successful. It's better for us to work with the drivers we have and recognize that sometimes things are going to happen.

That being said, if we had a driver that was continually hitting stuff or tearing up equipment or pissing off customers, or anything else that was costing us a steady stream of money we'd probably fire him. We can't afford that either.

 

OK to the OP, report it, because if he doesn't and they find out, he will be fired anyway.

By the way, how much do you guys think a repair like this costs to fix?



Or this one.



See to many of you, these are cheap fixes but they are not.

 

That's true.. but those are not scrapes by a long shot.
Those are reasons for homicide.

 

Those two represent two "mistakes" made by other drivers who hit my trailers. The first one was done on one of my new reefer trailers and cost a lot of money to fix, the driver said "well I bumped it a little". He was as dumb as a stone, didn't realize that he ripped the skin and took out the insulation.

The second one the idiot ran and we caught it all on the camera system which was running while the driver was in truck stop. it not just caught the actual damage but also the name of the truck and the driver getting out to see what he hit, then catching him taking off.

When my manager called the company, they instantly denied it so he sent them the video and the estimated costs to get it repaired plus downtime. They said it wasn't their truck that did the little scrap, so we had to threaten them with legal action to get them to pay.

 

Top one might be a few panels, but that bottom one's a doozie. Did the second one affect the frame?

EDIT: Didn't realize the first was a reefer too.

 

The top one will be roughly $2,500 depending on the area in the US that does the work if they replace the entire panel and do not put a patch in there. The bottom one, if it was just the rail and you replaced the entire rail, will be around $6,000. Then you add the replacement of the entire panel and you can get north of $8,000.

 

Don't forget to add the down-time when that trailer could have been out making money.
That's the real killer.

 

Those aren't minor scrapes, especially the bottom picture. If I did that while driving for a small fleet owner or owner-operator, I'd report it to him right then. Those guy have too much blood, sweat, and tears involved and I'd do everything in my power to make it right.
Different story with a mega that has thousands of trucks and 10's of thousands of trailers. Dealing with those outfits, I and my trainee/co-driver take top priority and the dinged trailer takes a lower rung on the ladder.