Skills learned after truck driver training & being out w/ trainer

You should write an autobiography for sure.

 

Baby wipes are your friends. You might think you pinched off a clean one but 4hrs of your butt cheeks rubbing together will prove that lie. I can't count how many butt mud smelling drivers I've been offended by....

 

I love whites, I have gotten nothing but great service out of them, beats the hell out of the custom boots I bought in Texas that were hand made by some llama guy.

 

Hope you don't mind an Aussie giving you some of his tips? The one key thing i learnt all those years back when i worked for a major transport company they were very strict on driver safety and taught us how to drive defensively this kind of technique has always remained a permanent thought pattern and influence on my style of driving. Always thinking ahead always watching what other motorists are doing or what they might do.And being prepared to take the appropriate actions required to avoid a serious incident.

 

I learned that I will always carry a 50 foot length of good, strong rope on my truck.

I first put rope on the truck after I had to make a produce load legal by sliding a couple short pallets back. Another driver loaned me a rope and we tied the back two pallets to a big concrete block and I pulled my truck forward. Load became legal without 3 hour wait to have load re-balanced.

After that, I have used the rope quite a bit.

Multiple times, I have tied the rope around bent mud flap brackets, and to the DOT bumper of the trailer, then adjusted the tandems forward a couple notches. Bam. Mud flap bracket no longer rubbing the tire.

I once tied a loose APU muffler in place with rope. Had to tie and untie it one night, so I could use the APU.

I have managed to get a trailer rear axle tire back on bead once with the rope, by squeezing the center of the tire all the way around, using the DOT bumper and the inflated tire in front of the off bead tire, with the rope attached to both, and all the way around the flat tire, with the rope crossing free at the top. The auto inflator took care of it from there, long enough to get me 5 miles to a shop. I will not do that again if I can avoid it. Took way too much effort and was extremely annoying to get just right.

Here's a couple pics of one of my early DOT bumper fixes. The mud flap on this one had a hole burned in it from rubbing against the tire, so I ran it through the hole rather than wrapping the mud flap around the bracket before tying the rope around it.

 

MacGyver has a tear in his eye.

 

Yes, I was an Eagle Scout. Or, rather, I still am, I suppose.

I have forgotten most of my knots, but I can still remember the right way to tie a square knot, and I will never forget the bowline knot, which might well be the most useful knot ever devised.