stupidest thing u have done or seen a rookie do?

back when i drove for schneider, in '96, i found out the hard way what a "load from hell" was. it was a load of kimberly -clark stuff, 4 stops in mass and r.i., bad directions for each stop, and to make matters worse, the idiots that loaded it never bothered to wrap the pallets, or mark them for each stop. i got to the first one, and found the whole load in a big pile. had to look at the bills and dig through the load for every case!!, then the second stop which i had to back off a 4-lane street at a cvs pharmacy, and hand-unload that. then got to me 3rd stop, no dock, just a regular back door. i back up to it, and fail to notice the big tree branch approaching my passenger side mirrors--CRUNCH!!!! it wiped those mirrors clean off of that side...

 

sounds like inproper load securment...which is driver responsiablity??
im kidding about that.... but serious on the same hand... now i dont no if you picked the trl up and it was already pre-loaded and sealed,
but the reason i bring this up is because at my company we have one shipper that is all drop and hook and we pick up sealed trls.... now, what gets me is that when i go to them to pick up, i have to go through security, go drop my empty, then go to the other lot and get my loaded trl and then go through securuty to have them check my papers and seal#... when i deliver i find that every load is on pallats, and their are never straps holding the load back, and when we drop we drop trls with straps left inside, and when i/we open the doors we find the straps just hanging there never used.... if i/we were to get a dot inspection and they decide to pop the seal and check the load out and find the straps just hanging their, can dot write me/us up for inproper load securment? or something like that, and if so who is responsable for that ticket? no doubt it would be me/us as the driver who gets the tricket im sure....
just wondering...

 

i dont believe so. if its sealed before you get it and you CANNOT break the seal they have on the trl then you shouldnt be liable for a load securement. Diesel bear should know what the interpretations are on this one

 

i was running north on I75 in ohio and we had a construction zone coming up, losing the left lane. the two trucks in immediately in front of me were doing a rolling roadblock. i'm in the granny lane and a loaded flatbed next to me in the hammer lane. now, the hammer lane was open for almost a half mile in front of the blocking truck, and the flatbed next to me was PISSED!!!! he was literally screaming every profanity in the book and some new ones i'd never heard. he finally yelled, "SCREW IT!" (paraphrase) and he jumped into the median, put the hammer down and passed the blocking truck.
i have told several drivers this story and no one has believed me yet, which is ok, because i saw it with my own eyes and i have a hard time believing a driver would do something like that.

 

DUmbest thing I did was in my first year of driving. I don't remeber where the load was going, but I had to go I-40 past Asheville N.C. My thinking was there isn't any real grades in the east. The reasoning for this was from being trained in the west. Well y'all probably guess it. I came down Black Mtn. Needless to say my brakes were a little soft when I got to the bottom. That taught me to do 2 things. First don't get overconfident. Second is go down long, steep grades as close to the beginning of the day as possilbe.

 

Your very first load...the engine light comes on...you get the truck stuck somewhere that you never would have been except for that...

and you pay the bill????

so like are you shootin' for sainthood or sumpin? I know I know...ya needed yer job,you are a saint though.

 

as a student I'll fully admit that I'm not experienced at all.

But compare me to some of the guys in my class, and you would think I'm the greatest driver ever.

We have one guy who refuses to check the kingpin when backing to a trailer. And sure enough, one time he skips it right over the 5th wheel. Thankfully all we had to do was dump the airbags and we were low enough to get out of the problem, but I was cranky that afternoon as it was.

This same driver also doesn't realize that he needs to merge to another lane if another truck is trying to get on the highway. We were on a 4 lane highway and a truck was on the shoulder starting to merge back onto the highway. Rather then merging to clear the lane, he stayed in his lane barely giving enough room to pass and forcing the other driver back onto the shoulder... And to top that off, about 2 miles further there was a tow truck hooking up to a van and there were people walking around, and yet again he refused to merger into the other lane.


That was the last time I rode with him.

 

I had only been driving for 2 or 3 months and was backing into a dock in Plover,WI, I had to do a 90 degree back into it. There was snow on the ground and I thought the driveway went out that far. Well it didn't and by time I noticed it, into a small ditch I went. Luckily I had a tow chain and another driver pulled me out.

After all that mess the forklift driver goes "oh we were supposed to mark that because drivers have been getting stuck there all the time, you was supposed to back off the street."

 

I saw a semi do a u turn in the median once. Funny thing about it was a mile up the road there was an exit where he could have got turned around.