The worst truck you have ever driven?

I'll post this at risk of being burned alive at the stake....

The absolute worst truck I ever drove was a 2001 Pete 379 daycab. That POS was the roughest riding trash heap ever concocted. The power steering worked when it wanted, which was seldom. It had a thing about quitting when blindside backing down hills.

The HVAC system was lousy. In the cold winter nights, my left side was cold and my right was sweating. That's after 20 miles and 20 minutes warming up.

The exhaust pipes rattled in the brackets on the side of the cab, driving anyone who was hoonswaggled into driving it ####### crazy. Perhaps that's why our mechanic thought the thing was wonderful. He's nuts too..

Other than that, which was the worst by far, I ran a '95 L8000 Ford single axle, an old CCX city truck. That was pretty bad, but it never left me sit. No air ride, not even the seat was air ride, and no radio. 8.3 liter Cummins with a 6 speed. You'd make it everywhere you wanted to go, just not in a hurry.

I'm rather spoiled, never really had to drive anything (other than the aforementioned Pete) that I hated, or was so unsafe that it shod be condemned.

 

I've driven a lot of crap, but crap was all around you, you HAD to drive one sooner or later. I'll agree, it was always a pain driving "the spare truck" or yard horse, as they were generally the oldest of the fleet, paid for a dozen times over, so it was kept around, fact is, you'd put off telling the boss about a problem for fear they'd stick you in the yard horse, but the all-time WORST truck I ever drove, was a set-back axle Freightliner cabover. It had the most mirrors on the right side of any truck, an air ride cab that pogo sticked down the highway, and the clutch was either in or out, no pressure point. Worst truck ever! A testament to my driving I never ran over anything with that truck.

 

I had several bad trucks in my time. To pick the worst would have to be several choices but reducing to one truck we had stood out easily. It was a White Commander Cabover. They must have carved it out of a single block. No suspension whatsoever. No power either. Nothing inside the cab worked. Shifting was more or less whatever gear you had before. Because you did not have power to stay in the next one up anyway. Heating and cooling? Forget it. Whatever the engine gave you along with the exhaust gases etc.

The other worst truck was a Paystar 9400 I believe. A conventional tractor with a extended wheelbase (No particular reason it was more of a liability than anything) That B&B Concrete in Little Rock west had for their bulk tanker back in the 1999 time period. I-30 was not rebuilt much yet in those days, just your square concrete plates for 300+ miles several times a day.

The truck finally broke when the floor including the pedals and the guts of the dash and seats fell down onto the frame away from the rest of the cab at 70 on that interstate one day. It shook itself to death. Leaving me with a problem of what to do to save myself before the steering went away. Everything else went away with the floor. So I let her drift off to the side.

The extremely tightfisted bosses would take the rest of the day getting that thing towed back, then send it off to be rebuilt with thousands of rivets. When I saw it back in the yard several weeks later I decided that would be the time I find another employment. And so it was in it's own time. That was not all the issues with that pos, once the transmission locked solid and refused the clutch in until the front steer fell 10 feet back down slamming the clutch loose out of it's low gear. That smashed the entire final drive and busted the seals allowing the oils to leak from the hubs of each drive wheel back there. that was another tow and repair. To display the ignorance of the people in the shop they resorted to blaming me for the failure of that transmission as if I did not know how to drive. After months of no issues with it. So that pretty much make it much easier to look for other employment and hold that company in a black mark forever.

Whats crazy was they had old iron mixers such as auto cars and what not. Those were a joy to me. And they included a few daycabs with airride in the fleet as well. Takes a little money to do that. So it was not all bad. I understand they run more gasoline than concrete today and with top dollar equiptment as they should have back then. None of that matters.

After I had left I learned two of the autocar mixers were rolled. Trying to get onto the 630 ramp. And so the cabs were destroyed. They sat in the yard as scrap for weeks.

As I stated there were other trucks. The third and last candidate for that list would be a International S model daycab, used to container work with a small company. If you ever needed a truck that did not recieve any maintaince at all and had a taste for dying anywhere any time during your Philadelphia run it would be it. However as bad as that one was, it was not as bad as the Bridger I ran for a sum total of one day. It failed at a upgrade trying to move a overweight container at a red light. Transmission and final drive took chunks out of it. The container was around 120,000 but thats routine. It made it about 4 miles from the yard on US1 to that one light and if it was to break it would have broken there. I think they junked that one after someone else broke it after repairs. They could have bought a nicer day cab for the money, however the company went out of business overnight anyway so there was probably mountains of bills and no money anyway.

What those bad trucks taught me was what was the most basic you can have working and get in a days work, DOT vehicle inspections sheets be ######. If DOT ever saw them or inspected them it would have probably created situations where the company would be audited and OOS themselves. In any way they took themselves out of business anyway or evolved into something else with different and better trucks.

However there is one more truck. I had driven that one exactly two miles after it was delivered to me by tow truck as a replacement for a badly broken regular truck. After I had managed to get out of the truckstop I discovered that the entire front end of that cabover had no meaning, the steering wheel spun completely either direction and she was drifting to the right which was a that time something I could work with. And there she stood on the shoulder half on the grass.

It was the next day when I found that company had specific instructions never to send that particular one out onto any road anywhere outside it's junk row behind the shop. The person who sent it down to me apparently had issues and wanted to see me fired or some other situation. But I wonder how that thing had enough steering to get out of the truckstop and then fail the way it did. You can only wonder at things like that. A little bit of luck. With the way that 95 was flowing in rush towards DC that morning people as in many people could have been killed if she drifted left. I would be in the electric chair etc long ago for that.

 

My first truck was a 69 astro. I simply can not express how happy I was the day the seat fell through the floorboard. But I will say this about it. No truck has every made me as much money as it did. Picked it up for 1500 bucks with a bad transmission.

 

The White "Road Commode",

 

That was my 2nd truck! ####. I've bought a lot of worn out junk in my life.

 

Dividing the two posts I leave everyone with a small memory of what school class teaching and real life trucking differences would be like. In School they preached and expounded on Driver Vehicle Inspections and so forth until they were blue in the face. I come out of there as if I had some sort of religous zeal to be sure that whatever they gave me would come out perfect (before I set out to deliver my load that they are waiting on)

My first tractor had something like 6 pages of DVIR reports with checked defects by the dozen and additional notes on what was not working. (Nothing was) I walked into the shop boss's booth that morning and handed it to him with the key to the tractor. Then walked off towards the drivers room to have a smoke and assess if we will have a workday today or not. (Not)

Boss saw that pile of papers looked at me and roared YOU! Come back here. Yes?

A fist thumped the pile of carefully written out and imagined professional forms for that sick truck. He says this is BS. We don't have the time for this one. I asked him great, get me another tractor. (Yard was brimming with the then new model eagle daycabs) He laughed. A bigger boss came out of the office to have a decision on what to do with the situation.

The end result? The tractor went out on it's three loads that first day with nothing working. When you consider Maryland and Virginia in those days with all of their nazi scales it's a wonder we got away with it that day. I did nothing but cross scales with it all day long coming and going.

That was the beginning of what I would consider my dark hat days. In order to stay hired and get work done any time new drivers in the drivers room asked about fixing stuff in the older trucks, I told them they don't fix nothing. Just drive the #### things.

The last time I said that, one manager came out of dispatch very offended. This high muck a much stood on my boots and expounded on trucking school class Pretrip one oh one using corporate decorated speech. That was 20 minutes of one way talking to.

That was also the beginning of my picking on dispatch when possible at that early age. And people wonder how fast good drivers get really bad in them days.

 

Mine pales compared to previous posts but it was certainly my most hated truck that I drove otr.
77 freightliner coe single bunk :
Center point steering .
No AC .
Spring ride .
Small cam Cummins 350.
10 speed.
Plastic and fiber board interior.
No bunk heat and very little on the floor up front .
It was one notch in luxury above a CF truck cause it had a radio and a few more gauges.

 

UGH THE LOANER. When your truck needs work that’s going to take some time but you still got bills to pay so you have to take that POS. Smells like a 1980’s casino, obvious shimmy on the steering, everything creaking, and always some #### dash light on.

 

2013 Freightliner Cascadia, 500k miles. Engine was great, pre DEF, DD class 15. Could pull anything. Rest of the truck was a rust bucket and falling apart.

In school we had old beat up range trucks, a lot of beat up Sterlings and old, I think they were GMC Whites, looked like the precursor to the current Volvos.