Western Express Safety

I drove for Western Express for a whole year. It's a 2nd chance company, plain and simple. They take the rejects as well as anyone fool enough to go.
Trailers were hard to come by, not because of a lack of trailers. Western Express had plenty of trailers when I worked there Nov. 2018-19. The problem was most trailers were torn up. In two of the terminals on the East Coast the number of wrecked trailers far out numbered the useful ones. In Allentown PA. they even had a 4 bay trailer repair shop just for trailers and were also farming out the trailers to another repair shop in the area because they couldn't keep up.

 

I was on US 219 north going to Warren PA, there's a designated truck route that goes north around the town of Ridgway that trucks have to take to avoid the 10% grade that runs directly into town and has a sharp curve at the bottom. Trucks are told to stop and check their brakes via flashing signs and reflective overhead signs that say "NO TRUCKS OVER 7,000 LBS" "ALL TRUCKS MUST EXIT". You can go south up the hill, but not north down the hill.

After I got loaded and made my way through Ridgway, now southbound pulling that hill, a Western Express truck and trailer was flying down the hill he's not allowed to be on, brakes smoking, past the runaway truck ramp...I just kept driving and said a prayer for the person that lives on the bend at the bottom of the hill...

 

perhaps he was unfamiliar with the English language......