What do you actually check on a pre-trip inspection?

At truck driving school in the 90's I asked how to adjust the brakes and was told that my company would show me and when I got to my company and asked their mechanics I was told that I should have learned it at truck driving school. LOL

YouTube is the teacher of the modern era.

 

Instead of just checking the air pressure on the steers, I check the air on all the tires. It doesn't take that long and offers an opportunity to look at other parts and listen for air leaks.

 

That's OK, as long as they know the brakes need to be adjusted a mechanic can be called to the scene 24/7/365.

 

To me that’s more than just a little weeping and should be repaired. If you’re pulling the same trailer all of the time and know when a small leak started and know how the leak is progressing that’s one thing, but if I grabbed a trailer like that with no idea how long it’s been like that I would head to a shop with it.

 

…and Mount Everest is just a little hill. That isn’t rolling by my call.

 

Yeah, that's why I sometimes prefer being married to a trailer at a small carrier and live loading/unloading everything. I can Google Review a customer and mentally prepare my plan for the load ahead of time on live loads and ask for detention if it's a while. On a drop and hook, there's no way to know what kind of mess you're going to get stuck with at most carriers. Too easy to pawn things off. Even if a driver is just unaware and had no ill intention, it doesn't change the fact I'm stuck with it.

Thought I was losing my mind for a second. Pretty scary though that they'd tell a driver that it's fine and then that driver would carry on thinking trailers like that are normal. If mosr drivers don't care about equipment, techs pat the driver on the back and say it's normal, and safety only cares if it's caught on an inspection, it's a pretty bad recipe.

 

If your company is good about getting trailers to their shop at a terminal things like this would probably be fixed and the driver would never know after they dropped the trailer. The issue would be if the trailer never sees a company shop and people just keep pulling it. It may not be a catastrophic failure that results in a fire but somewhere along the line a driver will be getting it repaired on the road.

The example in the pics shared would be easily noticeable with a quick glance, you wouldn’t even need to crawl under the trailer. Thump your driver side tires, crouch down and look across to the inside of the passenger side wheels, and do the opposite when you thump the passenger side tires. You’re already there and it only takes a couple extra seconds.