What is the point of the post trip inspection if you pretrip?

You want to pick up a trailer with a flat tire because the guy that dropped it didnt take a few mins to check it before he left?

Or how about you get to a truckstop and park, again with some sort of tire/air problem that COULD have been fixed while you slept, but you didnt do it, so now you are spending time waiting to get it done instead of moving like you had planned?

Or dont bother pre tripping because you post tripped when you parked and you had someone screw with your trailer while you slept and found out about as you are be-bopping down the road?

 

Would you rather find out you have a leaking wheel seal on the beginning of your day or the end? A tire can also appear ok at the end of your day but end up flat before the beginning of your next shift.

Local drivers it's even more important to catch things at the end of the day as opposed to the beginning especially if slip seating. Nobody likes coming for nothing that's for sure.

Things break and it's so much better to catch it before it kills someone or leaves you stranded with a very expensive tow or road service bill.

 

Welcome to truck driving !

A post trip give you the chance to spot a problem and get it rectified before you leave in the morning.

 

One downside to doing a good post trip is , lots of companies want drivers to get it fixed when driver should be sleeping. Now a great pretrip is a must. Might be your own life that is saved or someone else’s. Not to mention it’s the drivers butt if you get pulled for inspection and its something that could have been caught.

 

Are you a pro or are you a steering wheel holder? Just because there isn’t smoke pouring out of it at the end of the day (or trip if you’re dropping the trailer), you might still have lost a tire (it’s happened to me, didn’t see or feel it blow), had lightbulbs burn out, have a hub start leaking, etc.

And you likewise have to do a pretrip on every trailer you hook, because some mouth-breathing troglodyte dropped it off without doing a post trip inspection, leaving it there for you to deal with.

 

one pretrip on the truck per day unless you swap trucks. Each trailer needs a pretrip though. I usually just flag post trips, some companies want a full 10 or 15 for both some just want one or the other.

 

I just flag post trips as well but I do them because I complain to safety when I hook up to a loaded trailer with a obvious issue that should of been spotted by last driver or shunt truck before loading.. I shouldn’t have to lose half a day which can sometimes cause a weekend layover due to our 10 to 25 drop schedules during working hours.

 

The regulations are not in place to make YOUR life easy, but to try and meet a minimum level of safety for the people on the public roads. VERY few companies pay drivers to inspect the truck & trailer. BTW it's usually much cheaper and repairs are faster if you get them fixed at a shop or truck stop than beside the road in the middle of nowhere the next day. Be sure to tell any company you want to work for that you are interested in doing the legal minimum amount of looking for unsafe conditions. I expect it will simplify your job search.