Why won't drivers listen to the escort....

I've often thought the same thing. Besides...... a Prius is just wrong leading a parade like that.

 

@truckdad I stirred the pot a little. I reread your first post on a pilot car. I didn’t absorb your statement: ‘if it were my pilot car’. The emphasis being on the word ‘my’. I agree a lot with what you said. I can’t stand with my hands in my pockets while watching someone working. Team work makes the job go faster and seem a bit easier. Anyone who got a tad riled, you can stand down. I am from the generation with a strong work ethic.

 

Winner. "The true warrior comes to the arena with ALL of his powers at the ready."

 

When I was pulling blades, I was not concerned with my truck. I was concerned with my crew...3 trucks, 3 drivers, 6 pilot cars. We had a job to do...deliver a balanced and matching set of blades to a site. Most of those clowns (blade bLitches) had such egos that they wouldnt even speak to each other. They would run off, leave each other and not communicate. Wrong thing to do when the shippers and receivers want the sets to load together and deliver together. Because my crew worked together, we would lap the field. Unload, reload faster.

Trucks would break down. Escort vehicles would break down more. Certain pilot cars would need help with this like their top signs and whatnot. Some of the pilot cars were not in the best of health. I would have loved to have a "service truck" pilot car. I have tools and I can wrench, but thats 9 vehicles!

 

^^^^^^ That right there could be a pile of headaches.

 

Things like hydraulic lines, brake chambers, air supply lines would go suddenly. You had to be able to fix them and fix them quickly. Had a truck making a turn across a highway when one of the hydraulic lines for rear steers broke. He was blocking all sides of a 4 lane highway. We needed all hands to help with traffic. Had a truck pull on the shoulder and we took the lines off of it and put it on the disabled truck, refilled the fluids and got it off the road. Then we took the line off, and had one made.

If that point in time, any one of those pilot cars would have told me that was not their truck they were escorting or what their jobs was or was not, I would have been contemplating murder.

 

It doesn't even take that much. I run with a group of 8 pilot cars (they are all 4 door f250s. Not a sub compact) as much as possible. Their boss has told them its no problem if a driver ever needs to go anywhere like Walmart or a parts store. We are like one big family that usually goes out to eat at night. 4 pilots and 2 drivers with Oklahoma accents sure draws some funny looks when we get up to Canada.

They are mostly old retired drivers that know what it's like to be stuck somewhere in a truck not able to go anywhere.

They are in great demand btw at our company so much so they only work for us now and nobody else.

 

We gave up on hiring pilot cars. There are good ones out there but they're usually booked solid. We had enough of the other kind...late, out of gas, not really knowing how to do their job, argumentative, wanting to stop all the time for coffee or snacks or bathroom breaks...to last us forever.
Reading this thread brought back a lot of memories about pilot car drivers. None of the memories were good.
We have a couple of our retired drivers that we use now. They both ran OD when they worked here and they know the game.
The only problem is we can't get one to work during salmon season and you can't find the other one during deer season.

 

Ok so I'm curious, are there any certifications for the actual pilot cat drivers, or is out the company themselves who are certified and anyone can do the escorting?

 

Some states require certifications. Generally it will be found in your permit requirements, if there is a requirement for pilot cars the attachments will usually specify that, or they will say something to the effect of "pilot cars must meet the requirements of such and such state code such and such."