The Life, Death, And Resurrection Of My Truck Driving Career

Glad to hear that all turned out so well. I believe that this will end up being another thing that the safety manager puts into his teachings. Being in Montana, I see your company trucks all the time.

The Lord only teaches those that have the ability to learn, the rest are called natural selection. We had a rollover accident happen behind us yesterday. The driver was ejected and had to be flown to Billings from Butte because of the severity of the injuries. Our other driver was concerned that something came off his trailer to cause the accident. We were pulling belly dump trailers at the time and it happened behind him. He was really upset until we came back around and saw the scene. The driver left the road into the median and over corrected instead of riding it out into the median.

One more lesson that you can take away from this is more frequent checks in your mirror. It may not have helped but it also may have allowed you to see a change in your load. This is another reason that I hate tarps, you can not see the load directly. Had you been able to see your straps flapping in the wind, I know that you would have stopped or slowed even more until you could have reached a place to pull over.

Over confidence can cause a lot of problems in a truck but then so can fear. Remember to respect the truck but try not to be afraid of it.

I will say that wrecking a truck with a load of lumber and then your first load is another load of lumber is enough to make anyone nervous. Good job on picking yourself up and getting back on the horse.

Glad to hear you made it through this with only mental scars. Having read many of your posts I know that you will learn from this and I anticipate a long, safe and prosperous career going forward!

Wow, thank God you are ok and still have a job!

Wow, thank God you are ok and still have a job!

I agree!

You're a brave and considerate man for posting your story for all of us to learn from. I really respect and appreciate that. It's amazing how one moment everything is going along smoothly and the next moment you're pulling grass and dirt out of your teeth. Things happen so quickly out there. Sometimes you don't get a chance to correct a situation. By the time you know about it, it's too late.

Thanks again for posting this story. It's a great reminder just how quickly things can happen. Everyone needs to double check everything and never make assumptions.

Man, what an experience, what a story. So thankful that no one was seriously hurt and that your family still has you in their lives. I have been feeling self pity for a rookie mistake that I made recently that cost me no more than a job. This story really made me realize how insignificant my little scrape was. I was choked up reading this to my fiance. God is great and we can't possibly know His plan for us. He has His way of keeping us in check. I thank and praise Him for you and your story. I pray that we all can learn from our own, as well as others "little"mistakes. There's so much to learn and know in this industry and it seems the only way to learn most of it is in the field. I really love this site for this reason, that we can share our stories, mistakes, problems and support each other through our experiences. Thanks for sharing your story that we can all learn from it, and also put our own problems and hurdles back into perspective. Stay safe brother.

I wish I had the time to go through and personally respond to each individual comment, but unfortunately all I can do is say thank you to everyone for all the encouragement and well wishes. It means a lot to have the support of such a phenomenal group of drivers.

I just wanted to update this with a couple more pics. I asked my safety director (today, after a suitable interval had passed since the accident) if he could send me the pics that he received from the scene that day, since I was unable to take any. I told him my wife was curious to see exactly what had happened, and that I was planning on printing one out and pinning it up by the visor next to a pic of my family to serve as a constant reminder to be safe. So here they are. If you look closely in the first one, you'll see me kind of wandering around in shock:

Just thought I'd give an update of how things are going since this "incident."

My safety director has been having me send him a weekly "safety tip." I'm supposed to contemplate my habits while I'm our here on the road and come up with a unique tip and send it in every Monday. He wants me to do 9 total (not sure why 9, seems kind of arbitrary). I've done 6 so far. Maybe when I'm done with all of them I'll post them in a new thread. He said he shared them with the insurance company and they liked them, so that's good. I guess there was the potential for the insurance company to give my bosses a hard time for keeping me on, but so far they seem to have been cool about it.

I feel like I'm fully back in the swing of things now, only I'm much more aware of safety. I've been getting great miles and great loads, almost better than before the accident it seems. Since I got back on the road on July 7 (37 days ago), I've run over 17,000 miles, with 3 restarts. I've only been home 1 day during that time, which is tough, but I owe this company a lot so I'm doing my best to just run as hard as possible in order to help recoup some of the loss they took. There have been some days where I've felt burned out but then I see the paycheck every Friday and I remind myself that it's worth it.

Anyway, I know I'm one of the rare lucky ones who got to keep their job after a major accident, so I'm trying to live up to the second chance I got. Take care everyone. And be safe!

What a testimonial and an eye opener Something was watching over you that day Many thanks for posting this will be something I will repeatably read as my career progresses

There was something else they mentioned during the meeting which I’d like to share. They told me about their theory on the “terrible 2’s of trucking.” The theory is that right around the 2-month, 2-year and 20-year marks of a driver’s career, they will usually have something happen that will knock some sense into them. Whether it’s something as minor as bumping into another truck in a truck stop or something major like what happened to me, it seems those are the times when a driver becomes either too comfortable, too complacent, or too confident. I was all three that day.

Thank you for sharing this whole experience. I've been cautious and lucky for the last couple of decades in my personal driving and driving for work. I had a deer run out and stick it's head into the wheel well of my truck as I was braking safely from highway speed to miss it's companion that had run out in front of me. There was no damage to the truck and he lived. He probably had a serious headache though.

I've probably driven in some weather conditions that I might have been better off staying home. I'm from Wisconsin. If we stayed home every time it snowed, we'd miss a lot of work.

What an incredible experience and story. Thank you for sharing. As a soon-to-be driver, this has a very real and sobering effect on me. Stay in the moment...pay attention...give it your all...don't mail it in... All these came to mind as reminders I will emphasize to myself daily. So very glad you are not only ok, but a much better driver now because of this. I'll start my career in Missoula next month...hopefully I'll get the opportunity to meet you. Be safe and God Speed!