Comments By Pete B.

Wow, this is a great post, Davy. I think that after the first five minutes of discovering this site and forum while researching the industry, prior to becoming a truck driver, I closed the tabs on the other trucking websites because none matched the honesty, information, objectiveness, and professionalism found amongst the contributors to this site. Without a doubt it left me well-prepared to begin and succeed in a career I'd known nothing about, and for that I'll always be grateful to Brett, the moderators, and many others who have appeared here throughout the years.

Just the Manager decided he doesn't like me after I asked not to be dispatch by him in the beginning. My trailers were being tampered with in the yard, he would send me to the most difficult Receivers and they would give me the most difficult Docs. I was always being watched by the YD's as I backed.

This right here. Davy A. recently posted observations about the community of drivers engaging in this forum, and how many are considered 'top tier' drivers within their respective companies. Having been a part of this forum for many years, and having read hundreds if not thousands of posts by them and others, one of the characteristics of top tier drivers, or at least drivers who have maintained a long career in this industry, is that none of them exhibited the type of behavior you are describing. You wrote that your trailers were being tampered with... do you think that your manager assigned you trailers, and then sent people out to tamper with them? Or that he knew who the difficult receivers were and held back those loads for you? That's quite the conspiracy theory. You also find yard dogs watching you while you backed disconcerting.. well, I've had plenty of eyes on me while delivering to customers throughout the years... guys watching me back, watching me offload, some closer than others... but I didn't let any of it bother me. Most of them didn't know me, but they did know my company, so they had every right to observe me while on their property, making sure I worked safely and followed the procedures correctly. And that doesn't even really matter. When you enter someone else's property, you are in their world and subject to their rules. If you are bothered because your work is being inspected by the customer, that's a you problem, and has absolutely nothing to do with your manager.

You're a new driver in a company, and right off the bat requesting a new manager for these reasons...and these are just the reasons you have shared. That is not the way to prove yourself, and you are certainly going to lose any and all respect you might have been previously given. Add to the examples above your calling the non-emergency police number for assistance, and I'd say your conflict resolution skills need serious upgrading. That's borderline wackadoodle. I jumped in a loaner truck once where the previous driver's messages were still in the Qualcomm, so I read a few. Because they were so entertaining. She mentioned aliens who were stalking her in the truck stops. Aliens from space, not foreign countries. I see some similarities here.

If I were you, and you want to continue driving, I'd cut my losses with the company you are with, reevaluate how badly you want to succeed in this industry and what that requires, and if you feel you are up to the commitment, apply somewhere else.

This is one of those posts where we are not getting the entire story. As Larry alluded to, 'safety' is not going to call a driver; even if they were going to, they would access your HOS first and see that you were driving, and would refrain from making the call. 'Safety' is not going to bait you into answering your phone so that they could fire you. Let's say I'm wrong and 'safety' did call you... what prompted the three calls? I have heard of drivers getting let go because they were on the phone, but in each instance they were seen on the phone while driving, either at the entry gate to a Schneider yard (where there are cameras) or while driving around the Schneider yard.

If you want to pursue a career in driving, apply everywhere, be grateful for the opportunity (don't be picky), and when you find a job, honor their rules. It's their truck, their equipment, their risk, their rules.

Hi scorchednuts, hopefully what you did bring up with your carrier is the citation you received; that is something you want to be transparent about and let them know before they find out some other way. As far as reimbursement, that's a hard "no." It is your responsibility to make sure the truck is outfitted with the chains, as well as other safety equipment like three triangles, for instance. The company I pulled for, Schneider, would not keep up with your truck to make sure it had enough chains to satisfy Washington's chain laws (or Colorado's), but if you needed them to travel out west or just to deal with winter conditions, all you had to do was ask, and you would receive. Best to ask early, end-of-summer, to beat the rush. All the oc's accumulated piles of rusty chains in the spring when everyone turned them back in. So yeah, sorry but you're gonna have to eat that one. Expensive lesson; they happen. Stay safe out there!

Are you kidding me? How did you not catch this, Old School?! Coincidence of coincidences!

To anyone who comes across this thread... shaving your head/cutting your hair will not prevent you from getting hair-follicle tested. I keep my head shaved; the tester simply shaved hair from my arm to get the hair sample they needed. If you even need to ask this question this may not be the profession for you.

an air valve on top of the trailer was missing its handle, making it difficult to tell if it was open or closed; it was open

The Chicago valve?

No Chief, not the Chicago fitting; the lever that opens & closes the air valve. When the lever is perpendicular to the valve, the valve is closed. When it's parallel to the valve, the valve is open (except on an intermodal trailer, where the configuration is opposite). The Chicago fitting was probably on, but if the air valve is in the "open" position, product is still going to find its way out around the Chicago fitting.

For the sake of learning, are you able to provide information on the defects and how it was written up?

Thanks for the case-in-point lesson on the importance of doing even the little things right.

The defects were tanker-specific... an air valve on top of the trailer was missing its handle, making it difficult to tell if it was open or closed; it was open, and a little product leaked out through the air valve. There was also something about a vacuum that developed inside the trailer that I'm not sure if was related to the air valve or not... but driving at altitude seems to have affected it, the dog ears securing the dome lid on top loosened a bit, so additional product leaked out through the dome lid. I've personally never experienced that, and I've certainly driven at altitude, but then I've never pulled a trailer loaded with product with valves open. To that issue I'd recommend to all tanker drivers to be sure after getting loaded, even if not allowed on top of the trailer while on the shipper's property, to immediately pull over when off the shipper's property and climb on top with a mallet and make sure the dome lid is secured tightly. That's always been a habit of mine, and have found on at least two occasions where the person who loaded my trailer did not close the lid very tightly.... ... I cannot say how it was written up, as I never asked my friend for a copy of the report he received, and he did not go into detail other than to say the defects were all found under one category. If you find trailer defects, get them fixed.

Every driver knows the importance of a proper pre-trip inspection; it’s ingrained in us beginning with our first days in CDL school. Every day we log a pre-trip and post-trip inspection on our ELDs. But addressing the findings in the inspections is just as important as the inspections; just ‘going through the motions’ or putting off repairs until later or leaving them for the next driver can have very dire consequences. The following is a real example that happened to a friend of mine. Identifying names have been changed.

“Trent” picked up a tanker trailer needed for that morning’s live load. He identified several defects during the pre-trip that he determined would make him late for the live load if he either had the defects fixed or requested a different trailer. Trent was an experienced driver, with 10+ years under his belt working with tankers. He was confident that with the defects, he could still get loaded without further complications, deliver the load 1500 mi away, and offload the product safely, making a few adjustments (having pulled tankers for 5 1/2 years, I’m very familiar with problem-solving and getting product offloaded when faced with unexpected opportunities... so that's not really a thing).

Trent proceeded to the live load with the trailer, not wanting to cause the company time or money by arriving late to or having the load appointment rescheduled, got loaded on time as the defects weren’t obvious or visible to the untrained eye, and departed for his destination 1500 mi and three states away. Driving through Arizona, he was pulled for a random DOT inspection (his first Level 1 inspection in nearly five years), but not by any ordinary DOT officer, a HAZMAT-certified DOT inspector (he had a special patch on his uniform identifying him as such), who very quickly identified some issues with the trailer. They moved the inspection to the next exit where the officer could spend more time crawling over the trailer, where he found and cited Trent for all the trailer defects.

Apparently none of the defects were ‘out-of-service’ defects, as Trent was able to continue with the trailer, but they did all fall under the same category of load securement. The inspection report was uploaded and made available several days later, after Trent made his delivery and was underway on his next load. He did inform his company of the inspection, who then took a ‘wait-and-see’ approach, as no one knew exactly how bad the report was going to be. The total score on the report wasn’t the worst score the company had ever seen, but apparently no one in the safety & regulatory department had seen a score that high in one category.

After some discussion within the safety and regulatory department, it was determined that Trent had to be let go. His prior years of service and experience couldn’t save his job from the extraordinarily high score he received from the inspection in a single category. Making a decision he thought was going to keep the wheels of his company running smoothly, efforting to keep from disrupting load and delivery appointments, the end result is he incurred a ridiculously high CSA score that impacted his company and his company’s drivers as well, and effectively ended his driving career for at least three years. He did tell me he knew of someone who would have brought him on board, someone who owned a small trucking company comprised of refeer and heavy-haul trucks (I know, odd combination!), but my guess is that the opportunity leaned toward the sketchy end of the scale, because he never gave it serious consideration. He is currently not driving and starting anew in an entirely different profession.

The lessons here are obvious: responsibility of the driver lies not only in thorough pre- and post-trip inspections, but in follow-up actions whenever defects are found. DO NOT risk your career, safety, or the public’s safety over one load that you may be late on or lose altogether as a result of spending extra time fixing truck or trailer defects. It’s just not worth the gamble.

Reminded me of a scene I passed several weeks ago, In Massachusetts or Connecticut… I was clearly headed in the opposite direction, so know nothing of the backstory…