My First Accident Stories

I clipped a guy's mirror backing into a tight slip at a receiver, this morning. I felt bad, but my co driver coached me through handling my first, & what will hopefully be my only accident. He then reminded me of the story he told me, of his first Accident... & how he carried on with things from there. No bad damage, the housing was the only thing broken. Thank goodness. We all will have them, the first Accident. In a career, were all going to make a mistake at least once. Just deal with it and drive on. That's why there is insurance companies & safety departments... just learn & drive on, with a goal not to repeat the mistake.

I did Get Out & Look... I thought I was clear... Life still happens. We just deal & roll forward. Feel free to share your "First Accident story", & then please note how many years since that you have driven on with a safe record. Proof, that we all will in the end if we persevere, will reach a point of professional fulfillment & success. You just have to "Overcome". Cheers~

Eh small potatoes lol

I was distracted while pulling into the fuel aisle at sapp bros in council bluff Iowa . Wasn't watching my fully loaded trailer and BOOM into the concrete barrier. Knocked the trailer axle off and a tire went rolling down the street. A guy chased it with a forklift. Everyone pointed and laughed. Another prime driver stayed with me and bought me dinner. Told me his first story. Although I felt better...I never went back to that place until last month.

Guess what? Those fuel lanes are tight...and I still didn't like them. No wonder I hit it being so new. I could barely fit between the pump and truck to fuel. Doubt I'll ever go back again lol

Since then I stayed away from all Loves in AR and most Pilots. If they look tight. Screw it. Lol haven't had an accident since. ;)

My first and hopefully only accident happened while I was picking up a trailer from our drop lot in Kansas City MO. The guy who relayed it dropped it so tight in between 2 other trailers that I had to swing extremely wide to avoid hitting them. However, preventing me from doing so was a concrete barrier with a piece of rebar sticking out of the side. I was well aware it was there. I proceeded to slowly pull up and back trying to wiggle my way out of there, GOALing multiple times to keep a close eye on that barrier. However, the one time I did not GOAL, apparently the rebar got caught between my passenger steer tire and bumper. I backed up and ripped the bumper. Cussing up a storm and bumper still barely attached, I finally got out of there and secured the bumper with duct tape that I had, just the other day, picked up from our Des Moines IA OC. I didn't call it in since I didn't know the process, but my route took me by said OC anyway so I went there and showed OSR (Operations Support Representative). He didn't reprimand me like I thought he would, but he walked me through the process of reporting it.

That happened about 2 months after I started driving and about 4 days from the end of the quarter, so I lost out on my bonus, but that was the last thing on my mind. I was more worried about it showing up on my DAC.

I was instructed to rip the bumper off completely and hold onto it until I could get a PM done a few weeks later. It's surprising what kind of things your mind does to cope with something like that. For those 2 weeks, I kept saying I had a codriver named Bumper. xD

It's been almost 6mo since then (wow time has flown by) and I've kept my nose clean ever since. Hopefully I won't do anything stupid and it will stay that way for the rest of my career. High hopes!

Two days solo at TransAm, I didn't swing quite wide enough at a TA in Illinois after playing around in Chicago all day and clipped a guys bumper. Very little damage, but I was still in tears over it.

The worst part was that I didn't even know I had done it. We went into the restaurant to get some food and another driver came in yelling that I had done a hit and run and that he had called the cops. Complete jacka$$ about the whole thing. But the driver I had hit and the cops were very nice and risk management helped enormously at calming me down and walking me through the process.

Well over a year later and I haven't had another accident since then. I'm sitting right around 110k safe miles and pretty dang proud of that.

We all have a few bumps and scrapes along the way. It's just part of learning.

Dang deer! When will they learn to stay in the woods and off the road, lol

Dang deer! When will they learn to stay in the woods and off the road, lol

Deer whistles. They may not work 100% of the time, but they are effective in most cases. Growing up in rural Iowa, knowing all too well how much of a pain deer can be, I installed deer whistles on my truck on day 1.

Preventable - Took a wrong turn, which resulted in my being in a residential area. Proceeded slowly until I thought I could make a uturn... and in doing so crushed my driver side cab extender.

Not Preventable - Crusing in right lane, in construction area where left lane had a Jersey wall to its left. 4-wheeler, who looked like he was going to pass me, fell asleep, accelerated a lot, tried to drive over the wall and then tried to drive under my trailer.

About 9 months into my career, I was leaving a receiver in downtown Chicago, apparently about 4 blocks from Oprah's studios.

Not knowing the area AT ALL, I asked the receiver for directions to get back to the freeway. Their directions had me turning right off a two lane side street onto a two lane arterial with on-street parking and a concrete median planter full of daffodils. This wouldn't have been a problem, except some nitwit had illegally parked their minivan literally right at the corner. I swung as wide as I could to try to get around the minivan, and I succeeded...but in doing so I ended up dragging the bottom step and steer wheel on the left side along the concrete planter. Scuffed the ends of the wheel studs a bit, gouged the hell out of the step, and actually shoved the aluminum part of the step back about 5 or 6 inches. And from the look of things, I wasn't the first guy to make contact with that planter, and I'm sure I wasn't the last.