I Shut Down And Ruined My Service Record Due To Fatigue!

I think it's incredibly important for us to point out to new drivers the difference between being safe, and being lazy. We need to point out how important it is to have high expectations of yourself because trucking is no ordinary job for ordinary people. New drivers will come across these types and they need to be able to recognize when someone is taking the wrong approach so they don't follow the wrong path themselves.

Couldn't agree more. This is the essence of Trucking Truth itself.

I just felt tired and upset and found my mind drifting well driving , so I said screw this load I'm not driving !

Sure I'm afraid of being fired now, not because I refused to drive illegally but because I didn't make delv time.

Anyhow the point of this word salad is, always risk your job and not others lifes.

Fact is if you push yourself or ever put this job before your own personal health or well being , you are the reason we need more regulations in this industry .

Pushing yourself when you know you are not driving in a safe manner is never good , and anyone who does it should have their drivers license and not just cdl taken away.

So I shut down for a 2 hour nap, try and make me out as a villain all you want. You're just showing your true colors .

I'm not sure the point of your story , you mean your wife has to do her job ? Things don't always run smoothly or as planned otherwise i doubt she would have much to do.

And for explaing all she has to say is , driver got fatigued and that's that. If people are being rude to her she should polity ask them to be kind or hang up and refuse to do business with them unless they can act more professional .

I have thought about this for a couple days now, so if you are just a troll, you have succeeded in wasting my time. You didn't make me angry, though, so that is a troll-failure.

There's one thing I want to add. Werner, based on your posts here, I think you are the type who is so sensitive to everything that is happening to you that you probably cannot see that it has nothing to do with you. What I mean by that is, we all face difficult circumstances in life from time to time, some more than others, but how we deal with those circumstances makes all the difference.

You are not dealing well with your circumstances. You are not very tough mentally or emotionally. Crying about safety and looking for sympathy because you know you might have really screwed up and get fired as a consequence is no way to go through life. You would do better to learn to accept the consequences of your actions sooner rather than later.

For example, you said initially that you got your rest but your mind was wandering so you stopped for a two-hour nap. Honestly, I'm OK with that. I have stopped a few times when I was sick or overly tired myself.

What I didn't do was risk a delivery time and just say, Screw this load! No, I called dispatch, let them know what was happening, and did what I needed to do to be safe. Once I missed a delivery time because of illness, but it wasn't a problem because I communicated and dispatch helped me by contacting the customer to move it back a bit.

Once I started feeling a little sick while I was about an hour from delivering. I called dispatch and let them know that I needed a day to recover, but that I would deliver the load. By the time I got done unstrapping and untarping, I was drenched in sweat even though it was about 50 degrees out. I drove to the nearest truck stop, which was 25 miles away, and parked it for two days until I felt better.

Was I unsafe in doing that? No, I was able to control the truck and pay attention, though it was more difficult than usual. My dispatcher did not give me a hard time at all because I communicated clearly and did what I needed to do to get the job done safely.

Your comments tend to indicate that at any sign of difficulty, you are going to fold up and quit until everything is perfect. Calling for more regulations means that you think that is the only way people change their behavior, which means that is likely the only reason you ever change your behavior. The reality is that many of us change our behavior because that is how we are going to improve, whether there's a regulation for that or not.

You are not the safer driver, despite your attempts to make yourself look like you are. You are less safe, because your worldview doesn't extend much beyond your self-interests. You lack the ability to see yourself clearly, and you lack empathy for other people's points of view.

Lack of empathy is the root cause of road rage and a host of other bad driving behaviors. Here are a few examples:

* Not yielding for a merging vehicle, even if it's technically not your problem

* Continuing to follow too closely when a car cuts in front of you but then slows to drive the same speed as you

* Making a turn onto a roadway instead of waiting another 15 seconds for oncoming traffic to pass when you know it's going to be close for them and they may have to slow down until you can get up to speed

This career really isn't for you, frankly. Personally, I will feel safer if you do get fired and are unable to find another job driving a truck, because that will mean one less prima donna is on the road. Maybe you can get a job at a government agency writing more regulations to make this job even more difficult. I suspect you would fit right in there.

Werner, Old School isn't a dispatcher but my wife is. Yes, my wife manages a fleet of trucks every day of her life, even on her days off if there's an issue.

We get it, if you're too tired then don't drive. But after 8 hours of rest.... com'n.

You have no idea how many phone calls and how many strings my wife would have to pull to justify this one to the consignee. She would literally be on the phone for hours talking with several different people, and each one would be chewing her ear off, for something like this. Believe me, I am in her office almost daily.

You're not too tired to drive, you're just a bad driver. I just began my shift at my local job and I have 11 more hours of night shift to go and a whole lot of work. Yeah, I'm tired considering it has been a long, physical week in this scorching heat. But I'm an adult and I have bills to pay.

I'm not sure the point of your story , you mean your wife has to do her job ? Things don't always run smoothly or as planned otherwise i doubt she would have much to do.

And for explaing all she has to say is , driver got fatigued and that's that. If people are being rude to her she should polity ask them to be kind or hang up and refuse to do business with them unless they can act more professional .

By the way, I spoke with my wife about this.

I told her your refusal to drive after a break.... she rolled her eyes.

I told her your reply that I read above. She said that companies are in no position to refuse to do business with anyone. She said if she followed that advice the company would go out of business quickly.

Also, she said that companies could blacklist her company, meaning that they are permanently unable to broker loads from them, again which will lead the company out of business.

Finally, she said that the people she does business with on the phone are not idiots. They know how to trip plan, they'll see right through the BS.

There you go, this is your reply from dispatch from a neutral perspective.

Where, oh where, has Werner gone???

Reading all this made ME roll my eyes...and I'm not even a dispatcher.

I do agree that we need a popcorn eating emoji! LOL