Grabbing Wrong Trailer?

Once in Indy 2 of us were at the same small shipper and they had us in doors next to each other. It was very early in the morning and the loader looked pretty tore up still from the night before. I was preloading a trailer going to Ca by rail and the other driver had something else goong to NY. We got done and were both in the office getting our paperwork and I noticied the info was not correct. Bottom line was the loader loaded the trailers backwards. I thought no problem we’ll just swap trailers. We did and I called my DM and she was good with it and swaped the info in the system. I had told the other driver what I was doing, but he decided to call his DM and he said no problem and switched them. That was a nightmare. Too many fingers on the keyboard.

yep had this happen too. we were picking up and delivering to the same place so the shipper made our pick up numbers -01 and -02 but didnt tell Prime. NJ to MT, you know i was fighting to keep that load lol. i was already loaded and leaving when the other driver pulled me over yelling i took his load. on our end it was the same load number. smh took an hour to realize it was 2 seperate loads.

easier than when Walmart loaded my load on a Marten trailer and i had to block Marten in from pulling out. He didnt notice his BOL had the wrong address. That took 6 hours to swap. and WM kept saying "cant you just swap trailers it would make it easier for us." hahhah yeah, let me explain to Prime how i am.pulling a Marten trailer. or worse, i let marten pull away with mine.

and this was supposed to be an already completed drop n hook lpl

So in my brief training at Target DC in Oconomowoc, WI I was taught to get last 4 of seal #. We put it on paperwork and give it to security on the way out.

After forgetting to get it once or twice I started taking a picture of the seal. I later settled for writing it on the back of my leather work glove!

No more climbing in and out for THAT one!

Security never would have let him out of the yard.

Not necessarily true. Walmart is used to us having multiple produce stops. Many don't even bother to look at the paperwork. I have often wondered what the heck they are looking at. How would they know if all the produce for that stop was removed? They only see product. They have little hand held scanners but they often take the trailer control sheets and scan them as they are walking into the shack. i could be long gone by that time.

Yes, you are right typical and dangerous rookie mistake. A forklift driver could have been seriously injured or killed in this instance.

That WM is terrible. I spent 6 hours there over the summer just waiting for a door in a sea of truck chaos.

I once had the same happen to me in Monroe GA.

I also repowered a load from a new guy and he didnt realize the shipper changed the load. He never read the BOL. i was told to take the load to two stops in TX. Imagine my delight to find one going to TX and the other to Phoenix!!!! yay for miles on that one. The shipper never told Prime of the change.

I once had to argue with someone from another company that my Prime trailer did not belong to him. and no, it wasnt one of our normal fleets. It was a major carrier with a training team and the trainer didnt realize the 15 foot logo on my trailer wasnt his.

The Walmart DC's I have been to are almost Stalinistic.... nothing slides by them LOL. But I do agree they are not run great I have spent eight hours there before waiting to get unloaded. I was just saying that if they looked at the paperwork and the guy had a loaded trailer he would never get past them but then we are talkin about and I really shouldn't say this rent-a-cops. I wish I could remember where it was but it was a Ryder Warehouse where they have a third-party security crew. I was running out of time on my clock and there were three trucks ahead of me waiting to leave the facility. All three drivers the trucks were waiting at the window. And there was a line of trucks waiting to enter. When all of a sudden A car pulled a gal got out, went into the security office unwrapped her sandwich opened up her bag of chips and then started dealing with the drivers. I guess it was her lunch break and she didn't give a damn about traffic coming in and out of the facility. She abandoned her post because she was hungry... You can't make this stuff up...

Oh... other thing I was taught was immediately upon arrival at a store (after relieving pressure on the king pin and going off the drive line) was to check our pickup trailer to make sure the dock plate was down (indicating the trailer was ready to move).

Of course we still had to check to make sure the trailer was "as it should be" or we could live with it. (They had a bad habit of doing "sweeps" (returns loaded onto a trailer on a day that wasn't scheduled). On the rare occasion we had a "back haul" where we were doing a drop and hook somewhere else and not going right back to the DC... they had to unload the trailer so we could drop it empty).

Key safety point though was the "dock plate" check!

I was once.sent to pick up an empty trailer....in August 100 degree NJ heat and 100% humidity. I got there and opened the doors to find pallets of rotted fruit with bugs and flies all.over... of course the reefer was off and it smelled like Oscar the Grouch's vomit.

Apparently the customer needed a dock for a live load, they pulled the trailer and "forgot" about the product.

Boy were they mad when I told them they ownwd the product but Prime owns the trailrr and they need to unload it.

i need to write book just on stupid trucker issues lol

Yuck!

i need to write book just on stupid trucker issues lol

How about a collection of short stories with contributions from many of you here?!?

I think there IS a shortage of good, current-generation trucking stories in print!

I'd buy it!

All of our trailers have electronic ID tags if you pull the wrong one out of the yard it will send you a message telling you it also alerts the terminal you left and maybe "central dispatch". But still some how people ignore the message and keep on trucking.

If you ignore the message and take the trailer to the wrong location you do not get paid for that trip, and you might get fired. One of the guys in know did it l, he did not read all 6 numbers only the last 3 and pulled the wrong trailer. Not only did he not get paid but he received a stern talking too.

Bob, after keeping up with your thread yesterday, I was so paranoid about getting the wrong trailer (I had two today) that l checked all my paperwork about 4 times at each stop. Got a little nervous because I couldn’t find one and finally shipping was good enough to tell me it was in a remote lot after I searched for 30 minutes.