Bonehead Mistakes In My First Week Solo OTR

Here are a few things I managed to accomplish in just one week on my own, in case anyone else needed a confidence boost:

1. Started to take off with a freshly hooked trailer with the landing gear still down. Obviously didn't get more than about 10 feet before I could feel and hear problems.

2. Upon realizing said mistake, in a flustered state, left tractor in gear and brake not set, started to climb out to raise the gear, tractor started rolling with me standing on the steps.

3. Picking up a load in a CA border town. Blindly followed GPS, ignoring sign that said "last USA exit" ended up stuck in the line to enter Mexico. Had to sheepishly explain myself to CBP and received an overly embarrassing flashing lights escort to get turned back around.

4. In city traffic in the LA suburbs, forgot the cardinal rule of not proceeding thru an intersection until you can fit, thereby spending a light cycle with my 53 foot trailer blocking 6 lanes of traffic. You can imagine the vitriol hurled in my direction.

All that said, I'm having a blast, starting to get my sea legs I think in week 2.

Almost ending up in Mexico was the funniest part, for me. It actually reminds me of when I took a road trip with a couple of friends to Tijuana back in '98. In those days, some of the highways and roads from the US side went straight into Mexico without a border crossing checkpoint. (Talking about no checkpoint going into Mexico.) I can't remember what highway I was on, but I remember my friends wondering when we would be reaching the border. We went around an elevated highway curve and then we started seeing signs in Spanish.

Imagine if you could accidentally find yourself in Mexico without a checkpoint to stop you. Those would have been really tough conversations with border patrol, and your company.

The signs being in Spanish were because we had entered Mexico.

If you came here bragging that you made it through your first solo tour of duty duty totally unscathed I wouldn't believe anything you had to say in the future.

Maintain that positive attitude and don't hesitate to share any mistakes you make in the future. It's a good way to do what Deb described:

reflect and ask myself "okay, what did I learn from this?", and move on from there

Plus it reminds us all to be careful out here.

Just wait until this happens: you are in line to get fuel looking at your phone. You catch motion out of the corner of your eye and in a panic you step on the brake real quick bc you think you are rolling backward. Then you realize it's just the truck next to you moving forward.

That still happens to me sometimes.

It takes time to take time. I had my share of mistakes from not setting brakes to pulling out from a trailer with the lines connected still When I deviate from a system, it's when it occurs. For months I'd forget to put my eld in off duty when I stopped. I had a post it note on the dash and over time just became habit.

I've found that writing down the steps to my systems helped me. Eventually they become automatic habits.

As was said, you didn't hit anything and we've all been there. Slow down your things that aren't driving like connections and pretrip. Relax and breathe.

I've made a bunch of mistakes over the course of my career, but I've gotten better with each one.

I've dropped a trailer, hit an angling iron, had a trailer fire and I'm probably forgetting a few.

I also learn from the mistakes from others. I think it was Moe that forgot to set the parking brake and rolled into a curb damaging the oil pan of the truck. I always remember that set the brake.

Yeeeeeep. Just happened to me today.

If you came here bragging that you made it through your first solo tour of duty duty totally unscathed I wouldn't believe anything you had to say in the future.

Maintain that positive attitude and don't hesitate to share any mistakes you make in the future. It's a good way to do what Deb described:

reflect and ask myself "okay, what did I learn from this?", and move on from there

Plus it reminds us all to be careful out here.

Just wait until this happens: you are in line to get fuel looking at your phone. You catch motion out of the corner of your eye and in a panic you step on the brake real quick bc you think you are rolling backward. Then you realize it's just the truck next to you moving forward.

That still happens to me sometimes.

I can neither confirm nor deny the actual location of me ripping off a trailer door.........

I can neither confirm nor deny the actual location of me ripping off a trailer door.........

I had a trainee do that in TNT. He got past it though and is still driving.

Man I love this thread. I’m going to venture that over 90% of the drivers on this site have done or will do at least one of the things you described. My first solo load…..I reported to the distribution center and had to go over a pretrip with my safety rep and he pointed out that I had signed for a truck with a fairly nasty gouge on the side of my drive tire. We then did some close quarters training and he cleared me to call breakdown and get a new tire. He wanted me to unhook from the trailer and go to the maintenance point. Luckily he had left. I was so excited that I remembered to drop my landing gear but forgot to unhook my lines. I pulled out and heard a rather large “thump” luckily there was no damage besides for my pride. Later that week I was doing a tight back at night that happened to be very close to some road construction. I had to get out and look multiple times. On one of the get out and looks I forgot to set my brakes. Luckily a mound of rubble “gently” stopped my trailer and there was no damage thank goodness. Locked myself out of my truck while getting fuel and when I went to find my spare key that was discreetly hidden on the back of the tractor I realized I had made the huge mistake of hiding it while I was bobtail so it was fairly difficult to get to. (30 minutes and very greasy dirty cloths later) You didn’t hit anything and learned. Roll on driver! Good luck!

Forgot to mention that one day I was dropping an empty and got distracted. I unhooked my lines , talked to another driver. I had been running hard and was tired. So I absentmindedly got in the truck and hit my kingpin release. Luckily I always only pull until the trailer is off of the skid plate. And boom ! Trailer apron landed on the frame. Very lucky. Also no one else seemed to see so I sheepishly got out and started cranking .

I was going to say the same thing RealDiehl did, I think I've been fooled by the 'I'm rolling back! Oh wait, it's the truck next to me moving forward' bit three times now...very scary! Last one I was even in a dock, and thought, wait a minute, I should've hit the building by now! hah