We Had A Guy Fired This Week For A Very Preventable.

As the title said it was super preventable. Some back story. This guy, X we'll call him, drove our straight fuel truck 5 days a week. We go the the same places all the time. This happened in daylight. He was leaving a railyard and had a very tight turn to make. On the left of the turn are huge concrete blocks, on the right is a guardrail. He cut it to close on the left and broke the drive shaft, axle and a wheel. Turns out he was going 28 MPH when he should have been at a crawl.

This is a seasoned driver and that was a turn made regularly.

I am not allowed to post pics, but the truck is out of commission for awhile.

The moral of the story is slow down and pay attention.

Yikes!!

Yikes!!

Yup. Now they're looking for a day shift person. One day shift guy took that night shift spot.

Unfortunately we had a driver recently terminated after a similar mishap.

The store he was at required you to park under the gas fuel island to reach the fuel drops, and then pull all the way through to turn and depart the store.

Unfortunately he rushed his his right turn and hit the bollard protecting the fuel pumps with the trailer axle at just over 20mph. The trailers frame was bent, and will likely never be roadworthy again.

Always watch your mirrors and be aware of where your trailer is tracking. And more importantly don't rush!

Unfortunately we had a driver recently terminated after a similar mishap.

The store he was at required you to park under the gas fuel island to reach the fuel drops, and then pull all the way through to turn and depart the store.

Unfortunately he rushed his his right turn and hit the bollard protecting the fuel pumps with the trailer axle at just over 20mph. The trailers frame was bent, and will likely never be roadworthy again.

Always watch your mirrors and be aware of where your trailer is tracking. And more importantly don't rush!

Always know where your truck and trailer are and are going. Also, go slow when moving in tight quarters. In Charlotte last week there was a local fuel truck driver who went off the road at the exit for the refineries. It was wet out and he obviously was going too fast.

We had a guy back over a bollard around an above ground tank and ripped 3 of his 5 load heads off his trailer. It was pouring rain and he couldn’t see out the passenger mirror because it was soaked and he was going back blind. He didn’t wanna get out and look. Luckily the belly valves were shut. Same guy also cross dropped at a customer site and ruined 20k (10k gas/10k diesel) gallons of fuel because he was too busy talking to a worker there and didn’t pay attention. He finally lost his job after he had a major spill somewhere else. He was parked nose up on a pretty big angle, opened all the belly valves (the trailers have a manifold system so you can drop the whole trailer at the same time through one load head but mainly used for for pump loads), flooded the vapor recovery and was pouring a load of dyed out of the rear port and didn’t even know it. Luckily someone saw it and alerted him to it but it made a heck of a mess. I’m not with that company anymore but he cost them a lot of money and time.

Pay attention to what you’re doing at all times! A conversation that takes your focus away could cost you and others their lives.