your biggest mistakes????

[fuelman]

Thought it would be interesting for the noobs is see what kind of mistakes current drivers make and may remember reading this thread when they come up against the same situation.

Here's mine,,,
CRST-3 months- what can i say, this mistake lasted 3 months.

Coors beer-4 years-our trucks were already loaded when we came in the mourning, so we would open each bay door to see what was in each bay before leaving the yard. so one mourning i take off and get down the street and there is a 90 degree left in the street and yes i was going a little fast and heard a loud crash, i stop and there is about 100 cases of coors light 18 packs rolling and squirting beer all over the place. OOPS- FORGOT TO CLOSE THAT BAY DOOR!!! What a mess,, luckily the warehouse was just down the road and the warehouse guys came to clean it up. Needless to say i lost my saftey bounus for that quarter,, oh well, it was only coors beer,,, if it had been some good import i might have cried!!!!

Fuelman- 1 year- Dumped 91 gas into the 89 ground tank OOPS, luckily it upgraded the ground tank so it was fixable.

Fuelman- this one nothing really happened but i sure felt stupid afterwards. The electric window on my daycab is broken so we have cardboard stuck in the window to hold it up. I go over a railroad track and the bump made the window fall down about 8 inches, its kind of cool out at 1 am so i want the window up , i put my left knee on the steering wheel to steer, my left hand on the electric window button, my right hand crossed over to grab the window to pull it up, push the button and that damn window shot up and traps my right hand in the window, so now i'm in a predicament, luckily i was able to push the window down but that could have been a total disater.

OK YOU GUYS,,, fess up,,,,,, tell us your blunders, the only perfect truck driver drives my truck during the day shift and he will be the first one to tell you,,,,,, little does he know, i know he got fired from this job once,,, i;m saving that ammunition for a later date.

PEACE OUT,
FUELMAN

[rubberducky]

I have forgotten to take off grain locks before dumping, raised the trailer up for nothing to come out. Lower the bed back down and now can't get the grain locks off because of all the pressure on them from all the weight that was just put on them.

[scythe08]

Swift--- Backed into an extremely tight dock that no one else could get into, on the first try. Then had to pull back out an open the trailer doors that I forgot about and couldn't get back in to save my life.

Knight---- I had those bead massage seat cover pn my drivers chair. One day when I was getting out of the truck to fuel, I didn't notice that the front straps had torn off the thing and when I turn to get out of the truck, the whole thing turned with me and acted like a bed of rollers and shot my ass outa that seat on on the ground before I knew which way was up. And of course everyone saw it.

Dats--- Our most experienced(and grouchy) driver was on vacation. So I was assigned to take his sleeper truck down to St george from SLC ut and back to do his run. I normally drove a international daycab. His was a full sized freightliner. No big deal until I tried to go around the yard with a pup and tore off both his mud-flaps. There was one type of pup that his truck couldn't be attached to because the landing gear was too far forward, and of all the pups in the yard, that was the one I grabbed.

MBI--- We haul super sets that take garbage from a transfer station to the landfill. At the landfill we break up our sets and take each one to a tipper and dump the garbage so the dozers can smash it up. Anyway, the first week I was there I tried to take a trailer up to the tipper whilest forgetting to put my landing gear up and then bent the gear so it took me a half hour to crank that son of a gun back up.

And that's all I'm sharing, Thhhpppp!

[Malaki86]

I picked up a loaded trailer at our yard just outside of Nashville and took off for Laredo. When I got to the Texas welcome center I stopped for the night. When I got out and walked towards the bathroom something just didn't look right with the trailer number. After the bathroom trip I double checked the trailer number -wrong one. The trailer I was hooked to was supposed to deliver the next morning - in Nashville.

That was a nice non-paid round trip.

[BIG JEEP on 44's]

I picked up a loaded trailer at our yard just outside of Nashville and took off for Laredo. When I got to the Texas welcome center I stopped for the night. When I got out and walked towards the bathroom something just didn't look right with the trailer number. After the bathroom trip I double checked the trailer number -wrong one. The trailer I was hooked to was supposed to deliver the next morning - in Nashville.

That was a nice non-paid round trip.

WERNER ?

[ajritter04]

Getting into trucking without fully examining other options.

Getting married to my Ex-Wife. Also not going with Henderson trucking 3 years earlier than I did. Worst mistake I did while driving would be the time I had a tranny break in Alabama and was told to deadhead it home. By the time I got to the yard that tranny was JUNK they poured out everything BUT the shafts.

[Mack2]

Well this was more embarissing than a mistake. It took me atleast 8 trys to get the Peterbilt 387 we have at school backed up to the trailer and I had just backed the W900 up as perfect as you could ask for.

[VitoCorleone99]

Showed up at a customer at the last second, really dark night, took a few pull ups to get it straight, walked inside to use the bathroom, came back out, guy standing there, "You need to open your doors."

Dropped a trailer at the yard in West Memphis, pulled forward a bit, heard "thump! thump! thump!" against the back of the sleeper, forgot to unhook the gladhands and power cord.

Had directions to a place in Wisconsin, directions were wrong, it was late, I was tired, followed the directions despite that sneaking suspicion we get, wound up in some dude's yard as he sits on the porch in his underwear, drinking a beer. He was a truck driver so he told me how I could find a route through his neighborhood and get back out to the main drag. No harm, no foul.

[Dispatch_This]

Was on a side road in NM, the middle of winter taking a nap and had to take a leak (This was back in the 80's when I still had class and refused to use a Gatorade jug). Jumped out the door in my long johns and locked myself out of the truck. Looked around for awhile and found an S hook from a broken tarp strap and managed to pry out the spot-window in the passenger door...

[Malaki86]

I picked up a loaded trailer at our yard just outside of Nashville and took off for Laredo. When I got to the Texas welcome center I stopped for the night. When I got out and walked towards the bathroom something just didn't look right with the trailer number. After the bathroom trip I double checked the trailer number -wrong one. The trailer I was hooked to was supposed to deliver the next morning - in Nashville.

That was a nice non-paid round trip.

WERNER ?

Celadon - right after they acquired Digby

[BIG JEEP on 44's]

I picked up a loaded trailer at our yard just outside of Nashville and took off for Laredo. When I got to the Texas welcome center I stopped for the night. When I got out and walked towards the bathroom something just didn't look right with the trailer number. After the bathroom trip I double checked the trailer number -wrong one. The trailer I was hooked to was supposed to deliver the next morning - in Nashville.

That was a nice non-paid round trip.

WERNER ?

Celadon - right after they acquired Digby

Thought maybe Werner b/c of the loaction of the yard ...

[BIG JEEP on 44's]

Well Ithis isn't my fault it was mt FM's , But it's funny...


I had home time set for Dec 26th 2005 in Denver Co on the 25th I'm sitting bobtail in the Jubitz truck stop in Portland OR , And I get a message on the Qualcom ...Go ahead and head home MERRY CHRISTMAS...Well it's about 1300 miles to Denver , So I send a reply back stating ...That's an awfull long way to bobtail are you sure it's cool to head home ...Dispatch replies ..,If you can get an empty then do that if not Yes go ahead and bobtail...And a second time I reply you're positive you want me to Deadhead all that way....Final reply by dispatch...YES...Well I got my Mt at the Jubitz yard ,and heaed for home stopping once in Twin Falls Idaho at the Flying-J to fuel ...I get home on the 27th ,and send my arrived at home time macro ,And gave the keys to the shopp so they could do it scheduled maintence ...Then I arrive ready to work the day after new years , and send my available Macro ,And get a message asking ...WHERE ARE YOU...I reply sitting at the terminal then I get asked WHAT TERMINAL ,So I reply the Denver terminal ,and Dispatch replies who told you to go there , And my reply...DISPATCH said to go ahead ,and head home "MERRY CHRISTMAS " dispatch replies "We THOUGHT HOME WAS PORTLAND " I was like WTF I've never asked for home time anywhere ,but Denver CO ,And if hometime was portland Or why with no work available on the 24th /25th would I be sitting at at a truck stop with my thumb up my ***** when I could be at home ?...Dispatch's reply "you need to ask questions" ...I'm pretty sure I did ,But I had no idea Jerry Lewis was staffing the Werner dispatch office ... :wink:

[headborg]

Lets see;


not making a pass at Shawna K. S. the first time we went out on a (date)?
answering an add for JBHUNT to learn to drive a truck at (23???)
getting married at 25

[BIG JEEP on 44's]

And my biggest mistake was letting MY FM at werner know I was looking to leave the company in advance , As one would think the courtesy of letting your employer know you plan to leave would be appreciated not a cue to act in an un-professional manner attempting to ding a persons DAC in any way they can out of hostility towards a driver that simply wants to earn more than 28-30k gross for the next 10 years ...Oh , And if your an ass of a dispatcher towards your drivers...why on earth would you insist on meeting face 2 face with a driver you treat like shat ...I mean if your only weighing about a buck fifty and the driver you keep playing games with is pushing 250 and can put up 425lbs on the bench ...Why would you want him to be able to pick you out if infact you do screw him over ,and he decided to elect you for that ass-whooping you've been campaining for ... :wink:

[mack fan]

Got a $250 fine because the company forgot to tell me when running local you need to put start and finish times not just mileage.

[BIG JEEP on 44's]

Are these the biggest mistakes made while driving a CMV sober or not ?

[line_transporter]

running out of fuel because i assumed a $50 worth of fuel would get me from one town to another. Always fuel up at any chance you get, because you dont know when it will run out.

[matcat]

Well I have only been driving for 2 months, but, plenty of mistakes to go around My biggest, was in NC, I just got off of 77 onto 85 sb at 5:00pm, Charlotte traffic was quite heavy, and traffic was moving better in the second to right lane, all of a sudden I hear on the radio, "Hey swifty, how far you think your gonna get running the weight station?" I look over, and sure enough, there I was passing the weigh station entrence with too much traffic to even consider getting over! Needless to say it was a nervious 30 or so miles to the SC state line, never got ran down though...

Another time I was in texas, and there was road construction on a bridge, so they had a rather long detour around the interstate, made it all the way back to the interstate with one more intersection to turn at before getting back on, and a bear was directing traffic, well I had a 4 wheeler flash back from thinking about the bear, and made my turn a little to sharp, making a lovely scraping sound as my trailer got to know a concrete road barrier a little better then it should have, the cop just looked at me and shook his head as we waved me on to keep going (No damage was done, just scraped it)

Was at a pilot fueling up, was rainy as hell, and I learned a hard lesson about how slippery steps get when you mix rain and fuel :P

And finally, NEVER leave your windows down all the way and forget to tie down the window curtain!!!

[Templedawg]

probably the biggest brain fart of all time was turning down the wrong street while looking for a terminal, at night and in the rain, with a set of doubles. It ended up a dead end in a residential area with a 10 ft high power line. 3 hours later I finally had my trailers rehooked and pointing in the right direction. Then I still had to find the terminal in the dark, which started the whole ordeal. I turned 1 street to early. I have that one burned into memory as to never do that again!!!!!