(Warning: verbosity)

So Thursday I was having one of those days... and I wasn't alone.

My first load got scrubbed because trailer #1 at the yard has six marker lights out, including 1 top corner light and both rear corner red marker lights, which had been mangled at some point. The mechanic wasn't there, and it's not my job to do full lighting overhauls, so I went to our drop yard to find a suitable trailer. After 4 trailers failed my pre-trip, I found one that was satisfactory. Only then was I told that my customer in Louisana would only be there half a day, and therefore the load was pushed to Friday.

Okay.

Next, I hooked up to a tanker of UN1993 Xylene/Toulene to take up to our facility in north Texas. I checked the weather and it was 32* with ice pellets. "This should be fun," I thought. I hit the road and made it about an hour north and the boss called me and told me to turn it around because our facility was shutting down at 2:00p to become an ice rink.

Okay.

I then hooked up to another trailer to go, literally, right next door to drop off a drum load and pick up a drum load (handload, incidentally- no loading dock). I waited a good hour for the customer to show up, and eventually they refused the incoming which was then diverted up to a company in Tomball.

Okay.

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While I was waiting at job #3, however, I was a spectator to an astonishingly poor driving performance by a female driver from Alliance Transport out of Fort Worth, Texas.

My loading location is at the back of a cramped drop yard. The yard mule heroes turn and burn in and out of this place all day, but it is tight for a highway truck. I was pulling a 48' trailer and was barely able to turn it around in the corner (took a couple of back-n-forth cuts).

I heard a crunch and looked up. Ms. Alliance had a 53' trailer and 90* through her right hand U-turn, the ass end of her trailer dug into the trailer behind it as it swung out and back. She was past 90* in the tractor, with a trailer right in front of her. At this point if I were in the same situation I would have just continued on forward as backing up would drag the trailer harder, right?

Not Ms. Alliance. She cut the wheels LEFT and reversed, jacknifing even more and thoroughly mangled the air-fairing on the back right of her Columbia, while dragging the trailer back the other way. I got on the CB and asked if she needed help and she said no... ok.

She managed to get it back out of the jam and decided to stick the trailer in a narrow spot somewhat behind her. She pulled forward and crunched her bumper right over a pallet of concrete debris.

I asked again and got a more definite, more profane no. So I considered myself a spectator from then on.

She snaked it back left and right and right and left and bumped her trailer off the left and right trailers around her spot.

She pulled forward, got out and looked, got back in, and did the same thing.

She pulled forward yet again, got out yet again, got back in yet again, and proceeded to fold over her right fender blind spot mirror on the trailer to her right.

Jeez-us H.

At this point a yard mule driver managed to sneak behind her, got out, walked over, gave her the universal "throat slash" gesture, and yanked off her air lines (*whoosh*), pulled her fifth wheel release, cranked her gear down, and told her to get the hell out of there.

She did. He then hooked up and slipped the trailer right in in about 5 seconds.

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This lady probably did a couple thousand dollars worth of damage to her shiny new looking Freightliner Columbia in five minutes. I would have spotted her, and the yard guys would probably have taken over for her (rather than sit and wait for her to pull her head out of her ass). Instead she stubbornly continued on her destructive course after she was obviously flustered. The ONLY thing she did right was get out and look.

Sheesh.

-p.

 

I don't know what is wrong with some of these drivers. When I had them, drivers and trucks, I told all of them that if you ever had a problem like that, get someone to put it in the hole! DO NOT tear up my equipment!

I have been in places like you describe, and I have no problem grabbing a yard jockey to put my trailer in a dock or elsewhere. I ain't got no pride in tearing up a truck or trailer, or someones else's, just to prove I can do it.

If that was my truck, it would have came out of the driver's pay. But they normally quit before they tell you about that kind of damage and leave me stuck with the bill. Very few people are man or woman enough to admit fault. It was always the other guys fault for putting the pole, curb, fence, building, truck, car, (I could go on for days) there. Always someone else's fault. And then they tell you, "yea, I saw it" just before they hit it. But it ain't their fault! Like herding cats out here, glad I sold everything.

Common sense, I wish I could bottle and sell it.

 

She probably went through orientation and got the so called company training.

 

Man i thought i had bad days but that takes the cake. She let her pride get in the way of common sense. Some people are just so hard headed you just cant do anything but set back and watch them self destruct. And then of course laugh your ass off when they screw up. I bet she lost her job that day.

 

Unfortunately, It sounds like she thinks she has to prove something.

 

That reminds me of a female Swift driver who was dropping a load off at the Wal-Mart I work at (dedicated trailer from the Los Lunas, NM DC).

Here's a sattelite photo of our docks on the grocery side.



There are 4 doors inside the "walled" area. As long as you get your setup right it's no problem sinking it into the dock. The lines are clearly painted, etc. It's well lit.

Well this one driver just couldn't get it right. There were NO other trailers in the dock and she was having a bitch of a time getting it into dock 2. She kept failing to get up under the trailer once it was straight. Kept swinging the tractor back and forth and screwing up her setup. She kept this up for half an hour with us watching through the open dock door. She finally stopped, pulled the parking brake and got out, asking if any of us wanted to try. Everyone looked at me since I had experience. So I go out there, get behind the wheel, and with two pull ups got the trailer in the dock. Not bad since I hadn't backed a truck in over 5 years.

She's returned quite a few times and has gotten much better at backing. :lol:

 

I just now had to take an empty customer trailer over to that drop yard. There were only a couple of spots open and they were ridiculously tight, so I just moseyed over and asked the yard mule guy there if he could park it and he said no problem. I shook his hand, walked back to the trailer, disconnected and dropped it in the middle of the lot, he hooked up and had it in a spot before I was turned around and out of the yard.

Like the previous poster, I have no shame asking for help. I would still be there right now trying to maneuver this big bitch around otherwise.

-p.