Truck crash causing traffic headaches near Smith Mountain Lake - WDBJ7 Roanoke News and Weather NRV Lynchburg Danville |

For the record, the driver walked away without a scratch.

 

Those pics sort of lend support to the "Idiot holding the wheel" theory!

From the article;
It is sad what type drivers are being hired. :tears:

 

Dollar General????

Following GPS obviously means he was unfamiliar with the road. Anytime you're on a road for the first time, you need to go slower and be far more cautious. GPS can be fantastic to keep you "on course" when you don't know the area, but it will not keep the rig on the road if you come up on a nasty surprise. Caution is the only thing that can do that.

 

Went up to Wally-World today in Culpeper, VA and found VDOT has placed a new sign along Rt. 3. It states: Trucks: Rt. 3 recommended for use, DO NOT use GPS. I can only guess that a few genus's had decided to follow their GPS which sends them across Rt. 666 to cut over to US. 29. The problem with that is the cut over road is not truck friendly at all and you would know that as soon as you started to turn onto it. It's more like a goat trail that is barely wide enough for 2 cars to pass. I've followed several trucks across it that would not go over 15 mph. Had they gone the way the sign says to go, it would cost them a mile but save them a good 5-10 minutes+ depending on how slow they go across the "shortcut."

Speaking of Dollar General, probably was a JB truck. I see them pulling those trailers all the time around here.

 

I hear ya on that 'shortcut.' I never noticed that shortcut, but then again, I usually just go to the DG in Culpeper or take the truck route around town. I never have problems (unless slow traffic and stoplights count).

Alas, it wasn't a JB truck. It was a Classic XL in Werner livery (the last Classic we had on the account). We're the only ones who have that account in South Boston (I thought US Xpress, Swift, and Averitt were the only other carriers that DG uses). JB does pull Family Dollar out of Front Royal, though.

 

I was thinking it was Werner. I used to see a lot of them pulling DG trailers. I've also seen a few of the DG locations, and have nothing bad to say about the drivers that find themselves delivering to them. I've seen a few worse locations, like a few of the Harley Davidson dealers out in CA. More than once, I've been complimented on my ability to meneuver a tractor/trailer into a dock. (Some of the locations I've been to in NJ, CA, OR, WA, and PQ, are not for amateurs.) So, I have to tip my hat to some of the Werner drivers. My guess would be that this driver must have been fairly new. Not the way a driver wants to end a career.

 

Yeah, he hadn't been there a month yet, at least as I can recall.

 

While driving for K&B, there was a cold storage facility in Missouri that they had me go to a few times along a north-south route, but I can't remember the name of the small town near it. As you go south on that road, there is an overhanging cliff over the southbound lane that forces you to switch to the northbound for a distance of about 100 yds. unless you'd like to arrive without a roof and another foot or so of your trailer. I'm thinking that the lack of a roof would probably be a serious impediment to keeping that load cold that you were headed to pick up.:whistle:

 

Well Asphalt, if you moved over to go around that overhang then your smarter than the JB driver who was going to get a tire fixed here. He didn't swerve around a low hanging branch in broad daylight(prolly never saw it due to being pre-occupied with looking for the tire shop) and tore part of his truck roof open along with nearly pulling the whole tree down. The city police were none too happy with him when he claimed he never saw the huge branch hanging down and was why he did not swerve around it.