[jimifoad]

once i was hooking up to a box of paper in the fox valley, bout 20 below out. wasn't happy about it, let my emotions get in the way. pulled the johnny bar, thought the king was locked. pulled around the corner and dropped the trailor, busted an air line. now i always check that pin, lesson learned. cost me $175.00 for a guy to splice the air line and another $250.00 to pick the trailor up off the ground so i could get back under it. and by the time this was all done, i was late with the load.

[wild bill]

I was hauling cars, it was my second week on the job as a trainee. We had an enclosed trailer and the roof would raise up about two feet in order to load and unload the cars. I had gone inside the dealership while my trainer raised the roof and the top two rear ramps. He lowered the rear upper ramp after unloading the car but left the other one up. As he drove off he said OK lower it down and close it up. The problem was I thought he was talking about the roof, so I began lowering it and a passer by yelled Hey you're crushing a car up there :!: So I stopped what I was doing and sure thing I had just crushed the roof of a brand new $55,000 Cadilac Alante. That was back in 1986 and $55,000 was a small fortune for a car. Still is to me.
Needless to say I learned a valuable lesson that day.

[jimifoad]

another time pulling box, i had a real tight spot. snow covered lot, no room to back in the 53 foot box. had these 2 dudes spotting me into the building. had the trailor straight, doing a real good job. spotters are waving me back. then crunch! they didn't have the door open all the way and i hit it with the top of the trailor. i was looking at them rather than my total surroundings. nice little claim.

[LadyNorthStar]

Dropped a trailer once, thankfully just on the frame, a little cranking got it back on the 5th wheel. 35 below and the pin sometimes doesnt want to stay out, it can pop in while your backing up to the trailer, you can look and it looks pinned. At that temp you can tug test it and it seems hooked.

Pulled in the yard, left hand turn in between 2 other parked trailers. Front right of my trailer clipped the back of the trailer on my right. No damage but moved the trailer a few feet. My most awesome boss was standing there waiting for me to get in so he could unload... he gets this little smirk on his face and says... "next time you want to move a trailer, you wanna hook up to it first?" haha, I will never forget that.

First time I EVER hit anything backing up, actually anything period besides that above mention, a couple months ago, shortly after I taught myself to back up Super B's. Went to this palce, its a crappy place to back onto, got way crooked, and kinda mad (this is a bad thing to let happen) and backed into a light post. I was SO upset. All I did was take off a marker light and the hinge for the little door for the auto greaser. Knocked the pole over a bit but the guys laughed and said it gets knocked over at least twice a week.
I was in tears, 3 years of driving and finally did some damage. The shop manager came out and laughed, there wasn't a mark on the trailer, they replaced the light and the hinge in less than 5 minutes. I didn't lose my safety over it. lol

[wot i life]

Picked up a trailer on a Sunday morning to travel to Italy. Trailer number 26178 or something like that. Looked at paperwork and it stated that trailer had only 2 1/2 tonnes of groupage. Excellent, I thought. I ,ll bloody well fly up the Alps with this!
Never looked on trailer though.
Load had been transhipped onto another one and nobody thought to tell me.
Drove all the way to Port of Dover and boy oh boy, you should have seen my face when I saw the reading come up on the weighbridge.....1....4....5....8....0! Oh shite! an empty trailer! ops:
Who,s in the doghouse? Wot wot wot wot

[LadyNorthStar]

What a great idea for a thread, some of these have had me really laughing!

[line_transporter]

One other mistake I made was driving at night on an unfamiliar route. I wanted to pull over into a rest area to sleep for the evening, and while I was pulling into the rest area, I couldn't tell where my trailer (a 53) was exactly... all i had to guide me were those little orange lights along the side of the trailer. Especially on those tight curves. This particular rest area was, believe it or not, not made at all for semi's! Only space for four wheelers, so I couldn't sleep there, but I did also learn the lesson, not to drive at night where I hadn't been before. It's incredibly easy to get into trouble :idea:

I have had a few dumb ones like we all do

First memorable one was when i was with my trainer at Star. Did a drop and hook..did the pre trip on the second trailer..everything except making sure the tandems were locked in on the trailer...pulled out got down the road a way..went to slow down for a red light and those tandems went sliding for the rear and hit the stop bar..BOOM!! it made the loudest sound even from 70 feet behind us....made my trainer jump up from his nap mighty quick...didnt tear anything up LUCKILY..but it sure scared the crap out of me.

Recently..was dropping a trailer, kinda tired and not at my peak as far as attention span goes...hopped out...lowered the landing gear and let out the ming pin release hoped back in, dumped the air and started to pull away....anyone notice what I didnt do? I didnt untill i heard a VERY loud slap on the back of my sleeper..forgot to unhook the airlines and pigtail..pulled away, stretched them out until they unhooked them selves and they did a slingshot into the back of the sleepr...i thought i was screwed and had ripped all the plumbing out back there...luckily they broke away with no damage....ALWAYS make sure you unhook these....i would have been pretty much screwed if those things tore out.

I guess we all do STUPID stuff sometimes.

[fishnwiz]

First solo trip went to San Marcos Texas, got off interstate and drove to the T intersection directions called for. Looked at my written instructions which said to turn left to shipper so I promptly turn right onto narrow residential type street. Relize mistake but afraid to back up into other road so I drive a little ways . see an apartment driveway I think I can turn around in if swing as far to right first but lack about 2 feet clearing the 1 car park in my way. So now I have a car rear quarter panel about 1 ft in front of me, a deep dictch about a foot behind my rear duels and the tractor in almost meeting the trailer because I am in such a tight jacknife already and to top it off I am blocking a road on a sharp curve and it is 3 am. Took many 6 inch back and forths but finally got it turned around.

[derelict77]

In my first month driving solo with Gordon I forgot to slide my tandems back to legal after connecting to a trailer with 40,000 lbs of plywood. I drove that sucker with the tandems slid all the way back for about 200 miles to our yard. When I was fueling a fellow driver suggested i do another pretrip...I was really embarassed.