Without knowing the area, the driver had no way of knowing he could have found a place closer to the low-clearance to turn around. It should be standard procedure for companies to send drivers into the area that know the area, and not send those that obviously have no business going there. It would make deliveries more efficient, and reduce losses. While I do not know that particular area, I have been to places in NY and NJ that should have a warehouse in PA, and transfer the freight to straight trucks for delivery. At one location, the truck route takes a left, and I took a right... Because Werner had the street blocked with all the flashing lights around him after he took down a set of wires from a house or something. Police, fire, and utility trucks all had their lights flashing, with the Werner truck right in the middle of all of it. The street he was on was THE truck route in the area, and the street I took was not. I was guaging the height of every wire that was hanging across the road.

The streets and the layout of the towns are a couple of centuries old, and certainly not designed with modern rigs in mind. While it may not speak well for England, or the driver, any driver that has delivered to some of the out-of-the-way grocery stores that are well off the main routes knows what a mess it can be. If the truck was empty, it may have been much longer to back-track than to go straight to his next pick-up. It may be that no one told him about the low clearance and once you're committed to a direction of travel, it is not easy to find a place to turn around. It only takes one street sign to miss your turn and you're screwed big time.

There is a place in Union City, NJ that ships on 53' trailers all the time, and the only way a truck can get in is on a street that has very large signs saying "NO TRUCKS". And, when you see a day-cab with a 48' having to back up a couple of times to make a corner, it's enough to give you nightmares. Yet, the directions the shipper gives you makes it sound like you do this every day. (There was no way to back-track out of there, and the way out was also blocked with construction. Took me over an hour to go 3 blocks and be able to get out of there.)

 

Not know where he was going, or perhaps, following directions given, or maybe a little of both...kinda hard not to see the trailer jackknife like the pic shows unless you are trying to back around a corner to get into a parking lot....

Very dangerous to even begin without a spotter.

But when all else fails, GOAL (Get Out And Look) might have saved his ass.

Oh well, he's new....I guess he will learn.:roll::roll::roll::roll:

 

Then i guess i would have never made it out of the terminal on my 1st day then, huh? What some of the 'old timers' dont like, i think, is how technology has helped out so much, such as GPS, the internet, mapquest, and the like. Kinda the same goes with newbie drivers who have 'rode the coat-tails' of the vet drivers and we benifit from a/c in the truck, heaters, and such.

we didnt hear a whole lot of complaining from those who came to the new world on 'mayflower' type boats to those who came here on steam ships. What about the astronauts during the Murcury, Gemini and Apollo days crying cause space shuttle astronauts get to fly in a cadillac?

Work smarter, not harder. If you the driver are too cheap to buy a laptop or GPS to help you out, (for whatever reason...maybe you are 'old school' and think 'drivers before me didnt use GPS....neither will i) and save 10-15 minutes from making a wrong turn. Or to save you an accident backing around a light pole into a church parking lot becuse 'you're not familiar with the area', thats your own damn fault.

I make a wrong turn, or are unfamiliar with an area, i find the best and safest place to pull over, put out my triangles if i have to so nobody hits me, put my flashers on, the works. (if i had a flare or two, i'd use em) and fire up my internet, mapquest or something, and look on down the road for ANYTHING with a big parking lot. and if i dont have the ability to do that.....i look for a place to turn around, and if it looks in the least that i might not have enough room, i move on and dont bother to try.

i like what a previous poster said...."its not the mistake, its the solution that was tried"

 

Yes. I DO care enough to share my thoughts.

1) I'm NOT a 'perfect' driver. I don't believe there IS such a thing! We ALL drive 80k lb missiles down the road each day at (sometimes) high speeds. It is incumbent on us to do so with BETTER training and BETTER ability than the 4wheelers around us.

2) YOU asked if anyone on here, given the SAME circumstances, would have made the SAME mistake. I said that I would not.

3) Bridge weight limit signs are USUALLY within a few hundred feet of the bridge itself. The driver could have stopped his truck IN THE LANE OF TRAFFIC, put on his flashers, and WALKED his fat ass down the road to check it out! According to the aticle, IF he had done this, he would have discovered the "turnaround" available to him before he got to the bridge.

4) The article states that he began to "back out" of the situation. Why not back ALL the way out to the egg plant that he delivered to? (or the intersection, if there WAS one, where he took the WRONG TURN?")

5) He got tired of backing up and decided to turn around. Okay, that's fine. EXCEPT that he turned the WRONG WAY! The article says there was a field in front of the church that he wanted to turn around in. So.... WHY didn't he back his trailer INTO that field across from the church, keeping his cab (and his eyes) on the church while doing so? WHY back the trailer into a tight space between the church and a power pole, when he could have backed his tandems into the field, keeping his CAB between him and the church?

IF there is a "tight spot" to be negotiated, it is better to have it in FRONT of you, and with the agility of your STEER tires to negotiate it. So he might have had to put his TANDEMS into the sandy/dirty/muddy field across from the church. Maybe, they would even get bogged down. With 8 "drive wheels" and an interlock at his disposal, (ON the paved surface) I would think it would be no problem to pull his tandems OUT of that field if necessary! (Remember that the trailer was empty.)

6) THEN there are the power lines! In a rural area like this, they are usually ONLY on ONE side of the road! In THIS case, they were on the side where the church was. Big surprise! And we ALL should know that there are power lines from the NEAREST pole coming DOWN to the building nearest to it!

7) Then there is the placement of his tandems. I can't tell by the picture, but I THINK they are about halfway between full front and full rear. By moving them full forward, he would reduce the space NEEDED to make this turn. Of course, that would increase "trailer swing," but obviously he wasn't aware of that anyways! I would have slid them full forward, then backed into the OPEN field across from the church before atempting the "turn around."

I've said it before, and I'll say it again... Truckers are supposed to be SMARTER than the average driver! KNOW the terrain. KNOW your surroundings. KNOW simple things like which side of the road the power lines are on... and WHY! KNOW that it is better to keep tight situations in FRONT of your cab where you can SEE them and have more agility. And KNOW the turning radius of your vechicle and how the tandem position affects that.

I'm sure I could find MORE things wrong with what this driver did, but I THINK I have answered your "challenge," Tom. Do you have anything more to say?

Like I said: I am not a PERFECT driver. I don't even TRY to "play one" on this forum. I spend EVERY minute of my line 3 time LEARNING to be a better driver. And I spend a considerable amount of my OFF DUTY time trying to make "others" here as good as me. Won't happen.... but I try! :lol2:

 

There's no doubt that the situation could have been handled quite a bit better than it was. You've done a great job in my opinion of highlighting what went wrong, and how it could have been done differently, at least as far as we can tell from the meager details from the article. That's great, looking at stuff like this critically helps all of us to learn. That's not what bothered me, though.

My issue, Hobo is your arrogance. You've come out in front of everyone here and stated that you don't make mistakes here . I took issue with it, and you clarified your position. Fine.

Hobo, I've never had an incident. Never backed into anything, never scraped anyone's fender....never rear ended someone, never rolled a truck...never had a claim against me...

But believe me I have made MANY mistakes. It happens. Part of the human condition. I am very methodical, very picky about many, many things. I make a very strong point of learning from my mistakes, and I believe that's what makes me a better driver.

You are taking the position that a good driver doesn't ever make a mistake...which is a horribly ignorant way of reflecting upon your experiences. It also sounds condescending to the rest of us mere mortals who do recognize our past errors. :angryblue:

 

TomB985 said:

Good. That's a SMALL part of my reason for being on CAD.

I said I don't make BONEHEAD mistakes. There's a difference! Actually, in that thread, I admitted to snapping my airlines.... which I DO consider my one and only "bonehead" mistake! Is it MY fault I don't make MORE?

That's GOOD! You might make a truckdriver yet!

If that works for you, fine. I prefer to know what I'm doing BEFORE I do it so I don't MAKE mistakes I have to "learn" from. I HAVE made a couple, and I admitted to them. But, don't expect me to wallow in my "averageness" and cower at the duties of driving a truck just because OTHERS have problems "mastering" what came EASY to me.

No... I'm taking the position that a REAL "driver" considers a minor mistake as a learning experience and NOT something that needs to be "spilled out" on a message board. I expect him to know immediately what he did wrong and how NOT to do it again. But, maybe that's just ME!

If you consider yourself a "mere mortal," then that is YOUR problem. I never HAVE! YOU call it "arrogance." I call it Confidence!

 

The Great One known as Hobo.. :clap:

 

there is a big difference in being 'horribly ignorant' and 'tunnel vision'....and i'm seeing a bit of that here.

Hobo has said he is not perfect, and makes mistakes, yet Tom, you continue to ignore parts of what he says, and listen to others, just to make yourself feel better....or to think you are better than Hobo. WHO CARES. regardless of what you may think, or choose to read, he said he makes mistakes.

I am probably more careful than the next guy. Mainly because i have respect for my truck, and want to remain 100% in control of it. If that means i go down a hill at 20mph, while every other driver goes by me doing 55....so what. That make him better than me? no. I scraped some crome off a fellow co. drivers truck my 3rd day. Not because i was backing, but because i decided there wasnt enough room for me to make the turn for the dock, and so i kept turning out and was going to wait for more room to open up. Technically that is an 'accident'. So does that alone make you better than me? No. I like to stay legal, and not run with a cooked logbook. I can drive 640+ miles in 11 hours if needed. That mean another driver who runs hot, who can run 750 miles in 11 hours....that make him better than me?

why are we always trying to beat our chests, to make ourselves look better than the other guy? Why are we always trying to prove ourself to other people.

There was this boy, whos father wanted his son to be some hot shot athlete. and because his son didnt want to be, looked down on him and said, "you'll never amount to anything..". And the son told his father that some day he'd be a millionare. I read that the worst day of the son's life, was the day that he reached the one million dollar mark, and went to his dad and said "see i did it." and his father said....."so what." Why waste your time trying to prove you're something to someone else??

 

Okay, Hobo, I certainly see your point. Your first post on this thread bugged me a bit, but I can agree with everything you said in your last one. Thanks for clearing it up!

Kevin, I believe you misunderstand my point. I was attempting to qualify my next remark about how I make mistakes every day. Had I not referred to my safety record, I felt that it would make me look careless and complacent, which would have undermined the point I was trying to make.

In fact, the whole point of my posting on this thread was to insist that I, nor anyone else, is inherently a better driver than the next. I had an issue with people who, from what I could see, were relentlessly attacking the other driver, who isn't here to defend himself. There is always more to the story than you will ever read in a news article.

 

totally agree. HOWEVER, when you get a picture of your rig in a position that driver got it in....it is clear that he should have been given a ticket for "driving while stooopid". If you are dumb enough to try backing a truck up between a power pole and a small church, you need your head checked, THEN you need to turn in your keys.