Hey Matt...........sorry to hear that you lost your job. It sure seemed like you were enjoying it !! Hang in there.....keep trying....there has to be a company that can use you.

Well, I have finally made the decision to go for it. I start training for my CDL on APR. 14. I am scared sh--tless, but WTH...... you gotta just go for it sometimes. I've heard somewhere that it is tougher to KEEP a CDL than to GET one. I plan on working real hard to protect my CDL when I get it. Have a perfect MVR right now, and I hope to be able to keep it that way. 5 week course, so I should be OTR with a trainer, hopefully, by late MAY. Haven't decided which company to go with yet, but there are a couple of companies at the top of the list. (Swift isn't one of them)

So anyway, here goes another mid-life crisis career change. :shock:

Anyway, back to you..........IMO you should be totally honest from this point forward......make sure when you talk to perspective employers that you are up front with them and show sincerity when you tell them that you made a dumb mistake BUT you learned a BIG lesson that you KNOW will help you to continue your career when you DO find a company that is kind enough to give you a second chance. :)

Re: In your defense . .
 

Well here is the thing, I believe I had fairly descent training, and my OTR trainer was quite awesome and taught me a lot (30yrs experience and O/O for most of it), believe me swift drills sight distance probably harder then anything, and really I chalk my mistake more so to newbie inexperience then anything, at the speed I was going, I could of avoided the accident had I been a lot heavyer, and also I shouldn't of slammed on the brakes either being as light as I was, I should of just went for a quick lane change (I did look in my mirrors too to make sure it was clear, because I tried to slam brakes + make lane change), do I think swift has poor training, yeah at some of their schools, but not all of them, the one I went to has the best statistics of all of the swift schools because they do not have third party licensing rights (Too new of a school to obtain it) so they make you go to your state to do the road test at actual DMV, so it's a bit more strict. A hard way to learn a lesson yeah. And I would be more then willing to go out with the best of a companies trainer if need be, I would even be willing to do a refresher course (except for the fact I can't afford it right now)

Re: In your defense . .
 

Yeah...that is the solution to the problem!!! You shoulda flipped that steering wheel real quick and changed lanes !! :lol: :lol: :lol: Then you woulda not only have clipped the back of the trailer you were going to hit anyway, woulda laid your unit over on it's left side, gotten to slide down the road a little way's with your head inches from asphalt...and maybe had some speedballer just like yourself slam into you while you were doing all of that !!!


Why the heck wasn't I taught that, as the proper way of controling my vehicle???? :shock:

I would hope you didn't give away that video- or put it on YouTube- there are trucking companies which would probably PAY you for copies of that video-- to show their drivers what NOT to DO while driving... there are also probably safety groups/orgs that might pay you to take your video and your experience to local High Schools and do siminars on how you "screwed up and don't be like me" type lectures for driver's ed.

As long as YOU and others learn from the mistake-- there's real $$$ value in it. Trust me, seems like the last two trucking companies I've worked for-- both of the Safety Directors are total alcoholics with restricted driver's licences(can only drive to and from work) and are running the Safety department( so there's proof there's employment options out there)
you never know, maybe one day---YOU"LL be a safety director at a major trucking company.

I feel your pain man, Swift seems to have put an end to my career as well, although I didn't have an accident. I hopped off the truck and greydogged it home and Swift is saying that I abandoned a load even though my trainer was an azzclown and was with the truck, it ain't my load, it ain't my truck, is what I say. I applied at Werner a couple months later and they turned me down :sad: .

Re: In your defense . .
 

I didn't say I should of jerked the wheel, I said I should of just quickly changed lanes, At the time of impact I was halfway over to the other lane, if I hadn't slammed my breaks my trailer wouldn't of slid to the RIGHT SIDE which kept the truck from getting over quicker, you know this was such a minor impact, I probably hit that truck at a 3 or 4 mph difference, just enough to screw up my hood and radiator, it's not like I went plowing into it going 20+ mph faster, and as far as that other post about safety videos go, at the time of the accident the camera was not recording, I wish it had been, the software I was using didn't have the capacity to record while broadcasting. And if people want to insist I was 'playing with my video or computer' at the time of the accident, go ahead and think that all you want, you weren't in my truck at the time of the accident, so you don't know what I was doing, I know what I was doing, I was looking straight ahead watching the lines to stay in em in the fog. For me it was like watching a movie where a ship appears out of nowhere on the ocean in a movie in the fog that is about to broadside the ship the camera is on, the moment was just like that, going straight and all of a sudden, ohh sh... the back end of a truck appeared out of the fog, and a lot of people will say, "Ohh well you should of pulled over and let the fog pass" well that is fine and dandy in some types of fog, but this was on a mountain and the fog was only 1 1/2 miles thick, with no exits between where it started and edned, and I didn't find out until after the accident that that fog is there most of the time, doesn't usually go away. Point is I learned my lesson in it, but are you capable of believing that I did, and able to let it go or must you insist on being an azzhole and keeping posting stupid remarks?

What you have to realize, cat, with a CDL, everything binds down tighter on you. They see a CMV, bad weather, rear end accident.. and instantly chalk it up to you driving poorly. All that aside, perhaps you should get a copy of your DAC for your own records, and see what exactly Swift put on there. That information could help you out, never know.

As far as the other person abandoning the truck.. why didn't you clear it with your DM to get set up with another trainer? They have an assload of terminals, you're bound to stop at one, with clearance, to get a new trainer. Abandoning that truck just got you blackballed..

Maybe the OP should look for other avenues of employment, rather than driving a CMV. May be in the best interest for the OP's family and the general public....

Re: In your defense . .
 

First off....you admited when you first posted about your accident, that your laptop was open and you were broadcasting your travels. You continue to seem to feel that you did nothing wrong there. Second, YOU were traveling too fast for conditions...period..yet you seem to have no comprehension of the fact that you did wrong...you just whine about the consequences you are suffering.

You aren't even capable of understanding how silly you sound, when you suggest, {I should of just went for a quick lane change (I did look in my mirrors too to make sure it was clear, because I tried to slam brakes + make lane change)}. I don't know what that 30 year driver taught you..it didn't sink in...you didn't absorb it...or he taught you wrong.

Once you were in that fog...climbing that hill..YOU should have realized that there were going to be trucks in the right hand lane, climbing that hill at a much slower speed than you were traveling. Of course..you with all your wisdom and excuses, don't have that kind of knowledge or wisdom.

Kid...I'm not the smartest guy on the block...but I place myself in the top 5% of drivers in the country. I have 30 years of professional driving behind me. The only accident I have ever been involved in, while driving a CMV, was caused by the kid whom hit me. He was ignorant enough to assume I would whip a gasoline tanker across lanes to avoid him...when he changed lanes behind me...I didn't change lanes...and he suffers the consequences of his actions. There is a video of that accident, but it was recorded by traffic cameras on I-5...not by an illegally open laptop, operating a web cam.

Re: In your defense . .
 

There is nothing illegal with having an open laptop in a moving truck, there is nothing wrong with broadcasting a video stream of the road while driving either, so those points are null and void to your argument. Now LOOKING at the open laptop while driving, not so good, however I was not, secondly the rest of your point has been established already in the other thread, move on, thirdly, I have not whined at one point in this thread about my consequences, so go ahead and think what you want. How you think that broadcasting a video stream is wrong or dangerous, I have no clue! The only way it could be dangerous is if one was constantly staring at it while driving, every single cop car in this country has a dash mounted camera, and nearly every single cop car in this country has a mounted laptop, if your so anti-laptop and anti-camera why don't you go after all of the police authorities in this country for their dangerous and wrong usages of these things. You must obviously have a really poor attention span, or lack of multitasking capability if you are incapable of utilizing a gadget even to the simplest degree while driving, and there is nothing wrong with that, some people just do not have the capacity to even use a GPS without being dangerously distracted, but do not project your incapacities onto me, and definitely do not go stating your opinions on situations you know hardly anything of other then what you where told as if they are the fact. Even if I did NOT have that camera or laptop even in the truck, this accident still would of happened, they had no contributing factors of any kind. And yes I will defend myself on points that merit a defense, I have no argument with the fact that I was going too fast for conditions, and as I made it clear in the other thread at the time I also did not think I was, that is not a defense to say I was not wrong, that is just stating the fact that I did indeed make a mistake that I have learned a lesson in, very simple. There are many things in this life that are tough, and there is no reason why people such as yourself have to go around and make it even tougher with unjust negativity and personal bias.