Truck Drivers News

The story before this one is a prime example of how important a pre-trip inspection is. At least if you did do a pre-trip inspection then it will save your butt, in case something like this ever came up. But, still accidents happen so maybe the driver did do a “good” pre-trip inspection and that piece of metal just came loose after he had started down the road.

I pull the same trailer every load I haul, unless something has happened to my trailer and it is being fixed. The business I am in, I don’t have time to stay grounded so if my trailer has a problem I need to get hooked up to another trailer pronto. But, I do make time for a proper pre-trip inspection. Especially if it is a trailer I have never pulled before.

Here is a good website for a CDL PRE-TRIP INSPECTION WORKSHEET I will admit I do not do this every day. But I will do the basics, and I am constantly looking over my truck and trailer while I am loading or unloading. FYI, it takes me anywhere from 30 minutes to 1 hour to unload my trailer, so I have plenty of time during my unloading.

Once a week, I do check the air pressure in all my tires this is a requirement of my company. We run super single tires, and they are very costly when one blows out. Also, when I am loaded I weigh at 80,000 lbs or a little more all the time.

I know, most freight trailers don’t have a lot of things that could come loose and fly off while going down the road. But, a trailer like mine does I pull a pneumatic bulk tanker, so it does have a lot of valve handles, and lid latches, and hose racks etc. I keep check on these things all the time. Flat bed drivers, are also ones that need to do good pre-trip and in route checks all the time.

I once, pulled a flat bed many years ago. I was loaded with a load of steel studs one time. Steel studs are like 2×4’s only they are made from light weight steel. There is no way to properly tie these things on a trailer without bending them. I lost a partial stack while going down the road, the company I picked the load up at steel banding broke and allowed the center of the stack to come out. My straps were still in place and tight. I lost 57 pieces of this stack on the highway. Thankfully it did not go through someones windshield and kill/hurt them.

It only takes a few minutes of your time to walk around your truck and trailer. It is time well spent!

The Grandparents of their 18 year old granddaughter want too know, who is responsible? A bizarre accident claimed the life of a pregnant, East Texas woman. Around three Thursday afternoon on Highway 271 just north of Pittsburg, authorities say debris fell from a truck and crashed through another car.

Inside that car was Allyssa Collins, 18, of Pittsburg and her mother. Allyssa was killed.

“[She was a] happy, smiling, laughing, beautiful girl.”

For her family, it was a shattering loss.

“She’s my baby its just a hard loss,” said William “Dub” Murrell, Allyssa’s grandfather.

6 weeks pregnant, Allyssa Collins was southbound on 271, when a black truck pulling a rock crusher approached.

“Something came off the truck and through her windshield and hit her in the chin and the throat area,” said William.

Investigators said a two foot metal piece broke off the rig and crashed through Allyssa’s windshield. She was on her way back from a medical visit to Mount Pleasant, her mother was a passenger in the car with her. Allyssa’s mother immediately grabbed the wheel and steered the car to the shoulder, then called 9-1-1, but in spite of emergency efforts, Alyssa later died at a hospital.

“She took hold of Allyssa and it wasn’t long,” said William. “She died right after that.”

“It’s a helpless feeling,” said Connie Murrell, Allyssa’s grandmother. “[I felt] really helpless.”

The truck driver didn’t stop, and may not have seen what happened.

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About 50 protesters marched into the offices of a Port of Los Angeles freight hauler today and demanded the reinstatement of four truckers who they said were wrongfully terminated.

The small demonstration at Swift Transportation in Wilmington is part of a new effort by the Teamsters to organize some port drivers, less than six months after they were hired as employees under new city requirements for drayage firms.

Among those who attended the demonstration Monday was City Councilwoman Janice Hahn, who is running for reelection today.

In October, the port implemented its Clean Trucks Program, which requires the phaseout of older, polluting diesel trucks and, more controversially, elimination of the decades-old practice of hauling freight containers by so-called owner-operators — drivers who owned their rigs and were paid by the job.

Under the new concessionaire agreements, shipping companies that do port drays will have to employ 20% of their drivers by the end of the year and 100% by 2012.

In the face of these changes, the Teamsters and labor and community activists staged work actions at Swift and port drayage company Southern Counties Express, which have purchased hundreds of new, clean trucks under subsidies for use in the port.

“As they move to this employee model, they want to have these drivers do exactly the same thing — violate the law — as they did as independent contractors,” said Chuck Mack, ports division director of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. “No breaks. No lunches. Haul the overloads. Drive excessive hours.”

Bismark Sanchez Jr., 21, of Gardena, said he was among the first group of truckers hired by Swift when it began its L.A. port drayage operation last fall. He was fired Feb. 9.

Sanchez said the company accused him of damaging the tires on a manager’s Dodge Charger, but he said he was fired for encouraging co-workers to speak up when they were mistreated and because he was involved with the union.
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If Congress passes its latest spending bill, Mexican-licensed trucks could be forced back into operating within 25 miles north of the U.S. border.

But the ban, which would reverse a Bush administration policy, would have few ripples in the fresh produce industry.

“I haven’t seen very much interest from Mexican trucking companies wanting to take advantage” of a pilot program allowing Mexican trucks to operate internally in the U.S., said Terry Shannon Jr., vice president of Shannon Brokerage, Nogales, Ariz., and former chairman of the Greater Nogales-Santa Cruz County Port Authority.

“I don’t think there was enough participation even for a study,” Shannon said. “If there was some great interest, there would’ve been companies knocking on the door trying to get trucks in. But that interest just hasn’t been there.”

Opening U.S. highways to Mexican trucks by 2000 was a provision of the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement passed under the President Clinton administration. But several organizations, led by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, fought to keep the borders closed.

But in 2007 an appeals court cleared the way for a one-year pilot program allowing 100 Mexican carriers to send trucks beyond the commercial zones.

“As I recall, there were about 35 U.S. companies approved and about 14-15 Mexican companies, and I don’t know of any that were produce companies. Most were tequila companies,” said Jesse Driskill, president of the Fresh Produce Association of the Americas, Nogales.
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Many people who’ve lost their jobs in this recession see truck driving as a good way to start over.

“I’ve got friends and family that are truck drivers,” said Bill Pickens of Caldwell who lost his job as a mechanic and is now training to be a truck driver. “I thought I’d open my horizons and start a new career.”

The Idaho Center for Professional Truck Driving in Nampa says there’s so much new interest, they could easily double the size of classes, which now average eight to 12 students and lasts nine weeks.

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Actually the only ones I hear about that are excited are these truck driving schools. I read a while back that Schneider was not hiring student drivers anymore. A lot of companies had put a hiring freeze. The ATA says there is still a 20,000 in shortages for truck drivers. All I can say is where?

Mike Corkery collects cars.

As the Ottawa-based trucker travels across Ontario, he collects cars behind his big-rig whenever he pulls out to pass another vehicle, he said. The line of cars that gather behind his truck do so because his vehicle cannot go any faster than 105 km/h.

“Yeah, I collect cars now,” Corkery said with a laugh as he finished his supper Monday at 10 Acre Truck Stop on Wallbridge-Loyalist Road. “I look behind me and I just see a line of them.”

A group of truckers, upset with provincial legislation requiring all rigs to be equipped with the speed limiters, arrived at Queen’s Park around noon on Monday. The law came into effect in January, but companies have been given until July to come into full compliance.

Corkery said the mechanisms aren’t making any difference because most companies had already installed devices before the law was introduced.

“A lot of the companies, because of the fuel costs, have slowed their trucks anyway,” he said. “The only way it really affects us is when we pull out to pass someone.”

Tim Roberts, a trucker for 13 years, agreed, adding the speed limiters have created more incidents of “road rage” as motorists become agitated with slower moving trucks. He said many people don’t realize trucks are now set to reach a top speed and become angry when stuck behind a trucker trying to pass other vehicles.

“Oh yeah, I get people giving me the finger and cutting me off more now than before,” he said.

Like Corkery, Roberts said he doesn’t see any problem with the limiters. At the end of the day, he said, he still gets a paycheck.
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I tell ya I hate Hackers! The site should be ok now. At least that is what Google is telling me now anyways.. I hope no body was affected by this…Anyways thanks for visiting..

MILLINOCKET, Maine — As an image of his face filled the projection screen and various flat-screen televisions arrayed around the large banquet room of the River Drivers restaurant, Rudy Pelletier folded his arms across his chest and watched anxiously.

The 51-year-old is a logging company owner, not an actor, but there he was, one of the leading players in the Discovery Channel’s new reality TV show “American Loggers” as it made its debut at 10 p.m. Friday.

Pelletier stood almost frozen as the show’s narrator introduced Pelletier Inc., the Millinocket logging and trucking company upon which the show will focus for nine more episodes, with more installments coming if the program is renewed.

After the first commercial break, Pelletier turned to local restaurant owner Tom St. John.

“So far, so good?” Pelletier asked.

“Perfect!” St. John replied. “It doesn’t get any better!”

About halfway across the restaurant floor, the show’s executive producer, Sean Gallagher, was asking the same sorts of questions. After a year of preparing the show, he was pacing nervously among an audience of people who would know whether he had truly captured the real story.

“Watching the show with all these people around is a lot harder than I thought it was going to be,” Gallagher said. “I thought it was going to be like going to a party, and that’s it, but this is tough. They obviously like it, but it’s hard.”

Consisting mostly of Pelletier family and friends, the 200 or so premiere party attendees were not the most critical audience. Their pleasure was pronounced. When not enraptured, they cheered, applauded and laughed appreciatively, especially at some of the more zestfully macho dialogue as the Pelletier family — a patriarch, seven brothers and sons, and a bevy of grandchildren — and several employees described their work.

“It’s fabulous,” said Susan Jane, a resident of the Bahamas who accompanied St. John to the party. “I think it’s great for the family and great for Millinocket.”

Thanks to “American Loggers,” a tiny town of about 5,000 tucked into the southern end of the largest contiguous tract of woods in North America is finally being seen for what it has been for more than 100 years, spectators said: a place of great industry, proud, hardworking families, and immense size and beauty.
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