5 THINGS TRUCK DRIVERS SHOULD NEVER DO!

hey big strapper I've come up with a list of five things you should never ever do as a truck driver number one come down the mountain too fast and believe me I'm speaking from experience on this one I made that mistake early on in my career I was out in BC hauling fuel I'd loaded gasoline no I don't know I was I was quite used to the trans-canada after a while running back and forth on it but they sent me down to a town called Castle gar BC that meant taking the southern route I've met highway 3 and it meant going over the cell mole crest and Hill and I was I was pretty comfortable with all the hills on the trans-canada I thought you know I had it all figured out I thought I knew what I was doing so I wasn't I wasn't particularly worried about running highway 3 I had never done it before but how tough could it be I already mastered the trans-canada the distance roughly between the town of Creston BC in the town of Selma BC spoke 50 miles it's about 25 miles up the hill and 25 miles back down the hill so I crawled my way up and I got to the top it was it took me you know quite a while to get to the top the trucks were old and slow back then I was running a 300 horse our model Mac with a five-speed transmission got up to the top of the hill I looked down from the top of the hill and I thought oh this doesn't look so bad I've heard guys complain and worry about this hill but it didn't look that bad to me so I left the top two quickly what you do in mountain driving is you pick a gear to leave the top with well I picked the wrong gear so by the time I got partway down the truck was just gaining on me all the time and I was using the brakes more and more the Jake brick wasn't holding it I was having to use the pedals and the truck was still picking up speed and it was it was starting to get away from me and after a little while and me I'm waiting for the hill to be over I'm waiting to hit the bottom and it's it's just not coming up I come to a kind of a in a bit of a level spot look ahead of me and I can see down in there the bloody hill still another five miles long at least from what I can see and then thinking oh man now I'm in trouble got a pretty good smoke going hook the back my column gasoline so that's not a good combination I managed to find a flat spot and wind her down enough that I could get stopped set the brakes hop to got a couple of rocks to block the tires and then release the brakes again it's not brake pad on brake drum smouldering away and I had to sit there for about maybe 45 minutes for the whole thing cooled down enough that I could continue on my way down the hill but it was a real wake-up call looking in your mirrors and seeing the smoke rolling out of the brakes and knowing that the truck was picking up speed instead of slowing down no matter how hard you press the pedal so I got over that one lucky but there's something you never ever do is go down the mountain too fast no one ever died from going down the mountain too slow but I could have died from going down that hill that fast that day so I never made that mistake again number two you don't text while you're driving that's if you're texting and driving at the same time you're an idiot no other explanation is needed here that's a that's a major thing you never never do text and drive into that number three you don't ever let your reefer run out of fuel when you're traveling across country I had a friend that made this mistake back in the day we used to run pretty hard coming home off the coast we had produce on and the buyer wanted there ASAP so we literally back then and we could do it back then run as hard as we could as long as we could to get that stuff home so it was as fresh as possible I had a I had one friend that will call the lettuce King because we can't reveal his real name because he's probably still wanted by the d-o-t half the places we go but the lettuce King had a load of broccoli on and he was one of these guys that could literally drive a straight home and he had a he had a big 650 horse cat a modified cat it was a Marine Engine cat basically in his peat and that thing didn't even slow down in the hills he could go uphill downhill 65 75 miles an hour the load on so that truck could really make time and he was making time so he could literally run straight home with with almost no sleep he'd grab a couple hours here in a couple hours area and just keep charging well on the one trip home this this load of broccoli that he had on broccoli would you load it out there they they put a layer of ice on top of it and it takes a while for the broccoli ice to melt but you're supposed to be running the reefer so it maintains temperature well I guess it's I guess his reefer ran out of fuel somewhere around Wyoming and he was so tired or traveling so fast or I don't know what he was doing but he never noticed it the refried shut off and you know I don't remember now back when I think about it weather has had one of those idiot lights on the on the front of the trailer or not that he could check from his mirror maybe didn't happen maybe that was part of the problem but but he literally rode straight home and I guess the reefer must have been out of fuel for quite a while because you got into Toronto and open the back doors to back into the dock the produce terminal and here all the broccoli had flowered it was it had gotten so warm and it sprouted and started to flower so there's number three you don't ever do let your reefer run out of fuel you check your reefer fuel off and and you check your reefer temperature your box temperature often so you don't end up in that the same kind of pickle of the lettuce king ended up in number four you don't ever drive too fast for conditions and anyone that's been trucking in the winter has seen at least one wreck every winter there's wrecks all over the place and it's just caused from guys traveling too fast trucks or cars neither one stop as quickly on snowy pavement as they do on dry pavement it's just the nature of it so and and I don't know why everybody feels this need to travel at the speed limit or above it when the conditions are bad you can you can be out there and it's snowing like a bugger and you'll still see guys traveling at the speed limiter above the speed limit and these are the guys that that have the rack so that's becoming more and more common every year number five is a big one don't drive tired don't ever drive tired with the mandated easy Aldi's some of these carriers think they've got it all figured out but really you're the only one that can judge if you're tired or not if you should be driving or not the judgment call is completely up to you when you're tired all sorts of things can go wrong because you just don't have the mental capacity to absorb things at the rate you need to your attention span is down your timing is down all your reaction times are down it's just not good to be driving especially in one of these big things when you're too tired so forget about the ALDS they're only a safety check measure the ALDS were brought in to make sure that you get more sleep on the road but no one's figured out how to make sure that you get the sleep you need when you're out on the road not when the eld dictates you need sleep you dictate when you need sleep and that's gonna be a major problem with these EE L DS sleep when you need to sleep that's the main thing you don't ever drive one of these rigs when you're tired hell you don't even drive a car when you're tired because the possibilities are endless and none of them are good so stay safe keep the rubber side down guys and I'll see you on the backhaul [Music]

Channel: Smart Trucking

Views: 720,499

Keywords: trucker, truck driver, trucking, professional driver, smart trucking, smart trucking videos, smart-trucking.com, smarttrucking, truck driving, big rig speeding, big rig accident, peterbilt 377, kenworth w900, produce hauler, mountain driving, trucker texting, truck driver texting, big rig accidents, trucker speeding, truck driver speeding, 650 caterpillar engine

Id: ljwl4u_JXJY

Length: 8min 20sec (500 seconds)

Published: Fri May 11 2018