5 Common Mistakes New Truck Drivers Make (+ What to Do About It!)

Welcome guys to smart transportation. This episode is brought to you by JP Transco. They are in the Chicago area. They are one of the highest paid carriers in the States. Visit their website. They have a really cool calculator. A salary calculator so you can calculate. find out how much he

make

s there as a driver, check them out on their website, these guys are highly qualified, if you are looking for a transporter, take a serious look at GP Transco, five

mistakes

newbies

make

, number one, and this is not an order of Offense Severity of Offense These are just five things I have noticed when misjudging a curve, the new guys don't really know the size of the vehicle they are handling yet and they tend to misjudge the curve, so they enter a curve and It won't open wide enough or they'll try to take a turn that's too tight for the

truck

and experience will teach you that you can look at a turn and say no, it's too tight for me and not go into it, the new guys aren't sure.

However,

what

the

truck

will do in a corner, then they will try to maneuver around a corner that is too tight for the truck and trailer and they will get stuck there, they will end up on a downtown street somewhere where this car is parked on both sides. sides and try to take the curve around the corner without hitting cars and stuff, cornering is a big part of road transport and it's something you would learn through experience, it's a decision, you have to be able to open you, the old man who taught me. He said to always take as much space as you need.

Now part of the problem with cornering also is that in an effort to make the trucks more aerodynamic, they have moved them closer to the trailers to eliminate wind resistance. trailer, but truck manufacturers call that swing nose clearance. If you look at an invoice trick, you'll see that they refer to clearance for the swing tip. Basically

what

it refers to is the distance between the truck and the trailer how sharply you can turn the corner of the truck. truck with a bump and the bunk extenders, you're crushing the bunk or something and these new aero trucks don't have enough swivel clearance so you can't turn hard toward the trailer because you'll hitch the trailer with the truck that has a manufacturing defect that shouldn't be the driver's fault but that's how they build pickup trucks nowadays, they now have two shorter wheelbases, you're too close to the trailer for aerodynamics and that limits the ability to The trucks take corners and when you have something you have to be careful, so judge a corner carefully, especially a corner on the right.

If you're in a city and you're turning right, you want to leave room for obstructions like a telephone pole or a bus stop, something like that, anything that turns further than you think you need to turn as much as you can to stop the traffic, it doesn't matter, the idea is that you have to clear everything in the corner, go around the corner safely and that is the goal of the game, don't misjudge the corner and until you are really familiar with the equipment, always take more space than you think you need and that way you will never cut anything that turns the corner, especially a right hand.

The worst curve is when you turn left and look out the window and look in the mirror and you can see where the trailer is going. You'll see if the trailer has been tracked to a car waiting there. To get through the intersection, right turns are much more difficult and that's one of the biggest

mistakes

newbies make is misjudging the corner. Another mistake that newbies tend to make is not getting proper directions to a destination on a cargo receiver of any kind. Many people will rely on a car GPS, the cheapest GPS they can find, but a car GPS and a truck GPS are not the same and a car GPS will guide you on the streets the vehicles can go on. cars, but if you follow that with a truck, you'll find corners, you can't do truck areas that are restricted, low bridges, all kinds of problems, so rule number one, get a GPS, for trucks, not for cars, Rule number two is don't rely strictly on GPS, call for directions, don't ask. to talk to the receptionist, you want to talk to the shipping and receiving guys who are used to guiding trucks in and out of the place, you get a receptionist, she comes to work in her Honda Civic, low bridges don't affect her, talk to a transporter or a receiver who knows where trucks can go and where they can't and he will guide you and give you proper directions and the third tip in this regard is to invest in a road map and stop at the truck stop.

Before arriving in the city, obtain a road map of the city and compare it with the sender's or recipient's instructions. Get a visual idea of ​​where you're going on the map and that way if you get lost, miss a corner, make a mistake somehow. You have a paper map that you can refer to at any given time. You don't have to call the carrier again and say, "Oh, I turned left here when I started right, what do I do now? There's the second thing you want." Get the right instructions, very important, another big mistake that newbies make that is also part of learning is reversing and backing up a tractor trailer, it is probably one of the hardest things you will have to learn as a driver. of truck. how to do it, particularly if you're trying to blindside the thing where you don't want to have to blindside unless there's absolutely no other way to do it except if you're blindsided or if you're backing off in the appropriate way. from the driver's side, get out and look, position the trailer so you think it is in the hole or almost in the hole, get out and look, check for obstructions, look at anything, check that the lock is on the trailers a each side and then back away. again five feet or something like that and then check it again if you're not sure and keep checking until you're lined up with the hole and then you'll know you're good to go and that point is when you go a little bit open the doors and then go back in because Doors block your view when you look in the mirrors, so they take up space, especially in a refrigerator.

The refrigerator doors are so thick that they will block your view, so that's the last thing you do. up with the hole, make sure it's clear, check the hole, make sure there's nothing there, make sure the point block is down and then open the doors and go back in as straight as possible, try not to have You have to go back in because that's you know you're trying to turn the trailer between two other trailers often and that's when accidents happen you can cut a trailer usually you're the one who ends up kicking down a door and your boss gets mad and it's expensive to rehang a door, you don't want to do that, but backing up is what takes practice and experience, even the most experienced guys go out and check constantly and if you manage to go up five feet, go back up another. five feet and get out and keep repeating that procedure, it is much better than doing the anagen, kicking down a trailer door or hitting the truck of the guy next to you and you know that, being a two thousand dollar refrigerator, you have marked the side, I mean.

You can't imagine how angry that guy will be, so you don't want to get into that situation, so go out and look every time. The fourth biggest mistake that I think newbies probably make is being under pressure from a dispatcher and they want, they want to get the job done and they're in a hurry and being in a hurry is one of the biggest mistakes you can make because you forget things that would make you nervous, you get excited if you are launching a trailer sometimes the newbies forget to load in there, they lower the landing gear, unhook, disconnect the airlines and take off, there is no landing gear in the way, they just go down on their nose or forget to unhook the airlines, you start. off the airlines now you're headed to a repair shop you look like a fool slow down relax and double check everything just take another 30 seconds to check everything again check the landing gear is down if you're dropping the trailer check two times to make sure it's attached properly double check to make sure the airlines are attached or undocked or whatever you're doing, double check to make sure your bills of lading or signed correctly and it's not leaving the place and There is a claim on your cargo or something that you will have to justify when you get home, then check the invoice and give it to your boss to pay you and see, sorry, there is a claim, then your payment is ready. danger, slow down, don't rush and double check everything, take whatever time it's worth, the 30 seconds or the three minutes or whatever, make sure your doors are properly closed before you take off, check everything I don't know in a hurry take the time number five, the four biggest mistakes that newbies make is that they start thinking, well, you know, I've got this, I've done this for a couple of years, I got it and they're listening to the radio. o They are talking on the phone and they are not paying full attention to the work at hand and you have to be one hundred percent focused, you can't be fighting on the phone or listening to music with headphones on o I have to pay one hundred percent attention to the work and that's really important, don't get complacent and all kinds of guys, and even guys that have been added a few years ago, get complacent and leave the top of a climb too fast when the roads are slippery or something and end up in a bend in the middle, complacency can kill people if you're not careful and you don't want to get into a situation where you can't get out and a lot of times with equipment that heavy and that big and that fast when you realize you're In trouble it may be too late to correct it and then you're in a slide or something and you just finished, there's going to be as much damage as there's going to be and you're in big trouble, so the best solution for that is to not get into trouble. that situation first, don't be complacent, don't get overconfident, don't think, hey, I've got this, I've done it hundreds of times, forget the music, forget the cell phone, forget all the other distractions and focus 100% in what you're doing, that's very important when you travel. the road when you're backing up when you're leaving all the time every time you get into the fuel pumps even if you don't want to hit a fuel pump on the other side be careful pay attention pay one hundred percent attention to what what you're doing , you have that these trucks and trailers are big and heavy pieces, you can cause a lot of damage and you can kill people in a fraction of a second of an instant, so you can't stop thinking about work at all.

You have to concentrate one hundred percent of the time. Those are the five biggest mistakes that I think newbies make and I think if you pay attention to those five tips and follow what I've said, you'll save yourself and the shipping company. and customers and people on the road feel a lot of pity if you pay attention to those five things, those five mistakes that so many people make and you don't want to get caught up in any of them because once you're caught up in something like that there's no going forward. behind there is no way to escape you have done the damage and you are responsible and they will hold you accountable for it don't get into that situation in the first place, that is the best advice.

We can give it a bit of a heavy topic. It's time to lighten it up a bit. It has a little truck history. If you're interested, it's a Lettuce King story. You guys seem to like Lettuce King stories. Well, Lettuce King and me. We were heading west on I-80 and I was getting close to darkness and we decided we were going to land for the night and we landed in Rawlins Wyoming on I-80 and back then it was a Rip Griffin truck stop and It wasn't very big back then, nor the size it is now. I can't imagine Griffin's even owns it anymore, but back then in Rawlins it was a Rip Griffin's, there wasn't much parking, but what was there.

It was beyond the fuel pumps, so we turned and backed up, you know, in front of the fuel pumps and you could see the whole row of trucks and there was a chatter on the CB when we landed and you could hear everything and there was a a young lady on the radio and needed a place to sleep at night, you know, when you go to truck stops, you hear this story, you're constantly thinking, oh, this is just a bunch of lizards, so whatever, we backed away. , but lettuce, the last king decided to start a conversation with this woman.

I don't know where she was, but anyway she was at the CB, so it turned out her story was that there was a prison right down the street from the truck stop. She had gone down to see her boyfriend who is in prison and had stayed too late and now she had lost thebus and needed a place to spend the night anyway so everyone at the truck stop would know this story they had heard. He repeats it a thousand times and no one wants to be bothered, but the lettuce king is entertained by the whole thing, so he strikes up a conversation with her so that everyone, back then, there's not much parking at Rip Griffin's and everyone in The group can see what is happening.

So everyone is waiting and she says go to channel 22, so the King of Love goes to channel 22 and everyone else at the truck stop dials 22 because we all want to hear what's going on, so the King of Love Lettuce attracts us. to the truck find us to tell us you know you can, you can sleep in the truck here tonight and then a nananana so we're all looking at it from the windows as we go back and we're backed up to the back and a guy appears, it's not a girl at all, it's a guy and I don't know what you can say and be politically correct these days, so the lettuce king was in total shock.

It wasn't what he expected at all. Spent about an hour trying to get it out of the battery case so we could go to bed, we all laughed a lot and fell asleep at night, that was the end of the story, but we sure didn't make fun of the king of lettuce at breakfast time anyway, that's my trucker story. Be careful, keep the rubber side down and we'll see you on the way back.