As I have mentioned many times in this particular website I have held my CDL since 2015 and since that time I have been involved in three incidents while truck driving. The first one I was completely to blame and the other two had basically nothing to do with me. So lets take a look at those three incidents and maybe you can learn something or get a laugh out of
The Parking Lot Incident
I think the parking lot incident took place four months after I started driving commercially. I went a notoriously tight lot somewhere in Eastern Ontario Canada. The drive there was good as it was a Sunday in the fall so not a whole lot of traffic was on the road. I went into the guardhouse and they went through the normal paperwork and procedures which included issuing a badge to be on their property. The guard watched me cut the bolt off of the back of the trailer and took a peek inside to make sure that nothing had shifted or fallen during the trip. Everything was fine
I drove to the back of the lot and found a place to back the trailer into. At this point in my career I was not comfortable with backing whatsoever and sometimes it took minutes and other times it seemed to take hours.
I set up the way I was taught and actually got out of the truck to make sure that I was lined up with the spot and trailer. What I did not consider was the front of the truck. So I began to back into the stop and I turned my wheel to get the trailer straightened out when I heard a rather disturbing crunching nose. What I failed to notice that a trailer parked directly across from my spot was sticking out by a few feet.and I had managed to clip it while I was backing up
The damage was mostly to the front passenger lighting assembly with a couple of good dents to the fender
I finished backing into the spot and disconnected from the trailer. I had to drive back up to the guardhouse and tell them what happened and then reported the incident to my company.
I ended up driving back to the company terminal the same day and had to meet with the safety team the next day. I lost my safety bonus for a year and had to prove to a trainer that I was capable of backing up a truck. Since that incident I am hyper aware of other trailers when I am backing into any spot
The Swift Incident
I think this happened in my third or fourth year truck driving. I was in Ohio and went to a shipper in order to get a trailer loaded and bring it back to Canada.
Well I arrived and the guardhouse informed me that they were hours behind schedule and my trailer would be loaded sometime during the night however they did not allow truck drivers to sleep in their lot. I asked where the closest place to park was and he pointed a little way down the road to where there was a cutout that truck drivers used. So I backed up my trailer to one of the loading docks, disconnected and headed to the cutout
I had parked my truck, signed out of my ELD for the day and was beginning to cook dinner in the back of the truck. It was about ten minutes later when I felt my entire truck be bumped forward.
I got out of my truck and right next to my back bumper was a Swift truck. The driver got out of the truck and attempted to say that I had not pulled my brakes and had rolled into him. Told him I had been parked for more than twenty minutes and never heard his brakes being pulled. The truck driver would go back into his truck and pull his brakes
There was no damage to my truck and normally I would just shake my head and walk away from the incident however part of the steel support of my truck had managed to pierce his radiator which was now leaking onto the ground. I called my company to report the incident who then had me call the police as it would require a tow truck to get his truck out of there.
The officer would show up and asked for the usual stuff (CDL, insurance). I gave my side of the story which was basically I was cooking chicken in the sleeper of my truck when he hit me. The other driver would admit that he forgot to pull his brakes and had rolled into me. The officer would let me go and eventually the other driver was issued a ticket and a tow truck would be called to remove his truck and trailer.
The Swift driver had been driving on his own for less than a week when this incident occurred. I have no idea what happened to him afterwards but would assume that he lost his job over this incident but I could be wrong.
The Deer Incident
The final incident happened last Fall so 2023. I had been driving at night for over a year at this point and for the most part it was going well.
When it comes to wildlife on my route you see the occasional deer, coyote, raccoons and possums. During a previous route that I was on I would hit at least a raccoon a week on this one particular area that seemed to be infested by the little buggers. I have had deer run across a highway in front of me before but thankfully they were far enough ahead to avoid them
Well that changed one night. I was driving down Highway 401 East in Ontario (for those who are not familiar with this highway it is the busiest highway in North America in terms of commercial traffic). It was a wide road with three lanes going East, three lanes going West with a three foot concrete barrier separating the two.
I was driving in the middle lane as I had just passed someone when I saw a flash of color in front of me. The deer had run across the three lanes of highway going West, jumped the barrier, ran across another lane before striking the side of my truck.
The deer which managed to destroy all of the plastic surrounding the door lock would bounce off of my truck, darn near tore off the metal stairs at the back of the truck before sliding off into the concrete median
There was a rest area a couple of miles away so I would drive there and then inspect the truck for damage. Beside the area around the door lock and the metal stairs there was just a lot of blood and hair. The smell was something else though. I called my company to report the deer strike and then continued on with my run.
This particular incident made me a bit paranoid for a couple of weeks following the deer strike however eventually that faded. It could have been a lot worse if the deer had hit the front of the truck instead of the side however even then there was nothing I could do about it. Swerving to miss a deer is something that you are taught not to do way back in CDL school for that could lead to a much more dangerous situation.
Well there are the three incidents that I have been apart of over the last nine years of commercial truck driving. The last two were basically wrong place at the wrong time with the first incident definitely being a result of inexperience