St-St-St---Stress

 

Driving is stressful, there can be no doubt, driving a big truck more so. One of Company's training modules states that a driver's blood pressure goes up just getting behind the wheel of a truck. I don't know the validity of that claim, but I can believe it. What toll is this taking on my long term health? Say Levine, I don't have the luxury of worrying about it.

Driving a big truck in the snow is exponentially more stressful yet. I recently woke up in the morning from an endless round of restless driving dreams and realized that I'd been stressing because snow was predicted for that day. Another time, even more recently, I woke up in the middle of the night thoroughly stressed for the same reason. On top of the fact that it was forecast to snow heavily my first stop of the day was at the customer where I couldn't get traction to get out of their parking lot last year and had to be pulled out. Being early I didn't expect that they'd have plowed yet. Fun and games to look forward to! I couldn't get back to sleep. I tensed my body, shaking, and screamed, venting steam. The cat, who sleeps at the foot of the bed took off lickity-split and didn't came back.

So what happened? The day was a nightmare, but not because I had to be towed out of that lot. I never even made it there. In fact I never made it past the gate at Electrolux. I dropped the trailer. It slid right off the back of my tractor and landed with one foot on the pavement and the other on the grass, smack in the middle of the exit lane. I'm just glad that it fell off there, before I'd gotten onto the street.

The load was light but still the landing gear wouldn't work to raise it. The warehouse manager said that if it weren't snowing he could bring a forklift out to take some of the pressure off the legs so that I could lower them, but as it was there was nothing that he could do. I had no choice but to call it in and get a tow truck to come out and help me, which meant that I'd also have to jump through all the hoops that Company would require of me.

I'd done my safety check. I'd pulled on that sucker hard doing the tug test and I'd looked to make sure that the release arm for the fifth wheel was retracted. I'd even driven from the back of the lot up to the gate with no problem. Still it was my fault, I must admit. I'd done my safety check, but not quite a thorough one. You see, you're supposed to get up underneath the trailer and shine a light into the jaws of the fifth wheel to inspect the actual locking mechanism. It's something that practically nobody does. I'd done it for years and finally decided that if the release lever was retracted then the lock must be in place, no need to contort my body and run the risk of getting grease all over myself. Yet I'd been warned, had I not (see Culpability below)! I should have done the extra step, and believe you me I will from now on!

Company wouldn't let me hook back to the trailer until I'd had the fifth wheel inspected. I took off in the snow heading for the International dealer even before the tow truck arrived. The guy at the service desk there said they'd “work me in” and that I should have a seat in the driver's lounge. Fortunately I had a book with me and no other drivers showed up to turn on the TV for quite awhile. Seven hours later they called my name.

I was hoping that they'd find something wrong with the fifth wheel. I mean, there must be something wrong with it, right? If there was an obvious problem then I'd be off the hook. They didn't find anything wrong with it.

The bill there at the shop was $150.00. The tow truck was probably at least as much again. Fortunately there was nothing wrong with the trailer itself so there was no expense there. I felt responsible, I felt like I should pay. I was trying to decide how much I wanted them to take out of my check each week when my supervisor called to tell me that I'd been charged with a preventable collision and that I was on probation for six months. Preventable, yes, but a collision? No one was hurt, no equipment was damaged. This wouldn't go on my license, but it would go on my DAC report and might jeopardize my ability to get another driving job. In light of my long service and near spotless safety record I thought that a little harsh. “So to hell with them,” I decided, “let them pay for it. They can write it off on their taxes anyway as an operating expense.”

I also had to do several on-line training modules and be “instructed” by my supervisor, a guy who's never driven a truck before in his life, on how to properly connect to a trailer. It was humiliating, but Jeff's a nice guy and didn't try to lecture me, but only had me go through the steps while he watched. It was just something that Company required him to do as well.

So what did happen, why did my trailer fall off the tractor? I don't know, it remains a mystery. The official reason was that I was “high hooked,” something that cannot be the explanation. In that earlier post, Culpability, I describe how the trailers there at Electrolux are often high and I always lower them before hooking. Could the locking mechanism have already been closed before I backed under the trailer? Possibly. A part of relying solely on the release arm being retracted as an indication that the locking mechanism is engaged is that I always check, while lowering the trailer, that the release arm is extended to begin with. I might have inadvertently missed that step, what with the snow and all. But then why didn't that become apparent when I did the tug test, and how did I drag the trailer all the way from the back of the lot up to the exit gate?

We'll never know, but a 30 year veteran driver I met in the driver's lounge there at International offered a possible explanation. He said that if too much grease builds up in the fifth wheel then it can become viscid in the cold and prevent the fifth wheel jaws from closing completely. You can do the tug test and you can pull the trailer and everything seems fine but in actuality the jaws are creeping back open under the continued pressure. It sounds like a reasonable explanation to me, though it fails to explain why I almost lost a trailer that earlier time which was during the prolonged Indian Summer, before the cold hit.

I'm gun shy now. I check the fifth wheel incessantly and still I'm afraid to pull out. I wonder, would I have noticed anything wrong had I done the visual test that morning? I don't know, I certainly wouldn't have been as diligent as I now am trying to detect any slight opening in the fifth wheel jaws. And I have to wonder if there isn't some fault in my fifth wheel that International didn't detect. Is this going to happen again, regardless of my renewed diligence? Will we finally find out what actually happened when it fails again, with possibly fatal consequences? I'd rather it remain a mystery.

Another thing that I have to wonder is why oh why am I so fucking devoted to my job? The roads were terrible that day. Every other driver on my account called off that morning due to the weather, which was fine by Company. But not me, no. Like the damn Post Master General I felt I had to do my appointed rounds, regardless of the toll it might take on me or others. Maybe it's time for a career change. Does anyone know of a less stressful job I can do that will let me pay my bills? No? Perhaps I'll become an Artist.