Such a nice driveshaft........OUCH!

[asianflava]

Yep, like everything else, there are good ones and bad ones. Unfortunately, it's the bad ones that make the newspaper.

[madjack]

Yep, like everything else, there are good ones and bad ones. Unfortunately, it's the bad ones that make the newspaper.

...yep and they are driving 4 wheelers as well...if you could see what we(truckers) see when looking down into cars, you would be skeered...very skeered...I'll tell ya some hair raising tales sometimes....
madjack

[asianflava]

Yep, like everything else, there are good ones and bad ones. Unfortunately, it's the bad ones that make the newspaper.

...yep and they are driving 4 wheelers as well...if you could see what we(truckers) see when looking down into cars, you would be skeered...very skeered...I'll tell ya some hair raising tales sometimes....
madjack

Yup, those 4-wheelers. But they have more bad than good drivers. Trucks don't have freshly minted drivers, driving around with their friends in the back seat screaming into their cell phone so that they can be heard over the music.

[madjack]

Yep, like everything else, there are good ones and bad ones. Unfortunately, it's the bad ones that make the newspaper.

...yep and they are driving 4 wheelers as well...if you could see what we(truckers) see when looking down into cars, you would be skeered...very skeered...I'll tell ya some hair raising tales sometimes....
madjack

Yup, those 4-wheelers. But they have more bad than good drivers. Trucks don't have freshly minted drivers, driving around with their friends in the back seat screaming into their cell phone so that they can be heard over the music.

I was following 4 teen aged girls yesterday...at least 2 of them were on their phones(probably to each other) and all 4 were bouncing up and down and apparently singing...they ran a red light and missed getting T-bonned by about a foot and they never even noticed...I was sure glad I was turning off the hi-way at that point!!!!!!!!!!
madjack

[bobhenry]

...correction sledge...there are many that can back like that...it's just that the roads have been flooded with 4 week wonders...

I guess it all depends on the driver. I was one of those "4 week wonders", and was paired up with an old timer when I started driving over the road. Whenever we got to our destination, he would get out and "take care of the paperwork", then come out and tell me what dock to back the truck / trailer into. At first, this made sense to me, because I had no idea of what I had to do when checking in with the dock foreman. After a couple of weeks, I figured out that the guy couldn't back worth a darn. Even though he spent many years on the road, his backing skills sucked, unless it was a straight shot in to the dock.

Most of the focus in my driving school was backing. I grew up in Detroit, and that is where I went to truck driving school. Since many of the drivers being trained would end up being local drivers, we spent a ton of time backing into docks off of narrow alleys, and other tight places.

In my short carreer on the road, most of the drivers I met that drove over the road, weren't that great at backing into crappy docks, unless they regularly delivered into places like Detroit, Chicago, New York, etc. where there a lot of crappy docks. Most of them were used to delivering to truck terminals and large warehouses, that had nice straight on docks, that were easy to back up to.

Although I haven't regularly driven a "big rig" in over 20 years, the skills I learned in truck driving school still come in handy on a regular basis, backing up campers and utility trailers. I regularly pull a 21' car trailer, 35' 5th wheel, and 21' boat, and if it will fit, I can probably get it in there!

Was mechanic and wrecker driver for a local garage in my earlier years it was nothing to back the car onto the lift and have the boys set the lift and raise the car slightly to disconnect me. Later as a U haul rental manager we backed the larger trailers into the wash bay behing the box trucks. I have no problem with my 24' flat bed trailer or my 14' camper but I am sure I could die of either embarrassment or old age before I could back that 40 x 48 harbor freight trailer more than 25' in a straight line. Come on guys admit it the further away those trailer wheels are from the hitch point the easier it is to back anything up

[angib]

well, sad part is As Always the Truck WON. I'm pretty sure the car driver Died, Didn't hurt the Truck Driver at all..

It used to be noticeable in France that the behaviour of truck drivers differed between the 'conventional' (cab behind engine) and 'cabover' (cab over engine) types - the real loonies always seemed to be in the conventional trucks, where the long bonnet (sorry, 'hood') gave the driver good crash protection.

Nowadays in Yurp (well, outside Scandinavia) you never see a conventional truck - with Yurpeen length limits (max overall for a tractor-trailer is 61 feet in Britain), the extra trailer length allowed by the cabover type is just too valuable.

Of course the downside of this is that the truck drivers are at great risk of serious leg injury if they hit another truck or trailer, but their safety record is brilliant.

Andrew