Driver Training!!??

Well, here I sit in the passenger seat heading north out of Perth to Tom Price in the Pilbara. In the drivers’ seat is “the new boy”, otherwise known as Stewart. Tagging along behind us is two fridge trailers and a dry pan – loaded with a weeks work of supplies for Windawarrie, Brownfields (Jundunmunnah) and a dozen or so pallets for Pilbara Food Supplies.

It’s been a few years since I’ve sat in the passenger seat and this time it’s in a borrowed truck as well. My truck is in the workshop getting a bit of attention so I grabbed the boss’s truck (cleaned his crap out 😉 and set off last night.

Stewart is along for the trip to give him some experience with triples and so he can learn where the various runs go and generally get a feel of how we do things. As soon as he is up to speed on things and we have the new truck on the road he will be chucked into the thick of it on his own.

The new truck is expected to be handed over to us on Friday 28th – only four days from now. I’m going to be the lucky driver getting this one so I’m pretty keen for Friday to hurry up and arrive. We had a look at it yesterday and there’s still a lot that has to be done to it. Someone had better pull their finger out!

I have a 3500 watt 240 volt inverter on order for it – that will power a microwave oven/laptop charger and will even be big enough to power an ordinary kitchen kettle if I want. Expresso machine, maybe? 😉

The weather up ahead of us is pretty bad. Last reports I heard from Karratha are that over eight inches of rain has fallen in 24hrs. The highway between Roebourne and Port Hedland is closed, which won’t affect us but if that weather continues to the south-east we will be in for real trouble.
At present, just north of Paynes Find, it is completely overcast. Meekatharra has had some rainfall. I think Newman has had two inches and Tom Price has already had three inches of rain. This is more than enough to start water flowing over the highway at the floodways so things might get interesting later on today. Wish I’d brought my GoPro camera long.

Ok, I’ve got to get back to criticising someone’s driving skill, bloody hard work 🙂

Cheers, Mike.

Holidays-The Aftermath.

You know that sound that signals the return of reality? That really loud, discordant,crashing,unearthly sound of the alarm clock telling you to get up and get behind the wheel right now or you’re going to be late and you probably won’t be able to make up time for the rest of the week? Well, that happened to me last Monday and pretty much all I’ve done for the last week is eat/sleep/drive.

Welcome home. Welcome back from holidays. Welcome to work. Welcome to my reality. Now go away and let me mope around and complain about the unfairness of it all.

Ok, I’m not that heartbroken about it. It was a good break and if it had lasted longer I would have had to plan more stuff to do so I didn’t start climbing the walls or ring all my friends to find out what I was missing out on (although I did call twice to check up on my truck).

I will admit my first week back at work was a little rougher than ideal. A few issues with trailer light wiring, a faulty speed sensor (causing the cruise control to not work), a flat trailer tyre and the loss of power to the bunks interior lights. The trailer tyre is no big drama – considering that I have 62 tyres , not counting the 6 spares, and I haven’t had to change any on the side of the road for the last 6 months. I think I’m ahead of the game there. The bunk lights have proven to be more then just a blown fuse though, and I haven’t had the time to start tracking the problem down with the circuit tester. I’m not due home for 3 more days so I have to either make time to fix it or do without – it’s not a critical fault so my deliveries come first. The show must go on!

Cheers, Mike.

Unprofessional Truck Drivers

Part of the problem with the mainstream media is their tendancy to group all manner of trucks and truck drivers under the one title which gives the public a misleading impression of professional drivers and truly “commercial” trucks. Whenever any type of truck is involved in an incident there is no distinction made between professional career drivers, tradesmen using small rigid trucks as an extension of their business and weekend warriors using a rented furniture van to move house.
I don’t have any statistics to back me up, but, I am sure professional drivers are involved in a dramatically fewer number of incidents/kilometer than “amatuer” truck drivers. Unfortunately amatuer and professional drivers are all lumped together by both the media and and the people responsible for compling road accident statistics. The media, by doing this, create a false image of “dangerous/killer” professional drivers and the statisticians distort the police and government’s view of the true nature of the problem leading to laws and policies which, while encompassing all truck drivers, may not be accurately directed at the “problem” group of drivers.
Yesterday I saw a prime example of a “non” professional driver flouting a basic rule of transport – by failing to secure his load.

New gravity restraint system.

The bobcat on the back of his rigid truck had no restraints at all, the only thing holding it on was gravity and the fold-down sides of the tray (made of wood and not looking very strong). All it would take for the machine to fall off or slide would be to brake heavily or swerve (avoiding other traffic) or simply hit a large and unexpected bump in the road.
Guess what the headline would be then? “Truck Loses Load And Kills Family”. This bloke needs a kick up the arse and the media need to realise that professional drivers hate idiots like this.

Cheers, Mike.