No wonder truckers are now just steering wheel holders

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Jun 5, 2003
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Apple Valley, California
Local truck driving school tried to make a u -turn on a busy street and got stuck in the sand. I was always told never to make a U-turn in a truck. Too much of a chance of getting hit by a car. Wonder why this school allows this.

Really!
 

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When I worked in produce and had to load trucks. It was obvious which were real drivers and which were steering wheel holders by how many times it took them to back into the loading dock. Not to mention calling for directions to our warehouse and having to be baby sat while on the phone.
 
They were just feet from this big empty hard pack dirt lot
The problem is then people are thinking car, not semi truck. I remember driving a semi and you went from driving a car mentality to driving a semi mentality rapidly. I haven't driven a semi for 22 years and I would be a nervous wreck if I had to drive one today. When driving on a regular basis I would climb into a Semi go anywhere like I knew what I was doing :cool:.
 
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My Grandpa was a trucker, I have a lot of respect for the profession, my wife's Dad was a trucker also, but he quit driving semis after he had a fatal accident that separated a guy's head from his body, I feel bad for the guy it wasn't his fault, but I know memories like that don't quite go away.
 
That's a very very good point ^^^^^

I have seen multiple times on interstate 64 near me where it obvious a 18 wheeler drives off the road to avoid hitting smaller vehicles... They try to everything they can to not hit them and in doing so they go well off the road and nearly into the trees.

That kind of thing will never,,, ever leave you.

It's like locomotive engineers who drive trains and terrible things happen... Never leaves them either.
 
I’m a semi mechanic. I think the best thing most all new semis have which makes driving easier is an automatic transmission. And thank god truckers no longer are expected to live in a tiny cab over sleeper, run two log books, use cheap truckers meth sold at truck stop drug dealers which the DEA overlooked for years. Old trucking in the USA was a horrible profession.
 
I’m a semi mechanic. I think the best thing most all new semis have which makes driving easier is an automatic transmission. And thank god truckers no longer are expected to live in a tiny cab over sleeper, run two log books, use cheap truckers meth sold at truck stop drug dealers which the DEA overlooked for years. Old trucking in the USA was a horrible profession.

Old trucking was very vital to our country and it still is today. Not the easiest job and props to the drivers that make a living doing it. 👍
 
I work across the street from a large paper mill. It's a constant stream of freight trucks in/out of the place. Just to name a few, at least a few times a week, one of your finest flip flop wearing drivers will jackknife, blocking the roadway, or someone will drag a landscape boulder the size of a car into the road. They'll hook and tear down utility poles, jersey barriers and fences as well.

I'd imagine truck driving schools are short on instructors just as bad as the trucking industry is short on drivers. So short, the standards have slipped IMO.

Couple that with how clueless your average (car) driver is on the roads these days, I have great respect for good truck drivers.

Yes the tractors have gotten about as easy to drive as an average bro-dozer, but it still takes the patience of a saint and skill to navigate the payload around.
 
There is a good video from John Oliver about the trucker "shortage" (which is really a pay shortage), but I don't think I can post it here due to the language used in the video.
 
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