pre-trip inspection

The previous post about the pre-trip leads to a story about what happened to me this afternoon. I was hauling grain to town when an air bag blew out on the truck I was driving. Happened turning into the elevator so I unloaded and then bumped and banged my way back to the shop with it. At the shop there was another truck/ trailer sitting there empty and the grain cart was waiting for me so I hopped in the other truck and away I went without checking anything out. What I didn't see was the trailer was sitting on the saddle with the kingpin on top of the jaws instead of sitting down on the saddle with the jaws around the pin. Whoever hooked it up wasn't paying attention to whether it locked up or not and I was in too big of a hurry to to a pre-trip.

When I was shifting gears it felt like there was a lot of slop in the saddle jaws but this is an old spare truck that I haven't driven for a year so I just thought the jaws were worn. I went to the field, the grain cart filled me up, I hauled a load 20 miles to town and went back to the field and re-loaded. That's when another employee happened to shine the pickup lights on the truck I was driving and saw the air gap between the trailer and the saddle. Whooee! Now what do we do. The trailer's full so I slowly pulled it up on the gravel road, we dollied it down, with the dollies sinking into the road, and got the trailer down on the saddle like it should be. This must have been my lucky day. Maybe I should buy a lottery ticket. Jim

Maybe you'd better. We had one back in 75,was a live floor. Somebody pulled the latch. When the driver started ahead with it loaded,it came unhooked and went DOWN. Twisted it enough so that the floor wouldn't work. 2 guys worked the better part of a week shoveling corn out of it into a loader bucket and dumping it into another truck til they had enough out to get the dollies blocked and get it straightened up and hooked back on. Between you and Dave in Minnesota with his wagon coming unhooked on the way home,hope everybody's paying attention and will slow down and be careful dispite how late it's getting in the season. I know what it's like to be layed up during harvest. Trust me,better to spend another day or two on the tail end finishing up that to not be able to do anything at all.

I learned my lesson about pre trips. The boss told me to go to the shop and hook up to a van trailer for the next days work. It was dark and not haveing time for it,no pre trip was done. Next stop was the fuel island. Now I had time for the pre trip. As I walked around the back of the trailer I found the back outside wheel missing. I had to call the boss and confess to not knowing if it was on the trailer at the shop or not.Or if I had lost it between the shop and fuel island. He told me if I did a pre trip I would have seen that it was not on at the shop. The next days work was taking the trailer to the trailer shop to have the wheels fixed.

Saw a backhoe/loader tractor and it's trailer part company from the truck pulling it a few years back. Local septic service was pulling it with his tanker truck. Had traveled 30 miles before things came loose. Had forgotten to latch pintle hook on truck. Hit a bump just right, and trailer just floated away. Continued down the road almost 1/4 of a mile before bouncing off an embankment on the side of the road, finally coming to rest at an angle in the ditch. Only damage was to the front axle on the trailer. Watched that sucker come off and ride down the road, all I could do was say "OH, S___T!"