A recent turn of events necessitated my return to the trucking industry. I was previously an owner/operator and have never driven a company truck, until now. I would like to hear from other company drivers on just how effective their shops are when it comes to repairing things you write up an inspection reports.

The steering wheel in my tractor is off center to the point I can't see the speedometer when going straight ahead. I have written this up every day for the past 2 weeks and it still hasn't been fixed. This seems to be a safety issue to me, and if it sin't fixed by monday, I am going to refuse to drive it. I know this adjustment would take about 15 minutes, but I am not a mechanic, I am not paid to be a mechanic, and don't feel I should have to do this myself even though I am perfectly capable of doing so.

Anyhow, now that I am done venting, anyone else have any shop horror stories?

 

Most company shops only do what they have to to keep it legaly safe and save money.At least thet was my experience driving trucks and cabs.If it will pass a dot inspection then it wont get fixed till you grease the right palm.

 

usless it is a flagable defect, it will not get repaired. i have been getting writeups for stupid things like bald tires from the same driver for 2 months.there is still 1/2 inch tread left on the tires, but he wants new ones. unless it is a safety problem, i do not bother with it. i have had drivers go so far as to stop a dot trooper and ask for an inspection, pointing out certian things they want flaged. lucky for me the troopers are honest, and do not give in to rediculous demands. only 1 time was a truck put out of service in the past 5 years, and that was for brakes out of adjustment. i went out there with the trucks vir books for the past 6 months and showed them to the trooper. after hearing about how i would tell the mechanics not to adjust the brakes or fix anything, the trooper looked at the blank vir's and voided the ticket to me for failure to maintain, and issued a ticket to the driver for opperating an unsafe vehicle. seems he not once in 6 months wrote the truck up for anything, including needing a brake adjustment. as i said to the trooper, how am i suposed to know something is wrong with the truck if he don't write it up??

what i would sugest is to just write it up every day, so that if anything does happen, your butt is covered

 

I can only say from being a mechanic to write it up. From experience, independent trucks get only what is needed, if that, and leased vehicles from major companies get the best PM.

When I worked at Ryder Leasing, the policy was everything 100% fixed before going out the door, no excuses. Even dome lightbulbs, cigarette lighters, condo lamps, everything. You do not wait for a complaint either, if something is broken or about to fail, you replace it. You even clean the truck before it is returned.

You do have the occasional pig, but, most drivers I think appreciate a nice truck and return it in fairly nice condition for service and lease turn in.

 

my b.i.l. is head mechanic for a major trucking firm. he has drivers bugging him all the tme to install chrom this and thats on their rigs. then they complain when they have to take a different truck for a couple of days and it doesn't have thier name painted on the door. worst was when some guy blew a tire while hauling some fuel. a boss at the head office decided to order an inspection of all the tires. all those tires on each truck+trailer x lots of trucks.. and that was the middle of february.

 

I have been an owner-operator at different times in the past, and was until early last year this last go around. I am now a part-time company driver in a lease tractor. The lease company is very good about repairing things, even things I did not think they would.

That being said, I take tools with me and fix small things myself. If it is something bigger, I bring the truck home and repair it myself. This way I know it is done to my satisfaction. I can not count the times I have had my truck to the shop, only to fix the problem myself because the shop did not do it correctly.

You may as well take the tools and fix the steering wheel. First, look and make sure you don't have a spring center bolt broke causing the off center condition. If your drag link is non-adjustable, then the center bolt is the first thing I would look at. The u-bolts sometimes loosen up just a bit and will cause the breakage.

A friend of mine once asked me why his steering wheel had went off center. I looked and his center bolt had broken. His axle has shifted back almost two inches on one side.

Some mechanics either don't care, or don't know enough to check hangers, spring leafs and axles for shifting when doing a PM. I usually check these things while I am unloading.

 

There isn't any suspension damage/problem evident; I went over the tractor with a proverbial fine-toothed comb when they assigned it to me. I suspect what happened is the shop did an alignment and didn't take the extra 15 minutes to re-center the wheel afterwards.

Here's another fine example of the attitude I'm faced with at our company shop:
The particular tractor I was issued is a 1999 Kenworth T2000 with half a million miles on it. Its generally pretty ragged. We tow pneumatic tanks and deliver cement and flyash to plants and construction sites, so these trucks take a fair amount of abuse.

I have over a million miles of driving experience, and have never driven anything that is so hard to get moving when loaded to 80 or 84,000. I figure there has to be something wrong in the driveline and start checking things. Long story short is I pull the hood, put the thing in gear, release the clutch, and the engine abruptly torques over about 4 inches. Bad motor mount. I take it into the shop that evening with the inspection report, and the mechanic proceeds to go into this tirade/diatribe about how every T2000 on the road acts exactly like that, and advises me to pay attention to other T2000's to see how the act when taking off. He acted like a "dumb trucker" couldn't possibly diagnose a bad motor mount.

At this point, I'm less than thrilled, so without saying a word, I pulled the hood, got in and did the same thing. When the motor torqued over, he got a silly look on his face and mumbled something about needing to order parts.

Last week, I had written up a leak in the forward drive axle every day. Thursday, I show up at 4 a.m. and find a mechanic asleep in the driver's seat of my tractor. I opened the door, startling him awake. He says "I think I fixed the axle leak." and stumbles away. I get my flashlight and look only to find that not a single bolt had been turned except for the fill plug. I pitched a fit to my dispatcher, and it finally got fixed that night.

I can't wait for some new tractors to come in. Maybe if I start with something decent, it won't be too much of a "bother" for the mechanics to maintain it.

 

I'm not a OTR Driver, but a yard jockey for a large LTL company. I have found that i can write up my yard tractor till i run the place out of forms, and still will not get the problem fixed. I have found that by being nice to the mechanics, and buying a round of sodas on a hot day will get my tractor fixed whenever i have a problem. I became friends with the tractor mechanics, just so i can get my tractor fixed faster than the guys that treat them like dirt.

 

Well, to start with, I don't "treat them like dirt". They are arrogant, and talk to the drivers as though we have never seen the inside of a classroom, but I still don't say anything disrespectful. If something needs to be said, I take it up with my dispatcher, or the shop manager.

The mechanics evidently know everything, thus they don't believe a thing we tell them when there are problems with a truck, then they proceed to ignore it until something major fails. This always results in a higher repair cost than if the original problem had just been fixed.

 

At our shop, it seems like safety issues always managed to get fixed, but only after someone has been hurt by it, then they will fix it, after the damage is allreaddy done.