ALWAYS get HazMat Doucumation

Who Cares

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A Reno driver lost his job due to several bad decisions that he made.

As I understand the facts he left Reno and did not have is HazMat paperwork. My guess is that the paperwork was printed late Friday night/Saturday morning and the HazMat portion was not printed due to not being billed correctly.

He left Reno early Monday morning and would have had to acknowledge that he had correct paperwork on the Qualcomm. For what ever reason he left without it.

About 0500 he fell asleep and laid the set over. While he admitted he fell asleep there was a spill and the company terminated him.

One thing comes to mind is that OHFL has always printed dispatch paperwork even though there is uncompleted billing on the loads. I have questioned upper management about this in the past and the response has always been "we don't have time to check on this." Maybe it is time to start taking the time. And also,follow the company policy of dock supervisors signing off on loads before they are sealed.

Unfortunately the driver his now hung out and is opened to fines and loss of license due to his poor judgement. And I bet Oak comes after him for cleanup cost.

He was a long-term employee and I bet he could have kept his job due to the fact that he was honest about falling asleep, but the no paperwork pushed him over the top.

I wish him well.

http://www.flashalertnewswire.net/images/news/2013-09/1002/67434/090913.hwy97.hwy31.2.jpg

Oregon State Police news via FlashAlert.Net Truck Driver Cited Following Fatigue-Related Traffic Crash - Highway 31 / Highway 97 Junction south of LaPine (Photos) - 09/09/13
 
I wish him well, but I too agree that the no hazmat paperwork pushed him over the top. Was he aware that trailer had hazmat?Was it a placardable load? There are times when even 8000 lb shipments of hazmat get loaded onto a trailer without a driver knowing. As a line driver too, if he knowingly left Reno without legit hazmat paperwork, this is totally on him, moreso him not being a recent trucking school gradute. We had one new driver the other day pulled a placarded load in Cali with just the two placards on the back and no securement...Hazmat is not a joke.
 
I was told from upper management the other day that "there may have been more than one shipment of HazMat on the trailer(s)." And they "were looking into that." So that leads to the question if there is more than one shipment how is the driver suppose to know? Once again Oak is blaming the driver for something that he had no control over.

I do have from another source that he had not been taking his mandatory rest break and that may have been the company grounds to can him.

8000 pounds, that is nothing. I was on a bid run that used a three axle tractor and was pulled off of it one night as they had a 27,000+ pound trailer load to move. Of course Central in there infamous wisdom sends a single axle to take it on the next leg. By time that driver reached the drop terminal the HazMat paperwork caught up with the load. Only was full of small arms ammo. As no surprise to anyone, OHFL management was ready to ream me a new one. But since I still had my original paperwork and my dispatcher stuck up for me that was the end of it.

Why they can't just forward a copy of the original HazMat bill along with the driver is beyond me.

I reminded the manager that several years ago OHFL posted a two page memo (which I still have) on how the dock was to load, mark on the loading paperwork, the dock supervisor was to sign off, etc. The first words out of his mouth was "the P&D driver is to check this box on the Qualcomm" right away blaming the low man on the totem pole. They have never thought that if the bottom guy isn't doing the job correctly maybe he needs to be (re)trained properly.
 
From the sound of things, Im assuming you guys run a paper dock without scanners? So everything has to be written on a paper manifest?
 
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