|
And the sad part is that the driver of that rig will be hit with a preventable crash, fired and blacklisted.
The powers that be will say he should not have been driving in known high winds with a light load. At the same moment, that driver will be hearing his dispatcher reminding him that he is on a "hot" load that absolutely MUST deliver on time.
Can't win either way. I've been in that situation myself. I just refuse to drive and lay down the safety card. Most dispatchers won't try to fight that and just reschedule that hot load. I just came up Fancy Gap two days ago in high winds, but I had over 41,000 lbs in the box and was pretty safe from a blow-over but a Fed Ex driver in WV wasn't so lucky and he lost his rear trailer and plugged up the WV Turnpike for quite a while while the wreckers unscrambled that mess.
Blow Overs are more common in Wyoming around Elk Mountain and Laramie where wind gusts over 70 mph are not uncommon. I've been shut down there waiting for the wind to lessen enough to roll out along with lots of other light loads and empties. I recall one time where even parked, my trailer was rocking so badly that it was knocking against the trailer next to me. That driver and I just kinda shrugged and dropped our landing gear as best we could to try to mitigate the banging and resultant trailer damage. Hell of a dangerous thing, high winds.
|