After driving OTR for fifteen years how hard could it be to drive a tri-axle?
Harder than you might think.
I got a job driving tri-axle dump truck back in 2004 in and around Montgomery Alabama. With no experience but a class A CDL, Kelly decided to give me a shot and the story begins.
Ol’ Red sat in the yard at Kelly’s shop and a friend talked Kelly into giving me a shot at it. I was working in a saw mill and couldn’t turn down the opportunity to get back behind the wheel.
We had a job up in Lake Martin prepping a site for a house to be built and after clearing the trees and debris out a drive and pad had to be cut out and we were bringing in sand and red dirt to be put down for a foundation.
The gravel pit we were using in Tallassee was about forty-five minutes from the site and we had to travel across AL 50 to get there, 50 was a two lane highway with lots of ‘hills’ to climb and with a full load the brakes would overheat long before I got to the site so by the time I arrived I would have spongey brakes at best.
I was the last truck in line at the site which meant the first to dump and we had to back up to the edge of the road and empty our loads over the edge of a long drop off where the drive would lead to the house that was to be built. I was talking to the other three drivers waiting on the site foreman and I was nervous about backing up and dumping that close to the edge with no brakes to speak of.
I told the site foreman this and we got into an argument so he radio’s Kelly who proceeded to tell me if I wanted to be a driver I needed to drive or bring the truck back to the shop and beat it down the road. I tried to tell Kelly about the brakes but he knew that truck so I thought okay, I need this job and backed the truck up to the edge of that damned road.
As I sat my brakes and started to lift the bed to unload, the weight started to pull the truck back and up bringing the front tires off the ground. The other three drivers were running away as the brakes failed and the truck started rolling back and then down towards the lake out of control. Me? well I was flipping out as ol’ Red picked up speed. I was lucky enough to slap the PTO down so the bed came slamming back down instead of flipping over and I tried to aim the truck into a big oak tree to bring it to a stop before going swimming with it.
I came out of that truck livid and ready to tear the site foreman a new ass when the boss pulled up and came down to stop me. I wasn’t too happy with him either and after a heated argument he got me settled down. After getting ol’ Red back up to the road using a Trac-hoe I adjusted the brakes and limped that POS back to the yard and called it a day.
So yeah, the first day driving a tri-axle was pretty damn interesting for me to say the least. I got a brand new truck about a week later and Kelly turned out to be one of the best bosses I ever had the pleasure to work for.
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