Rolling westbound on a major highway at night, with my high beams on. I was passed by a state trooper. Normally, I flick off the high beams when I’m overtaken at night. This time I didn’t, forgetting that they were on. The trooper hit his blues, brake lights flaring. The trooper pulled me over. His…
This is an “as-told-to”: The nearly-real time chronicle of a first-time truck owner. Keep in mind that this is all said from a general point of view. Simply to give you an idea of what owning a truck is really like. Some of the numbers aren’t accurate but ballpark figures. It’s just to give the…
Why do so many shipping and receiving yards care if you slide your tandem wheels? When driving a big truck with trailer into a shipping/receiving yard, in my trucking tenure I estimated that about a third of them required you to slide your trailer’s tandem wheels all the way to the doors. This was usually…
Part memoir, part tall tale, part instructional manual: Chris DeBrie’s “Check Your Tandems” is from the perspective of a truck driver as he moves from newbie “greenhorn” to seasoned professional. What is “slip seat trucking”? It is for the tractor trailer driver who does not own a truck. This variety of driver is known as a…