Truck drivers and running over things.
Hi, Folks.
My first time here - it's a public holiday and I actually have a little spare time on my hands.
Firstly, I acknowledge that truckies do move just about EVERYTHING that moves anywhere and that many of the highway runners and long-haul boys are good eggs - around 10% in the mix to give them all a bad name.
However, put those same truckies within a 1/2 mile of a construction site and there seems to be a MAJOR character change, to the extent that of all the different classifications of workers on construction it seems to me that truckers are the least capable of doing their job without damaging something or otherwise getting into trouble.
I have done the trick of putting spikes in the ground to catch truckies running over my pegs. I have also barred truckies from a site where I was working because they couldn't/wouldn't follow directions after being given DETAILED instructions about where to dump.
One of the barred ones was full of bluster about how I couldn't do that, me being a 'lowly' spread dozer operator on that job, so I sent him to see the foreman about whether he was barred or not. As he was walking over to see the foreman, I caught the foreman's eye and made a slitting movement across my throat. The truckie came back, much quieter, got in his truck and drove off and I never saw him again.
I was told about 5 minutes later by one of the other truckies that that particular truckie was a foreman for his company. I think that says something about that company's personnel standards.
One thing that has puzzled me for quite a while is the fact that you can have a reasonably intelligent conversation with most of these blokes away from a work site. Put 'em in a truck with a dump box on the back and they revert to the mental level of a three-toed sloth and about the same (lack of) pace too.
Mind you, having said all of the above about the 'knights of the road', I also have to admit that there is an increasing number of what would in days gone by have passed for truckies (based on mental ability) now finding their ways into the seats of machines. It's a worriesome thought.
Let the debate rage.
