Complaint Review: NFI National Frieght - Vineland New Jersey

Preston, you really need to challenge this. You drove 35 miles, and on that basis alone, you have a good reason to challenge any finding by NFI that you are at fault in this unfortunate accident. From what you have written, the carrier has no firsthand knowledge at the scene of the details, or was in a position to know what happened. Hopefully, you have not signed anything for the carrier, up to this point about the incident. A point of law that can be used to challenge this with USIS, is to inform them that any finding was conducted without your being involved in the process of determining that you had failed in any manner to prevent the incident. Their failure to have your signature on a report of finding, will give you a very good reason to demand removal of the entire incident from your report. As Paul Suggested, you need to get a copy of the accident report. This may offer all the proof needed to challenge the findings of the Safety Department of the carrier. The person who wrote that report was at the scene, and was in a position to have firsthand knowledge of the circumstances. If you indeed had a truck safety officer on site, this is even more evidence on your side. If he wrote the report, even better. You also need to get a copy of your USIS report to know EXACTLY what has been entered on it. You are entitled to a free copy of this report. The process for obtaining a copy can be found here: http://www.usis.com/commercialservices/transportation/ContactUs.htm When you have both of these in front of you, determine if the accident report contradicts ANYTHING entered by the carrier. If so, make it a point to write in your challenge that the accident report was written by an officer at the scene, cite the contradiction(s), and include a copy of that report with your written challenge. Now...here's another point to include in your challenge. Did the carrier have an accident investigator come to the scene? If not, they have no basis for determining fault, or charging you for this, under any criteria. Their findings are mere speculation, and ruining your chances of obtaining employment on speculation is not in their best interest. A quick way to resolve this situation is to request the entry to be reduced to an "Incident" on your USIS report. Accidents come with details. Incident entries do not. Incidents also do not require you to be involved in the determination process, and the carrier is NOT allowed to reveal what they involve to others, unless they have a written and signed disciplinary report on file to substantiate the entry. If you do not receive a quick resolution to this, be prepared to seek legal representation. You have a great case, especially if you are being prevented from seeking employment based on the entry on your USIS report. Be very firm, but polite in your challenge, and I would mail a copy of the challenge to NFI. Make it clear that if this is not resolved to your satisfaction, that all legal options available to force a resolution will be explored. Then do it. What happened to you, happened to me in March of 1997. I have been driving more than 25 years. Until that day, I would have told anyone that a trailer, once locked in place, could never disconnect on it's own. Nothing mechanical is perfect, and there are times when inexplicable things do happen. To anyone who reads this post, I will give you a really good piece of advice. NEVER, and I mean NEVER sign an admission of fault in any accident or incident for a motor carrier, no matter how minor in nature. When you do, it can be used against you. No representative of the carrier would do so, if one was placed in front of them, and that is the polite way and reason to refuse to sign it. When you sign it, you accept liability and it allows them to report it as a negative on your employment reports. If at some point in the future, there is litigation involved, that signed piece of paper can allow the carrier to wash their hands of everything, and hang you out to dry.

Paul, what you said is corect! I was given an addtional thing to check after hooking up to a trailer: go and look to see if the 'jaws' on the 5th wheel have completly engaged around the kingpin. Also, I was warned to always do the complete hook up test whenever I went out of veiw of the truck because anyone can walk by your rig while at a truckstop...... and pull the kingpin release handle and walk on, for what ever reason. Fired cowocker ect....... ALWAYS CHECK THE CONNECTON!!!!

It's easy to understand why NFI dacced you on this. They must assume it's your fault for the accident. Now, this never happened to me. I never had a high hook or a trailer that just came loose from the fifth wheel while I was driving. In fact, at CRST they showed us a safety video. A driver did not get his trailer all the way across the railroad tracks and it was struck by an oncoming train. Even after being hit by the train, the kingpin and fifth wheel still held together. I never do a tug test when I hook up. I simply back under the trailer until I hear the latching mechanism click shut. At that point, I get out and inspect the location of the handle and make sure the safety latch is in the locked position. So far, I've been lucky. My equipment has been in good enough shape to hold the trailer kingpins without problems. But, when I was at USX, I had another driver tell me the exact same thing. He was new and he was careful. I assumed at first he had a bad hook or a high hook or something like that. But, no, he assured me that he got out and examined the connection and did a tug test on the trailer. He hooked up exactly as he was supposed to, but the trailer came off anyway in a turn. So, I don't automatically assume the driver screwed up anymore. In fact, what is more likely is that the fifth wheel never got any maintenance. These d**n OTRs run the trucks month after month and do as little service as they can get by with. If you think there's a shortage of drivers, just try looking in the service bays. Those guys have it even worse. Everything on a semi is big, heavy and held together with giant bolts. Who wants to do diesel tractor service? Especially at the pay rates that some of the fleets offer? Plus, many times the work load is more than they can handle. Checks aren't done. Maintenance gets skipped. In most cases, the only thing that is ever done to fifth wheels is to throw some fresh grease on the top plate. Do you know that screw on the front of the fifth wheel? That controls the locking mechanism. As the parts wear, you are supposed to turn the nut and adjust the mechanism so that it continues to lock solid. There is even a special tool with a kingpin on it that is supposed to be used to make the adjustment. In your case, I'll bet that nobody ever did that. These tractors get run for half a million miles. During all those miles, they hook and unhook thousands of times. Plus, all that tugging and jerking around as the truck goes down the road. Easy to see how this could happen. In this case, you got lucky. Nobody was injured. A loose trailer full of beer could easily have killed a dozen people in heavy traffic. The way to prevent this is not to depend on the company for maintenance. You pretty much have to learn how to adjust your own fifth wheel. You need to keep the latching mechanism greased. That's in addition to checking your brakes and everything else on the tractor that is critical. After all, it's your a*s in the seat. Here's what I would do. I'd call NFI and discuss the situation with safety. Then, I'd ask them to remove the negative DAC entry. I'd start out nice. If they wouldn't remove it, I'd explain that I would be calling the DOT and filing a complaint. Then, I'd call their insurance carrier and explain about the maintenance problem and how they might want to consider whether they can afford to pay the death or injury claim the next time a trailer comes off. Trust me, the company has a lot more to lose than you do. Chances are, they'll go back to USIS (dac) and pull off all those negatives about you. Two can play at the game. Remember, you can file a lot of negatives about the company too. You might want to threaten to complain to CRASH and Patt and public citizen. There are tons of groups that have it in for the trucking industry. No trucking company needs you filing a complaint with any of them. If you still can't get them to back down, file the complaints. In addition, your driving file works exactly like your credit file. You have the right to get a free copy and the right to dispute the information on it. You also can have a 100-word rebuttal included. That's your opportunity to tell your side of the story. Trust me, all you need to do here is threaten to take the safety issues to the DOT and their insurer. That alone should do the trick. If for some reason you still can't win, you can always drive for a small fleet or an owner operator that never spends the money to check Dac. Right now, companies are begging for drivers. I still get requests in the mail. Just for the hell of it, I called one the other day. I told the company that I had an abandonment under dispatch and that I threatened to report my last company to the DOT for HOS and safety violations. You would think nobody in their right mind would hire a driver like that, right? Wrong. The guy was all but begging me to start. So, what's that tell you? They need you a hell of a lot more than you need them.

Preston, did you veiw and or retain a copy of the report that the D.O.T. submitted to your employer? What is often done at DOT accident(s) location(s) investigation's, is a preliminary report is drafted by the responding DOT(s) officer(who you spoke with)and that officer's findings are given to a Reveiwing officer who determines the finale result, based on the evidence the responding officer(s)submitted at that time. After you left the scene and that DOT officer submitted that report for reveiw, the reveiwing report officer may have termed this incident as driver error, based on any number of variables. Get that final draft of that report that was given to the company, and determine if the variables that were reported, are the same as you provided to the responding DOT.