Overweight Load Question

I agree with Daniel's conclusion and advice and it looks like it may work.

That trainer is definitely taking advantage of you and putting you in a position to take the fall for an overweight ticket. Sad and shameful, no question about it. It's unbelievable the lack of integrity some people have. I don't care about running with an axle overweight or being over gross or whatever. It happens and sometimes you'll do it. But you do not ever make a conscious decision to knowingly break the law but put someone else behind the wheel to take the fall for you.

I'd love to be in the offices of that company with the safety director when that trainer returns so we can grill him on his unethical and shameful practices. I'd love to see the look on his face and listen to the cr*p that's gonna come out of his mouth when experienced drivers that know exactly what he's doing confront him on it. That's disgusting to me. If you want to take a risk then take one yourself. You don't ever F with someone's license, career, and pocketbook like that.

To me it's 1000 times worse in this scenario because you're supposed to be their mentor. You're supposed to be watching out for them. They trust you. They rely on your skills and decision-making and you go and throw them to the wolves?

Shame on him.

I'm not kidding one bit when I say if I was in charge of things that would have been his last student at my company. Time for him to move on....

If the shipper puts you over and you have to run back to them from the scale, who pays for it?

It's rare that you have to go very far when that happens. It's more of an annoyance than anything. In the few times I've had to do that over the years I don't believe I ever inquired about being paid for it. You might be able to squeeze a few bucks out of dispatch for the miles you'd have to cover but you're probably talking like $10-$20.....it's not enough to worry about. You just hustle back, get it fixed, and get rollin.

I'm with you on that one Brett. This trainer disgusts me and I would love to confront him about it.

I'm with you on that one Brett. This trainer disgusts me and I would love to confront him about it.

Isn't that kind of stuff just infuriating!?!?!? I mean, some people have absolutely no decency whatsoever. You become a trainer and you're supposed to be mentoring new drivers. But before they can even get their first solo run under their belt you're jeopardizing their license and career without them knowing it and you're living up to the very same stereotype we're trying so hard to overcome in this industry. Man that makes me furious!!!

I can understand the anger and wrath this trainer deserves from the experienced drivers here.... but I'm starting to pick up on a bit of a TruckersReport vibe starting up in this thread. Could just be me since we haven't yet gotten out the torches and shovels We've only heard one side of the story so far... I would like to also hear the trainers side of the story and what he was thinking when this all went down. Was it really an 'evil intent' or a series of dumb mistakes that an experienced driver and trainer should never make once let alone repeat? I have no doubt that the sentiment here is very likely the correct one, but yet again I'm still curious what the trainer was thinking... from his point of view.

Ralph, I can almost 100% tell you what his point of view is. Look, he is a trainer - that means that he himself has been schooled in what is right and wrong to do with his trainee. He absolutely knows what he is doing is flat out wrong, but more than likely he is a lease/operator and he is hurting for money. He is needing to turn some miles badly, and he is doing everything he can to get that accomplished without any delays. That is all fine and good as long as you are a solo driver and willing to take the fall for the things that will eventually catch up with you and bite you. But it is totally not acceptable when you are taking a new rookie driver and placing him into situations where he will be blamed and suffer the consequences of your greedy actions when all he is trying to do is get into a new career. A trainer cannot put his student into these types of situations, and if he had the slightest bit of any conscience at all he would never be doing what he is doing.

What he is thinking is that he can't afford to get things corrected, he's got to roll - and as long as he is thinking that is his primary objective, then he needs to forget about training and just run that leased truck as a solo operator until he goes broke or figures out how to do it in a profitable way without putting other innocent people at risk just to justify his foolish business decisions.

Old School, Don't get me wrong... I'm not disagreeing with what you or anyone else is saying here. My gut feeling is that you've nailed it and are 100% correct... but that is also assuming that the facts presented are also 100% correct and factual. Not saying that the OP is wrong, but it is easy accidentally omit some detail or other that may shed things under a different light.

The point of my post, is that I was merely pointing out that there are two sides to every story and I would love to know what's the trainers side of the story? Now, would that exonerate him in any way for his decision to run overweight? Absolutely not, I agree 100% that putting others at risk is not acceptable, I guess I'm just hesitant to fully judge the situation without knowing both sides of the story... Even if it changes nothing.