I arrived in Joplin early in the afternoon on Friday, July 20th. A bozo in the inspection bay determined the tire pressure of one of my new super single tires was a mere 30 PSI and directed me to the tire shop to have it inspected and repaired. After no more than 15 seconds of looking it over it was determined said bozo doesn't understand how to use a tire gauge and I was rolled out and into the regular maintenance area for some other items to be taken care of.
The incident in Nogales required that I speak with the folks in Safety and I made my way to the headquarters building and found the right person to talk to. After a long wait I was brought into a conference room with the safety person and my fleet manager and the safety person presented me with a form to sign. Apparently, the folks in safety used my single spotty cell phone conversation to conclude this was a preventable accident. Had I known then what I know now, that would have been a much longer and more detailed phone call. I was under the mistaken impression I would be meeting with safety to go over the events in detail.
Another issue reared its head as a download of the engine computer on my truck revealed several anomalous numbers... among them a high speed at some (unknown) point in the past of 87 MPH at an engine RPM of over 2050! I've never approached either of these numbers, and for some reason when the last driver of this truck quit and it was reassigned the shop failed to reset the computer, as is policy. Since company trucks are governed at 67 MPH on cruise controll and 70 MPH with the accelerator floored this means 17 MPH over the governor and apparently still in gear.
I, frankly, believe that these readings are spurious. Back in February, I was traveling along I-90 from Seattle to Spokane and the rotation sensor on my drive shaft malfunctioned and it had my instruments going from 0 MPH to pegged repeatedly because it wasn't able to correctly see the rotation of the drive shaft and multiply it by the gear ratio.
The individual from Safety wasn't very understanding of these points, even after I showed him on the report that the total engine hours and the hours since reset were identical (meaning it hadn't been reset since it was installed in the truck).
The form I was asked to sign had several incorrect statements on it and I refused to sign. The guy from Safety and my fleet manager signed as witnesses and we tabled it for the time being.
First thing Monday morning I went to see the next person up the chain of command in Safety and we went over the events in Nogales and the problems I had with the form. He allowed me to type up a statement giving my account of the events and I went so far as to use Google Maps to get a satellite view of the area in question and drew lines and points on it to illustrate what happened. Sometime in the next few weeks three drivers at random will be asked to sit down and go over a number of cases like mine and determine if they were preventable or non-preventable, and the result is binding on CFI and myself.
We eventually came to accommodation on the form as well, so it got signed by both of us and will be held in a file until after the above determination is made. If it is ruled non-preventable it will get ripped up and the matter will be closed.
There are some things about the way that CFI operates I wish were explained better, or explained at all, in the training and orientation phase.
