UPDATE: Please note that there has been a change of date to June 9 – 15, 2011.
This year, in addition to the ride to Sturgis, Road Dogs on Hogs is also going to do a ride June 9 – 15 to the Deal’s Gap area. The Tail of the Dragon is a very popular ride in the area. It has 318 curves in 11 miles. Many riders over the years have wrecked or been killed on the road. But that is not the only great ride in the area. There is:
Tail of the Dragon
Six Gap
Moonshiner 28
Devil’s Triangle
and Cherohala Skyway.
All these beautiful rides are where GA, TN, NC, and SC come together. I have looked at many campgrounds in that area and decided on the Punkin Center Motorcycle Resort. I talked to them as well. It is a motorcycle ONLY place. If you are camping, you do not need a reservation. BUT if you want a cabin, you will need a reservation.
Camping is $15 per night, per tent with up to 4 people. We can get a group rate if there are enough people going. It is $80 per night per group for up to 10 tents. They are redesigning their website so if you have problems with it, try again in a couple of days. I plan on being in there on Sunday, June 5th. See ya’ll there!
Punkin Center Motorcycle Resort is close to all of the action and offers camping facilities ranging from roughing it with tent sites to full service cabins with all of the amenities. They are a biker friendly campground.
They are close to the Cherohala Skyway, the Foothills Parkway, the Blue Ridge Parkway, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Cades Cove, Chilhowee Lake, and the many lesser known treasures waiting to be discovered. Best of all, Punkin Center Motorcycle Resort is only 400 yards off Highway 129 and 9 miles from the start of the Dragon, one of the most famous motorcycle tours in the Eastern US!
Feel free to invite your friends!
So start making your plans if you would like to do something different this year with the group. It promises to be a great week of riding and camaraderie.
As some of you know there has been a great debate of the motorcycle ONLY checkpoints. As truck drivers we are use to being singled out because we drive something more than 4-wheels. Now they are going after the motorcycles! I was contacted today by Rogue, a great friend to the Road Dogs on Hogs, asked if we could help. Before I get into that, here is what I pulled from BIG BEND BIKERS FOR FREEDOM
ABATE of Georgia has put out a strategic plan that they plan to implement during bike week in regards to the, in our minds illegal, motorcycle checkpoints that riders through Georgia may run into. It reads as follows:
Background:
The NHTSA recently announced a grant program to supposedly address Motorcycle Safety issues. The recipient of the money for the demo project was the Georgia h of Public Safety. The Georgia State Patrol is conducting a series of roadside motorcycle safety checks in accordance with what was outlined in the Request for Applications. The amount of NHTSA funding is $70,000.00. The motorcycle check points do not address nor decrease motorcycle accidents and instead “profile” motorcyclists and discriminates against citizens based on their mode on transportation and clothing.
Action:
Letter Campaign
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Letters have been drafted to Governor Perdue asking him to discontinue the program and to concentrate on a research based motorcycle safety campaign.
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Letters have been drafted by the MRF to Transportation Secretary LaHood asking him to suspend the program.
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Letters to the Editor have been drafted
Letters should be downloaded a, printed and passed out to membership and motorcycle community for signatures. The letters will be delivered to the State Capitol; and forwarded to Washington.
Action:
Phone bank campaign
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Each district will hold a one night phone banking campaign where members will call and/or email there US Representative and Georgia Rep asking for support in discontinuing the motorcycle stops
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Each district will encourage members and non-members to call officials
Districts will contact the Legislative Director with an accounting of the actions and tally of call and emails.
Action:
Tracking the Stops
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An accounting form sheet will be made available on line for victims of the motorcycle stops to relate their story
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A Whistle Blower form will be posted to post any notifications of stops
Action:
Civil Disobedience
A group email will be sent out to inform districts of motorcycle stops in their area. A team of members who volunteer to participate in blocking the stops will be sent in motion.
A press conference will be called to give information to the press and to present our case.
We also hope to have riders cruising the southern areas of Ga. and are formulating plans that we hope to have ready by Thursday. Should you identify or be stopped in Georgia you e-mail us at rgnostic@gmail.com. We will gladly get the word to ABATE of Georgia and to other contacts.
When Rogue asks me if I can help or if RDOH or the truck drivers can help, I try to get the information out to you. Here is an excerpt from his email to me this morning.
What I would like you to do is let big rig drivers running those routes know what is going on and ask them to help if they can.
At this time we are not sure exactly where these checkpoints are going to be. If someone was to see one and call it in we can the dispatch people to the site. Most of us believe they will be trying this at rest areas as it is even more impractical to force them off the interstate But any thing is possible.
I sent out a few emails to ABATE of Georgia asking what the truck drivers could do to help and how they should do that. Ned Williams, Secretary of State, A.B.A.T.E. of Georgia sent me the following information. Please look it over and save the contact information some place that you can find it if you see one of these motorcycle only checkpoints.
As we get ready for Bike week and the impending check points A.B.A.T.E. wants to provide every resource to riders who live in or cross our great state. So here they are!
SMARTPHONE users:
email: secretary@abatega.org if you roll up on a checkpoint
ALL CELL PHONE users:
TEXT us at (404) 981-5612 with the letters “CP” at the beginning of your text message followed by your location and name(so we can match it to your phone number to verify who you are). We will in turn log your message then post TO OUR FACEBOOK the location of your check point.
CAMERA PHONE and CAMERA users:
Capture any footage you can and (PICTURES AND VIDEO!) email us, we will provide you an upload location if your file is too large to email otherwise please send it to secretary@abatega.org
As we enable additional resources everyone we will post them to our facebook page.
If you are in Georgia, PLEASE help these guys out. I know many truck drivers also ride. We are singled out enough as it is. We should help ouot our fellow brothers and sisters that love the feeling of the road beneath them.
Please feel free to pass this information along to anyone that you think can help. Lets get the word out that we are not going to stand for this!
Today I had to meet with a gal from Workman’s Comp for a vocational evaluation. This assessment was to see what my skills and limitations are. There were a lot of questions about my hobbies and activities before the fall and what of that I can do now. It is this lady’s job to take what learned from me today and the doctors notes and go out and look for me a job that I can do within those limitations. After an hour and a half I broke down and cried when telling her my frustration at not being able to do the things I did before and not being able to drive a truck anymore. Trying to explain to someone that has never driven a truck what it is like to do and then to loose it is not an easy task. I know many of you have heard and read me talk about how trucking in more than just a job, it is a way of life and a life style. The nomadic nature of drivers in ingrained in them so deep that it becomes part of who they are and of who I am. Over the last couple on months as I have started school and had to try to integrate myself into the “real world”, I have had days that I hate my life. I have had days that I am angry at the world. I have had days that I ask why me and want to crawl into a whole and hid from all these crazy people that just don’t get me. I try to hang on to that fact that now I am chasing another dream I have had for several years. If not for the fall I am not sure that I would have taken the step to go to school and try to start another career in radio. I remind myself that I am smart, personable, and that the only one holding me back from chasing this dream is me. But it doesn’t always work. Even though I am doing well in my classes, I think I have at least one A, several high B’s and a C, I get scared. I wonder if I can really do this. All of this came out when talking with this lady today. I think that this meeting is another slap in the face that this is really happening, I am not going to back to truck driving, and that hurts.
The thing that made it even worse was the meeting with my lawyer after the lady left the office. My doctor has give me a 6% medical impairment rating. To get a rough dollar number as to what that means for a settlement we have that the 200 weeks that are allowed for a scheduled member, multiply that by the 6% (which equal 12 weeks) and then multiply that result by what I am getting per week from AIG for workman’s comp. That comes to $4787 for each wrist. Shane, my lawyer, says that it what I can count on getting at the very least. But that total will be multiplied by 4 or 5 because of the impact the injury has had on my life. So if we go with the hopeful number of 5, that total is $23935 per wrist. That is a total of $47871. Does that seem fair for how much of my life has been impacted by this injury? These are just base figures. Shane say he is going to shoot for 100 week times what I am getting weekly to start off with. That still only comes out to be $39893 per wrist for a total of $79786. Of course, he gets 25% of what ever settlement I get. This news did not go over well with me. I was really expecting more. I don’t want enough money to live off of the rest of my life, I just want enough that I don’t have to worry about how I am going to live while I got to college the next four years. Shane told me that workman’s comp laws are really not set up to deal with severely injured people. they figure that if you are severely injured, you will be going on social security disability. when I asked him I qualified for that, he said that they really are not set up for a partial permanent disability. He says that I do have a winnable case, but it would be a fight to get it. When I asked him if a lawyer would even touch it is it was going to be such a fight, he said they would, but that I didn’t want to start that until after the workman’s comp case is done.
So, I sit in limbo once again, not knowing what is going to happen and how I am going to survive the next few years while I try ti finish college and start a new career. But as much as there are days that I really want to give up, I am just not that kind of person. I am a survivor and a fighter. One way or another, I will adapt and overcome!!
The Other Victims of Battlefield Stress; Defense Contractors’ Mental Health Neglected
by T. Christian Miller, ProPublica – February 26, 2010 1:48 am EST
On the one-year anniversary of her husband’s suicide, Barb Dill breaks down at her husband’s tombstone. Wade Dill, a Marine Corps veteran, took a contractor job in Iraq. Three weeks after he returned home for good, he committed suicide (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times / Redding, CA / July 16, 2007).
REDDING, Calif. — Wade Dill does not figure into the toll of war dead. An exterminator, Dill took a job in Iraq for a company contracted to do pest control on military bases. There, he found himself killing disease-carrying flies and rabid dogs, dodging mortars and huddling in bomb shelters.
Dill, a Marine Corps veteran, was a different man when he came back for visits here, his family said: moody, isolated, morose. He screamed at his wife and daughter. His weight dropped. Dark circles haunted his dark brown eyes.
Three weeks after he returned home for good, Dill booked a room in an anonymous three-story motel alongside Interstate 5. There, on July 16, 2006, he shot himself in the head with a 9 mm handgun. He left a suicide note for his wife and a picture for his daughter, then 16. The caption read: “I did exist and I loved you.”
More than three years later, Dill’s loved ones are still reeling, their pain compounded by a drawn-out battle with an insurance company over death benefits from the suicide. Barb Dill, 47, nearly lost the family’s home to foreclosure. “We’re circling the drain,” she said.
While suicide among soldiers has been a focus of Congress and the public, relatively little attention has been paid to the mental health of tens of thousands of civilian contractors returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. When they make the news at all, contractors are usually in the middle of scandal, depicted as cowboys, wastrels or worse.
No agency tracks how many civilian workers have killed themselves after returning from the war zones. A small study in 2007 found that 24 percent of contract employees from DynCorp, a defense contractor, showed signs of depression or post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, after returning home. The figure is roughly equivalent to those found in studies of returning soldiers.
If the pattern holds true on a broad scale, thousands of such workers may be suffering from mental trauma, said Paul Brand, the CEO of Mission Critical Psychological Services, a firm that provides counseling to war zone civilians. More than 200,000 civilians work in Afghanistan and Iraq, according to the most recent figures.
“There are many people falling through the cracks, and there are few mechanisms in place to support these individuals,” said Brand, who conducted the study while working at DynCorp.”There’s a moral obligation that’s being overlooked. Can the government really send people to a war zone and neglect their responsibility to attend to their emotional needs after the fact?”
The survivors of civilians who have committed suicide have found themselves confused, frustrated and alone in their grief.
“If I was in the military, I’d at least have someone to talk to,” said Melissa Finkenbinder, 42, whose husband, Kert, a mechanic, killed himself after returning from Iraq. “Contractors don’t have anything. Their families don’t have anything.”
Some families of civilian contractors who have committed suicide have tried to battle for help through an outdated government system designed to provide health insurance and death benefits to civilian contractors injured or killed on the job.
Under the system, required by a law known as the Defense Base Act, defense firms must purchase workers’ compensation insurance for their employees in war zones. It is highly specialized and expensive insurance, dominated by the troubled giant AIG and a handful of other companies. The cost of it is paid by taxpayers as part of the contract price.
But the law, which is designed to provide coverage for accidental death and injury, blocks payment of death benefits in the case of almost all suicides. Cases linked to mental incapacity are the lone exception, judges have ruled.
A joint investigation last year by ProPublica, ABC News and the Los Angeles Times revealed that contract workers must frequently battle carriers for basic medical coverage. While Congress has promised reforms, there has been no discussion of changing the law when it comes to suicides involving civilian defense workers.
The military, by contrast, allows survivors to receive benefits in cases in which a soldier’s suicide can be linked to depression caused by battlefield stress.
Hundreds of soldiers have committed suicide since the war in Afghanistan began in 2001, according to studies by the Army and the Department of Veterans Affairs. In response, the Defense Department has become more active in trying to prevent suicide than its hired contractors, military experts said.
The military is “aggressively trying to reach people and do intervention beforehand and set up suicide awareness programs,” said Ian de Planque, a benefits expert at the American Legion, the nation’s largest veterans group. “Awareness of it has increased. I don’t know that it’s transferred over to the civilian sector at this point.”
Birgitt Eysselinck has spent years trying to prove that her husband’s death in Iraq was related to stress from his job with a company specializing in the removal of land mines and explosive ordnance. So far, courts have sided with the insurance firm, Chicago-based CNA, in denying Eysselinck’s claim. (CNA declined to comment, citing privacy reasons.)
Eysselinck, 44, said that neither federal judges nor insurance adjusters understand that civilian contractors face many of the same risks in Iraq and Afghanistan that soldiers do. Her husband, Tim Eysselinck, endured mortar attacks and frequently traveled across Iraq’s dangerous highways, she said.
“There is a huge percentage of contractors who are silently suffering,” Eysselinck said. “That obviously puts them and their families at risk. Communities are bearing the brunt of this, especially the families.”
* * *
Wade Dill was working at a local pest control company when he decided to take a job with KBR in Iraq in late 2004. The money was good – almost $11,000 a month for handling extermination and hazardous material disposal, more than double his normal salary.
“He said this was our opportunity,” Barb Dill said. “He could start a college fund for our daughter, pay off the mortgage and have a nice retirement. He told me at his age, 41, he didn’t know if he had enough years left in him to give us what he wanted.”
Wade started that December, working on bases in central and northern Iraq. Violence was ever present. A base near Mosul was shelled frequently. He told Barb that a mortar landed close enough to temporarily deafen him. Once, he called her sobbing.
“My husband never cried, ever,” she said. “Marines don’t cry. A young man, a soldier, had put a pistol to his head and blown his brains out. And Wade had to go in and clean up after they removed the body – he had to clean up brain matter and blood. It really upset him.”
Barb Dill noticed a change in her husband when he returned home for a visit in December 2005. The couple had been high school sweethearts, married for 15 years. They had troubles, but had always worked them out. Now, he seemed moody and often angry, lashing out at her and their daughter, Sara.
“He would say hateful things to me and our daughter – things he had never said before.” Dill said. “This was a man that loved his little girl and his wife. He always called us his girls.”
When Wade returned for another visit in June 2006, he abruptly quit his job and began acting erratically, Dill said. He ripped the wiring out of appliances, smashed mirrors and poured lighter fluid on their furniture.
After a few weeks, Wade took a room at a local motel. On July 15, he asked Barb to come see him. Their conversation spiraled into a confrontation. Frightened and angry, Barb sped off in her car. The next day, the Shasta County coroner’s office called to tell her that Wade’s body had been found in the room.
“He told me that he was sick and needed help,” Dill said. “I told him to get help and then we would talk. The last time I saw him was in my rearview mirror.”
Dill soon found herself in financial difficulty. Her husband had always taken care of the bills. He had spent lavishly with his higher salary, buying two BMWs during trips home. Now, Dill discovered the couple was $300,000 in debt on their mortgage and car loans.
She plunged into depression, struggling to cope with her daughter’s grief and the sense that she had failed her husband in his time of need. She sold the cars and nearly lost her home after falling behind on mortgage payments.
She suffered mostly by herself. Except for a handful of Web sites, no support groups exist for widows of civilian contractors. The federal government offers no counseling for civilians returning from work in war zones.
Dill said that she felt abandoned by everyone: her husband’s employer, the insurance company and especially the federal government, which oversees the Defense Base Act system through the Labor Department.
“Shouldn’t our government be responsible for the companies they hire?” Dill said. “Shouldn’t our government take care of its own people, who are doing jobs our government, ultimately, wanted them to do?”
* * *
Survivors of civilian contractors whose death is related to their work in Iraq have the right to apply for compensation benefits that pay up to $63,000 a year for life.
Dill applied, asserting that her husband’s PTSD made him an exception to the rule against payments in suicide cases. Her claim was denied by AIG, KBR’s insurance provider.
She protested, sending her claim into a dispute resolution system run by the Labor Department. Her case is still grinding its way through the system, which can take years to produce a final result.
Experts hired by the family and the insurance company differed on what led to Wade Dill’s suicide.
A psychiatrist hired by her attorney found that job stress in Iraq was one of the factors that drove Wade to suicide: “The bottom line is that the combination of physical separation and work-related stress resulted in increasingly emotional distance, greater distortion of the relationship, increasing emotional intensity, and a pattern of increasing erratic behaviors that culminated in suicide,” wrote Charles Seaman, an expert in PTSD.
A Labor Department examiner recommended that AIG pay the claim, but the company refused. AIG and KBR declined comment about the case. In court filings, AIG has argued that the Defense Base Act does not cover suicides.
AIG attorneys also have said that Wade Dill’s actions were related to marital and family problems. A psychiatrist hired by AIG testified at a hearing in San Francisco in January that he had performed a “psychological autopsy” on Wade Dill based on interviews with his family and court documents.
The psychiatrist, Andrew D. Whyman, said his evaluation led him to conclude that Dill suffered from depression and that his suicide was unrelated to the violence he witnessed in Iraq.
“Take out the Iraq experience, (the suicide) would have happened,” Whyman testified. “He had a choice. … He could have chosen not to do that.”
Barb Dill insists her husband came back from Iraq a changed man.
“No matter how strained our relationship could get at times, we always pulled out of it with no problem,” Dill said. “Iraq changed all that.”
Now, she said, she is trying to hold her life together. A final decision in her case is not expected for months.
“We’re just slowly sinking,” she said. “It’s hard to be strong.”
Watch a preview of ‘Disposable Army,’ a documentary currently being produced by Mark Crupi, which contains interviews with Barb Dill and T. Christian Miller.
Disposable Army: Read the complete coverage of injured defense contractors and their struggles to receive promised medical care.
Write to T. Christian Miller at T.Christian.Miller@propublica.org.
What is the only difference between a trucker driver story and a fairytale?
A fairytale begins with ‘Once upon a time’ and a truck drivers story starts with ‘You aint gonna believe this shit!’
Yea, I know that is a VERY old joke. I remember it being told to me 20 years ago when I first started driving. But there is a reason I tell the joke now. The other day a driver friend and I were talking and swapping truck driver stories, more like remembering the “good ole’ days”, and he suggested that I should write all these great stories down some place, before I get to old and can’t remember them any more! I thought it was a great idea. Since much time has passed and I can’t be thrown under the jail any more for some of the things I did back then, I thought it might be cool to share the stories with ya’ll. The thing is where do I start! Do I start with going to truck driver school back in 1990, or the first driving job I held, or maybe I should start with how I decided that I wanted to drive a truck. Yes, I think starting at the beginning is best.
It was 1990 and I was confused about many things that was going on in my life at the time. In debt, living in the “system” with my 3 boys, I was a basket case. Looking back I wonder if I should not have been locked up in a little rubber room some place. On the edge of being suicidal and feeling that my boys would be better off without me, I sent them to their Dad. I had just started dating a truck driver that went by the handle ‘Bruiser’. He had been driving about 5 years at the time I met him. I went on the road with him for several months and during that time I got the idea, “Hey, I can do this!” The thought was that I would learn to drive a truck, get out of debt, get my head straightened out, and then get my boys back. As many of you know, that last part didn’t happen. I wont go into all the whys of that, other than to say, that learning to be a truck driver the way I did, the diesel smoke gets in your blood and you can never get it out! It wasn’t that I didn’t want them, I felt they really were better off with me at that time. If you can’t take care of yourself, how can you take care of your kids? By the time I had my head on my shoulders better, I had fallen in love with driving. To come off the road would have meant a massive drop in pay and I felt I would have been right back where I started, living in the welfare system. I didn’t want that for my boys. So I kept on trucking and did my best to see them as much as I could.
I bugged Bruiser to teach me to be a truck driver. He made a comment that sticks with me to this day, “It’s a living, but it’s not a life!” I didn’t understand that in the beginning. It took many years for me to really get what he was saying, but by that time, I was hooked! I remember sitting in the jump seat one day as we were headed south on I75 in Florida. Bruiser was having a hard time getting a bear report (cop report) so he handed the mic to me. “They will come back to a woman before they answer a man.” he said. So I asked for the bear report and got it…..and I got a whole lot more.
Now remember this is 1990, there were not that many women on the road and many men back then thought that women did not belong in a truck as a driver. So along with the bear report, I was treated to a few crude comments. One even called me a bitch and a lot lizard (prostitute). I looked at Bruiser, started handing him the mic and asked him if he was going to take care of that. He looked at me and told me that if I wanted to drive a truck, I should learn to deal with that kind of stuff or take my ass back home. So I keyed up the mic and let that driver have it! Bruiser was a great inspiration and a great teacher, even thought he never put me under the wheel. His pushing me to make sure that driving was what I really wanted to do and teaching me that because I am a woman, I am going to have to work harder than any man out there, is probably why I became as good a driver as I was and lasted as long as I did.
I have had many drivers ask me how I got into truck driving. I tell them that I dated a truck driver once upon a time, went with on the road and got hooked. They ask me if I want to kick his ass now? I always respond with the same answer. “NO! It was a very tough time for me back then. Truck driving saved my life and in that, the guy that got me into driving, saved my life. I owe him!”
I know it hasn’t been perfect, I have made some mistakes along the way and done some things that I am not very proud of, but I would not be who I am today, or where I am today, if not for becoming a truck driver. With your indulgence, I will relate some of the stories I have in my head from 20 years on the road as a female truck driver. I hope that it will help those outside of the industry better understand the people behind the wheel of those big rigs they see going up and down the road. For those that want to get in to trucking, maybe they will have a more informed view of what it really takes to be a truck driver. And for those that have been there and done that, maybe we can swap some stories of the “good ole’ days” before we forget them in our old age!
This is from Land Line magazine. Please take a look, keep an eye out for this driver and pass it along to others you know are traveling the roads. There is a phone number at the end of the article if you have any information on Mr Eischens.
SPECIAL REPORT: Former Arrow driver now officially ‘missing’
Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2010 – A missing persons report was filed last night by the family of John M. Eischens Jr. of Mabank, TX, a former Arrow driver.
The family reportedly has not heard from the trucker since before Christmas, when the Tulsa-based motor carrier suddenly shut down operations and stranded nearly a thousand drivers on the road.
As volunteers were trying to locate those drivers and get them home or to a safe place, the driver of truck number 6325 emerged “unaccounted for.” After two weeks, he remains missing.
According to Iowa driver Eric Mende, a volunteer working to help stranded drivers, Qualcomm reported no activity on the truck that Eischens was driving for Arrow. Mende said the “last ping was to a tower in the Butte, MT, area.” Mende began calling truck stops in the area and that’s how he found truck number 6325 abandoned at the Pilot in Butte, with keys in it.
Mende told Land Line Magazine that he asked the Pilot security guard to check the lot. The guard found the Arrow truck and reported that the driver’s belongings were gone. The guard told Mende the truck had been there since Dec. 25. There was no sign of Eischens.
Volunteers who have talked to Eischens’ family in Texas report that his mother is worried that he’s not contacted them for several weeks and “it’s not like him to fail to call on Christmas.”
Det. Steve Williams of the Anna Police Department told Land Line that the report was filed last night and going “into the system” Wednesday morning. Williams said because it was a new investigation, details were not available.
If anyone has information on whereabouts of Eischens, please call Det. Williams of the Anna, TX, Police Department. The office phone is 972-924-2848; after 5 p.m. calls will be handled by dispatch at 972-547-5350.
I am an editor and have been writing over on “The People’s Journal” about the PGR, “Road Dogs on Hogs” and workman’s comp. Yesterday the site published a story from a good friend of mine, Walter Twohorses, about his dealings with Trimac‘s workman’s comp insurer, AIG. I have to say that being friends with Walter over the last two years I have seen and heard of the difficulties he has gone through in trying to get non-invasive medical treatment and other benefits due him.
In July 2007 I started training where I learned how to run the pumps, measure the oil and several other required duties. After two weeks I was turned loose with my own truck. It was a ‘96 Freightliner FLD that was originally an OTR truck and had been converted to run the oil fields. It was probably the biggest piece of crap I have ever driven and should have been “retired” a long time ago. I suspect that instead of buying new equipment, they would purchase older, worn out trucks from other branches of the Trimac company to show a profit and saved the company some money.
I drove this worn out Freightliner for a year with the air-ride seat bottoming out an average of 3 to 4 times a day. The impact to my spine took it’s toll over that amount of time.
One day I got out of the truck to hook up my hose. When I stepped down it felt like someone had stuck a very sharp knife in my back and I went down. I could not move. Other drivers at the pumping station helped me get up because I could not do it on my own. I have never experienced pain like that before and it scared the hell out of me. It was about half an hour before I could move. The other drivers helped me get back into my truck and I drove myself the 35 miles back to the yard. Good thing I know how to float the gears because I could not push in the clutch due to the pain and weakness.
Sadly this is a common problem with some trucking companies. Trucks that are deemed “safe” by DOT standards are not always in the best shape when it comes to the drivers body. Truck drivers spend hours upon hours sitting behind the wheel bouncing down the roads of this great Country. These are not always the best roads and can give a very rough ride. These roads take a toll on the trucks. the suspension gets weak and any air-ride equipment no longer works as it should. I don’t know what regulations are for running in the oil fields as Walter did, but I know that any road truck, even if it is new, is NOT set up to be running off-road. They need a much heavier suspension as well as many other beefed up parts to keep the truck from falling apart.
Whereas I have had a rather easy time in dealing with AIG, my injury was a very obvious one, Walter’s is not. The damage to his spine was incurred over the course of a year. I realize that can make a case harder to settle, but if he has the documents to prove that this damage was done while driving for Trimac, why are they not taking care of him? Is AIG to fault for this or Trimac? I know that any time I had a problem with AIG I could call my company and they would get in touch with my adjuster and get things straight. Trimac has not done this for Walter. They have left him swinging in the wind, fending for himself.
You can read Walter’s full story, “Difficulties with Trimac’s Workman’s Comp insurer, AIG” on “The People’s Journal”.
