KEN'S KORNER - SEPTEMBER 2005

DRIVER SABOTAGE
By Author, Educator and Big City Driver Ken Skaggs

Have you ever purposely destroyed your equipment? I mean, have you ever been so angry at your boss that you purposely did something that you knew would result in a huge repair bill to teach the cheapskate a lesson? Have you ever loosened an oil filter? Flattened tires? Destroyed freight? Got mad and kicked something? Or worse? Someone told me a good story the other day and it urged me to recall some of the more interesting driver sabotage that I’ve seen over the years.

One driver I used to work with purposely flattened nine tires on his company truck. He was following another company driver around a sharp turn and noticed a huge box of nails spilled all over the road. The day was still early and he didn’t feel like working that day, so he decided to take advantage of the opportunity. He pulled over and put a bunch of nails, handfuls, under every tire on the right side, then pulled forward, dropping the whole truck on that side. He positioned the box of nails and all the loose nails around his truck in such a way that it would look like he simply ran over a box of nails. He got the rest of the day off and never got in trouble. The company suspected sabotage, but they couldn’t prove it.

Once, while working for a gravel-hauler pulling end-dumps, someone pulled the fifth-wheel pins on about twenty trucks. At least half of the drivers pulled out from under their trailers. And these were the old dump trailers with no crank on the landing gear (the old pin-type). Many of them were loaded too. So, needless to say, they had to wait for hours as two forklifts picked up each trailer (some had damaged landing gears). The company never figured out who did it, but some of us had our suspicions.

I remember one driver who lasted about a week. He seemed like a nice guy. He borrowed five dollars from me one morning as I was walking in to work. When I got into the office, I found out that they had just fired him for painting gang graffiti on several trucks. It was funny when someone said, “Hey, he just borrowed five bucks from me, on his way out, after he knew he was fired.” And someone else said, “Me too.” And I said, “Me too!”

Then there was Danny. He was always so angry. He would walk around mumbling and cursing about every little thing. He’s been seen kicking garbage cans on more than one occasion. Everything aggravated him, so we all gave him plenty of room. We all wondered why they let him work there. Maybe they were too scared to fire him. When he went on vacation, I drove his truck for a day. The whole interior looked like someone beat on it with a hammer for about a week. Every knob and switch was broken off, all the glass on the gauges was busted, the steering column was loose, there were clear footprints on the cab’s ceiling and there were cracks in every panel from being pummeled daily. I reported all the damage to management but they just shrugged it off saying, “That’s Danny.”

The worst one of them all has got to be Alimony Man, as I like to call him (mostly because I can’t remember his real name). His troubles started the day they told him that his wages would be garnished to make his alimony payments. I felt sorry for him. Somehow, his ex-wife got the house and was supposed to get alimony too, even though he had full custody of their two kids. He told management that he would quit before he gave her a dime and that they should throw that wage-assignment in the trash and act like he doesn’t work there anymore. Of course they wouldn’t, so he quit. On his way out the door, I heard bam, boom, pow, crash, crunch, smash, boom, biff, bam, then after a few seconds of silence, a big bash. A few people came out of the office and we followed a trail. There were holes in the wall from kicks and punches, a broken water fountain, a door hanging on one hinge, and outside, a broken window on the bosses’ car.

Then there was the time I had to go pick up an abandoned truck. I was told simply that the driver had just quit and refused to drive the truck back and that all the costs associated with the recovery of the truck would be taken out of his paycheck (not to mention a bad report on his DAC). After a flight to Texas and a seventy-dollar cab ride, I heard another side of the story, when I met the former driver, who handed me the keys and asked where the tow-truck was. As we walked around the block, to where the truck was parked, he explained. It turns out that, supposedly, someone stole all of the tires one day. Then, the very next day, they took the hood and the stereo. On the third day, they burned it to the ground. He called the company on the third day and got fired because he didn’t tell them about the other thefts on the day they occurred. But, as he said, that was his scheduled home-time and he wasn’t going to disrupt that time with matters of work.

Then there was the former co-worker who used to enjoy staying in motels while out on the road. The only problem was that the company we worked for at the time didn’t pay for motels unless your truck was in the shop. Need I say more?

Of course, sabotage happens. Some people will do anything for money. Some people are just angry or lazy. Truth is, sane people can lose their temper too. You never know what a person is thinking or what kind of day their having. Have you ever seen the movie “Falling Down” with Michael Douglas? I rest my case.

Copyright © 2005 10-4 Magazine and Tenfourmagazine.com 
PO Box 7377 Huntington Beach, CA, 92615 tel. (714) 378-9990  fax (714) 962-8506