We just had a fatal accident (disp here) and lost one of our drivers. She called me this morning on the way to the office. She was coming in with her regional load of a full tanker. She wanted to run a short load real quick after she dropped off the loaded. I told her I didn’t think she had time but I’d have to check her HOS when I got in. I was still on the road to the office.
When I got in, I checked HOS and it would have been tight, but possible. I marked her location in the system and went to emails until she got closer to final. See if she had time. About an hour later I get a call from another carrier’s dispatcher. She reported that one of hers was involved in an accident with one of mine. She gave me the driver’s number so I could call him directly. I’d asked if our driver was okay, could they just put our driver on the phone, see how they are. The dispatcher just said she “couldn’t do that right now.” At the moment, I didn’t know which driver it was.
I called the other driver. He was alright. But he kept saying he couldn’t let me talk to our driver. I asked why not and he finally said, “They didn’t make it.” By then an officer was on site and he put me on the phone with him. The officer told me what happened.
“Your driver hit this other truck from behind. He didn’t survive.” It wasn’t until I tracked all the drivers in the area that I realized who it was. The officer assumed it was a man because it was bad enough they couldn’t tell it was a woman.
The other driver had blown a tandem and was “limping” to the next exit when she came around the corner and couldn’t miss him. A fully loaded tanker came off the 5th wheel into the daycab and there was nothing that could have been done. It was over quick. We pulled up the dashcam footage and there was no missing the other truck.
I’m torn over this because I feel like I made her hurry up to squeeze in one more short run before the end of the week. DOT wants to take a statement Monday for this. I ‘m not worried about being in trouble, I’m just messed up about losing one of our better, motivated drivers. She was always a go-getter and hard chargers. I’ve never had anything like this happen before. I don’t know where to go from here.
