Personally I think its great to take kids out in trucks, lets face it one of the worst aspects of trucking if you’ve got kids is not seeing them for days on end sometimes.
A word of warning though - a few years ago I had a work mates( one of the fitters) son (age 11) with me for the day. He used to come down to the yard a lot, loved trucks etc, and the boss said he go out with me on some local runs. We ended up picking up an old shunter to run back to the yard after dropping our unit off for service at workshops half way through the day. It had no passenger seat belt - no probs 5 minute journey back - half a mile away from getting back a car failed to stop at t junction on our left and hit the nearside rear wheel at approx 50 mph, with no trailer it pushed us through 90 degrees and we rolled completely over into the opposite carrage way. Amazingly we escaped with only bruises but when we climbed out could see that the vehicle that had been coming towards us in the opposite lane had stopped about 6 inches of hitting us as well. It was a truck fully laden with steel, and the driver had his lad in with him as well. He told me he couldn’t believe he’d been able to stop and had got his son to hide in the footwell as he was convinced he was going to hit us ! He said that was it, his son was never going out in the truck with him again…
Tiny