Tarmaceater:
I have made loads of mistakes and miss judged a lot from dropping a trailer with too much weight in the front and it sank to it’s knees in a soft surface yard and as punishment had to hand ball off ten tons of Spanish ceramic tiles on my own .Turned too tight and took out the front of a tourist coach in a restaurant in Portugal that allows truck parking.
Not ratchet strapped a load and got pulled in by the police who know all about commercial vehicles including ADR regulations, luckily no fine but told to secure it .
Should have refused to collect a wide load from Algeciras as didn’t have enough chain tensioners , fined in the Basque Country for no permit to transit there, and a fine for too wide , parked up for ten days , then DVSA issued a defect notice coming off the ferry in Plymouth, all fines paid back by the boss .
Including the charge to call out a crane in Burgos to reposition the load .I have seen drivers pull away after dropping their trailer and forgot to remove all the Suzies has got distracted talking to a mate , the lesson here is if distracted, repeat what you did again.
As a driver you will get the blame for everything, I was unaware that the fork lift driver punctured some tons of white paint then turned the tins around inside the pallet to hide it, a few hours down the road I finished my break in the cafe to find leaking paint all down the side of the lorry, using some initiative I went to a bus depot and politely asked to borrow their jet wash .
Boss gave me a grilling, FLT driver didn’t.
Sounds like you’ve had your fair share of bad luck!
I’ll definitely remember that distraction phrase!!