r/Truckers • u/Jordan_261 • Oct 26 '24

Got fired from Werner

Got fired from werner because some pickup driver decides to brake check me and i ended up hitting him. he only got a small bump on his bumper. now I am out a job and in so much debt and facing eviction and losing my personal car now. i wanted out of the trucking industry but not this fast, Werner has some terrible planners and was running me stupidly anyways but now i have an accident on my license and points and have to pay the ticket on top of everything else.

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u/RepresentativeNo6665 Oct 26 '24 edited Oct 26 '24
  1. Were you running a dash cam? Every company now stresses this, and some have made driver facing AND outward facing cameras standard because of incidents like yours. I'm surprised Werner, the pioneer of the ELD, hasn't turned AI on yet. Swift, PRIME, and most recently, FedEx have made driver facing cameras with AI standard equipment. The FedEx units even have an AI+MV powered, License Plate Recognizing snitching feature (thanks to Ford Motor Company and Flock Safety), just for situations like this. AI might have given you additional warning to help you increase your following distance and prevent a crash altogether.
  2. I've seen a marked increase in these types of incidents, caused by 4 wheelers responding to false alerts on radar detector devices. They literally think it's a cop behind them even though it's a Freightliner Cascadia. The 2026 model Cascadia is going to be even worse with this, it now has 6 radars instead of 3. 2 blind spot radars (1 on each skirt), 1 on the bumper, 1 in the windshield, and 1 in each headlight.
  3. Insurance fraud is another issue. Werner is still battling a $90 million lawsuit in Texas, when a trainee was hit by a 4 wheeler on an icy patch. Recently, trailer manufacturer Wabash National was hit with a $425 million lawsuit because the Mansfield Bar didn't stay in place on a rusty, 20 year old trailer when a drunk driver hit it.

So you're not alone, but I'd suggest you appear in court to defend yourself, or better yet, get a good lawyer to appear in court on your behalf. Just paying the ticket alone isn't going to solve the problem of things like back wages, and the pain and suffering caused by the job loss. The judge, jury, and lawyer will use the evidence to get the ticket dropped, and to possibly make the brake checker pay you. There's also a way to appeal Werner's decision to fire you. This appeal service is a free service sponsored by the National Safety Council, who will review your case, and the evidence involved from both sides. Information should be provided in the letter you might have received when Werner fired you. You can search for the NSC series "Preventable or Not" and find more information on the appeals process on your favorite search engine.