Commentary: Complacency Is a Killer
Rolf Lockwood
” >
Rolf Lockwood
” width=”185″ height=”248″>
Every time I write about wheel security, I get e-mails from technicians complaining about the complacency they see in their own shops when it comes to wheel care. So I know it’s an ongoing issue. Informal chats here and there always confirm it, and people are forever telling me to keep on pushing. So I do.
There will be those of you who say, “Not again,” but I make no apologies for harping on this. I wrote about wheel-offs in this space just over a year ago, and previously in 2014. Fact is, I’ve been addressing it since the 1990s when wheels seemed to be falling off trucks all the time — and killing people in the process. They still are, though maybe not so often because we understand more these days. But we all know they happen, and I don’t need iffy statistics to prove it.
I’m writing now because of a disturbing e-mail I had not long ago from a veteran technician at a large fleet, which he described as “so-called leaders in preventive maintenance.”
Not so, apparently.
“I can assure you complacent thinking is the norm around here,” he wrote, requesting anonymity.
“Sure we had the new procedures and some training thrown at us when wheel-offs were in the news, but that is not the case now. Of the 12 technicians working in my shop, there is only one installing wheels correctly, one comes close, and the others aren’t even in the ball park. Management does nothing and will do nothing until a wheel-off occurs. And when that does happen they will review the procedures taken, and when they find the tech who didn’t do it right they will fire him and remind those that are left of the proper procedures. A week or two later, things will be …Read the rest of this story
