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Running a warehouse or manufacturing facility isn’t easy.
Every day, you’re expected to keep product moving in, around, and out the door. Faster. Safer. With fewer problems and zero incidents.
That’s a lot to carry. It can feel like an impossible ask, but we’re here to help make it possible.
On this show, we dig into the real challenges happening on the floor and at the loading dock. Each episode, you’ll hear from industry experts, operators, and problem-solvers who share practical ways to improve quality, boost productivity, and keep facilities running smoothly.
Our goal is simple. Share new ways to tackle challenges that never seem to end so your people and your product get in, around, and out the door safely. You ready to clock in?
Jeff Gowen (00:00):
We lock in a trailer and we get an alarm going off and it's like, why is this alarm going off? It's annoying. Let's turn it off. You turn it off. That's where the mistake is. That alarm is there for a reason. It's saying, "Hey, we've got an issue here, whether it's with the lock or with the trailer, and we need to take a minute, stop, figure out what's going on. We got to slow down, take a minute and just think about it."
Mike Smith (00:22):
Clocking in, the podcast for people who keep products moving in and out of industrial facilities every day. I'm your host, Mike Smith, director of product at Robert Dietrick Company. I have with us Jeff Gowen. Good to be with you.
Jeff Gowen (00:38):
Good to be with you.
Mike Smith (00:39):
All right. So Jeff, before we get into what we're going to be talking about, give us a little intro on yourself. How long have you been with RDC? What have you done here at RDC? Because it does set up and help people to know your and I background maybe when talking about this subject.
Jeff Gowen (00:53):
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, started as a technician, worked in the field for two years, primarily in the service department, and then moved into a role, a customer success manager role. So now I get to manage salespeople through the business. So I kind of work in our central territory and get to manage them every day and help them. I bring that technical application to the sales team, whether you're looking at a job, really get in depth on the technical side of things and help explain things to customers in that way.
Mike Smith (01:20):
So for our listeners today, both you and I have been in the field. We've got several years of experience. We've done install, we've done service PM, we've responded to a lot of different problems. And you and I both have also been facilitators of solutions. When there's a problem that's just unfixable, we go in and help try to solve it. So we have a background there. That's relevant because today's topic could be considered kind of a heavy one, not to get to Debbie Downer or anything, but it's a very serious topic. We're going to cover an accident that all too often happens out in industry. I mean, it's probably happening somewhere right now, but we've got the technical expertise to navigate this. We're also going to be doing a two-part episode. We haven't done that before, but again, this topic is one that is so important.
(02:11):
It merits a good lengthy discussion around it. We want to break it up into two parts. So we're going to give you some great stuff here in part one. We're going to follow it up with our second episode. And then that latter episode, we're actually going to be sharing a lot of resources with our listeners, some checklists, some really good guides and things to help listeners after this conversation. So make sure you tune in to episode one and episode two of this discussion. All right, so the subject we want to talk about today is, that was a drum roll in case no one saw it or heard it, unplanned trailer departure at the loading dock. That sounds probably pretty boring to some people. It's not though. Why does someone need to know about this topic? Why do listeners need to know?
Jeff Gowen (02:58):
Because it can be a super dangerous situation in your facility. You may not know and may never have experienced it, but unfortunately it's something that can happen and it can happen to anybody. So just having that awareness is super important.
Mike Smith (03:09):
Who all needs to hear this?
Jeff Gowen (03:11):
Anyone who is at or around a dock area, whether it be warehouse managers or an actual forklift driver, whatever it may be, anyone who's in that arena, whether it's even a truck driver, need to be in the know with this.
Mike Smith (03:25):
The goal of this episode is not to scare anybody. It's not to use fear tactics. We want to be positive, encouraging. And in fact, in the second part of this series, we're going to share with you our belief that this accident can be prevented and we're going to tell you how. So don't want to scare anybody. This doesn't have to happen, but we want listeners to be prepared when it does happen. I want to start off by parlaying a little bit about something that you and I both enjoy, which is, I guess you could say water sports, being on the water. So back to this accident, behind the scenes, when someone gets involved in an unplanned trailer departure, when we respond to that call, we might say something to each other like, "Man, somebody went on a ride in the back of a trailer." Usually when you and I are talking about going on a ride, it's on a Sunday afternoon, it's on the boat, we're going to go to the marina and grab lunch, maybe take a dip before we have to go back home, right?
Jeff Gowen (04:25):
Exactly.
Mike Smith (04:25):
That's a ride you want to go on. That's where you want to be. Where you don't want to find yourself is in the back of a trailer on a forklift pulling away from a loading dock. That's a very bad ride to go on. Let's start with a scenario. And again, this is a scenario that very well could be playing out somewhere right now. And statistically, it probably is. It's a weekday. Let's say first shift, everything's been going smooth. You're loading, unloaded, trailers are flying in and out. It's just a good routine day. Nothing's going wrong. One of your drivers is loading a trailer. It's almost fully loaded and they pull out to go get one last skid and put it on the trailer. They drive on the trailer, set it down, they go to back up and there's a problem. Where there used to be a dock leveler, where there used to be a path back into the building, there's now nothing and the driver can't stop.
(05:23):
And then the next thing you know, that driver finds himself or herself four feet on the ground, hopefully safe and unharmed, but all too often that's not the case. That is not a good situation to be in, but that's the scenario that we're going to be talking about. That's basically what happens with unplanned trailer departure. Maybe the driver thought he had a green light, maybe someone thought they were done loading, but they weren't. Maybe there was no restraint at all. Maybe the customer was just using wheel chocks and it was just a crappy one maybe that wasn't holding the trailer. I mean, there's a lot of reasons why this can happen, but that's the scenario that happens all too often and that's what we want to talk about today. So shortly after that, what's the question that everybody has on their mind right after an accident like that happens?
Jeff Gowen (06:11):
What do we do now?
Mike Smith (06:13):
Right. What do we do now? So in this episode, we want to discuss what to do when it happens. We want to pinpoint some reasons why it happens. We want to talk to you about what you should do after an accident like this happens. And lastly, and maybe most importantly, we want to tell you how you can prevent this from happening altogether.
Jeff Gowen (06:32):
Sounds great.
Mike Smith (06:33):
All right. So Jeff, before we get into the two points we're going to be discussing in this episode, have you ever responded to a call where something like this has happened? And if so, what's the vibe? What's the atmosphere like?
Jeff Gowen (06:44):
Yeah, absolutely. Unfortunately, it's not a fun call you get, not a fun sales call or whatever it may be. You go out there and people are a little freaked out. They're confused on why it happened, what got them in this situation, and they're really looking for answers at that point.
Mike Smith (06:58):
I concur. I mean, I've been on those calls. It's not a good vibe. It's very unfortunate. Sometimes someone's been hurt or worse. It's not something cool to walk into, but there's something right out the gate that when this happens, we want to advise customers to do right away. So step number one, you just arrive on the scene, this accident's just happened. What do customers need to do first and foremost?
Jeff Gowen (07:22):
Make sure everyone's okay. Safety is number one. Make sure everyone's okay right after the situation happens and get to your emergency response, whatever it may be if that ends up being the case.
Mike Smith (07:32):
Have you ever seen the episode of the. Do you watch The Office?
Jeff Gowen (07:35):
Oh yeah.
Mike Smith (07:35):
Have you seen the episode of The Office where Dwight lights a cigarette, throws it in the trash can, throws a little lighter fluid on it and simulates a fire to test everyone's emergency responsiveness awareness, right? Oh yeah. When these accidents happen, that is not the time to be trying to figure out what your company's policy is. How do you respond to an accident? Please know that ahead of time because right when that happens, you got to go into instinct mode and you've got to know what your policies are and you got to get people taken care of. So just a little disclaimer here, step one, our advice is, and I think the advice of any safety person out there, know your company's policy when something like this happens and go to work executing it. Secondly, who do we take care of first? What do we take care of first?
Jeff Gowen (08:19):
The individual involved in the accident.
Mike Smith (08:20):
Yes. People are priority number one. Make sure that everyone is okay before you start getting into the next step, which is determining what actually failed and how did this happen. So this might be the most important part of the whole episode is taking care of people first, but resisting the urge to put everything back together again, move the forklift out of the way, clean up hydraulic fluid, repair damaged equipment, sweep things up, leave everything as it is, as long as it's not in danger of harming anyone. Why do we want to do that?
Jeff Gowen (08:57):
We want to be able to recreate the scene. We need to be able to see what happened and where everyone was, what individuals were in certain areas, what obstructions may there have been and that type of thing so we can recreate the scene so it doesn't happen again.
Mike Smith (09:10):
If you clean things up too quickly and don't give your safety team, your leadership team time to come out and assess things, it's often hard to recreate or put the pieces together later. So taking pictures, interviewing, things like that's a really good moment to just stop and do those things. And there's questions you want to ask and there's questions you don't want to ask, right? I'm not a big fan of witch hunting when there's a problem. Sometimes people's instinct is to be like, "Who did this?" Dude, when you're a kid, no one wants to answer that question. No one wants to speak up. But if you roll in there and the vibe is asking another question, which is?
Jeff Gowen (09:48):
It's how did this happen? How did we get in this scenario?
Mike Smith (09:51):
So there's a huge difference in asking those two questions. One is focused at who done it. The other is focused at how did this happen and how can we prevent it? So how do we start to figure out or what's one way to start figuring out once we've done our initial investigation as a customer, how can we start really putting the pieces together as to what went wrong?
Jeff Gowen (10:12):
It's important to get your professionals out there, your actual dock and door providers. They're the ones who are experts in this equipment and let's get them on site. They've seen it before. They know where to look and what to do, and that can be a great tool in this process.
Mike Smith (10:25):
So we just covered part one, which is immediately after an accident, an unplanned trailer departure, what do you do? You want to follow policy, you want to help people, you want to start to ask the right questions, resist the urge to put everything back together and reach out to the professionals, right? Start to put the picture back together. Secondly, what we want to cover is let's define once we start asking the right questions, how did this accident happen? So let's get a good definition now. Some people are probably on pins and needles. Hopefully most people know what unplanned trailer departure is, but for the sake of it, let's get a good definition down of what unplanned trailer separation is. What is it?
Jeff Gowen (11:07):
Yeah, it's when a trailer moves away from the building during loading procedures. So whether the forklift is in there or whatever it may be, that trailer moves away during the actual process of loading or unloading.
Mike Smith (11:19):
And they're not supposed to be moving, right?
Jeff Gowen (11:21):
Absolutely.
Mike Smith (11:22):
Okay. What types of trailer separation are there? Let's go through some of the basic ones for our listener and break it down. There's definitely more than these. These are going to be the most common, but we're going to explain to people now what types of unplanned trailer departure there are. Let's start with just generic unplanned departure. Most often than not, how does it happen?
Jeff Gowen (11:45):
Most of the time it's when your trailer pulls away, and that may be because the restraint was never locked or they didn't have a restraint at all. That's the most common. There's no restraint, nothing keeping that truck to the building.
Mike Smith (11:57):
Is there a mandate saying I have to have a restraint?
Jeff Gowen (11:59):
There is not. The only requirement is wheel chocks technically.
Mike Smith (12:03):
So that's generic unplanned trailer departure. Talk to me about trailer creep. What is that?
Jeff Gowen (12:09):
Whether that trailer has, could be poor brakes or whether it's a slippery surface, when that trailer fork truck is going in and out of that trailer, if you don't have a restraint, it's possible that that trailer wants to creep forward. And what you run into is a forklift driver drives back into the facility and that leveler has fallen out of the trailer and then you ended up with some serious issues there.
Mike Smith (12:31):
Yeah. And go back to using a wheel chock, just using a wheel chock middle of winter, you just had an ice storm, everybody wants to be at the lake. It creates an environment that makes it very susceptible for trailer creep, right? The vibration of driving in and out just creeps the trailer further and further away from the loading dock a little bit at a time. And before you know it, the leveler's just falling down and that creates a really bad scenario where the forklift can drive right outside the building. So that's trailer creep. I almost said this is a fun one. This is not a fun one, but this is one that many people might not know about. Landing gear collapse. What is landing gear? What does landing gear collapse? Why does it happen?
Jeff Gowen (13:08):
So landing gears are used primarily when you're not doing live loads, when you've got a yard dog that goes out there and drops that trailer and we're loading and unloading with no semi attached to it. And what can happen is it's the actual stands that that trailer sits on and supported by. They just seem to be overlooked. It just seems like no one really does any maintenance on these things and they get rusty. And what can happen is you got that heavy forklift with your material going in and out of your trailer. Once it gets to that front of that trailer, if you've got a bad structural, a very, very poor landing gear, it can collapse and it can cause the trailer to tip over.
Mike Smith (13:45):
Yeah, I've seen it. Were you on the texting thread a few weeks ago where some of our techs showed up to site? I won't name the site, but a trailer collapsed. Landing gear collapsed, trailer was landing sideways into another trailer. That is a really, really dangerous situation. How do you prevent it? What do you need to have in place besides a live load, besides a tractor under the trailer, what do you put in place to avoid that?
Jeff Gowen (14:07):
Well, there's a couple things. You can put a restraint on the building and that'll keep it from completely falling all the way over. But the big thing is trailer stands. Let's put a trailer stand into the front of that trailer to support it just in case something like that were to happen and we're not doing live loads. It's just another place for safety.
Mike Smith (14:22):
And let's be real, I know it can be a drag to do it. You're in a warm yard dog or truck and you don't want to get out and put the trailer stand in place. But if you're someplace like a paper mill, beverages, you're double stacking skids, and you've got really heavy loads on the front or the nose of the trailer, you really want to consider using trailer stands. All right, so talk to me about trailer pop-up or upending. How does that happen?
Jeff Gowen (14:49):
So forklifts are heavy. Once you got a forklift going into a trailer, the second it gets in there, all four wheels are on the very back of that trailer. And let's just say the tandems aren't slid back all the way on that trailer. What can happen is the front of that trailer can pop up off the ground and then you got the front end of the trailer coming up, you're going to run into issues where it can pull away still. So that's pop-up and then upending is the exact opposite. So we go to the very front of that trailer and whether we're hitting our brakes with the material or just stopping in general in the back end, those rear tires start to come off the ground. I mean, it can be super scary.
Mike Smith (15:24):
Yeah. I mean, basically if you're a physics, I was going to say nerd. I'm not a nerd. I'm a nerd. I'm a total nerd, but I'm not a physics nerd. I just don't know math. But if you're into physics, I mean, you think about a fulcrum and wherever you have the tandem wheels on a semi-trailer slid, that's your fulcrum point. And if you don't have your trailer wheels or your tandems slid all the way back, you really open yourself up to tipping that trailer one way or the other, right? That's another way that trailer separation happens. You kind of touched on this one already, but no restraint at all. Talk to me about that. How does that create trailer separation?
Jeff Gowen (16:04):
We've got absolutely nothing keeping that trailer attached to the building. So whether there's a tractor trailer there or not, or a driver just decides he wants to pull away, I mean, unfortunately it happens. You quit feeling movement in the trailer and you're like, "Oh, I'm done." And they pull out and it can be a serious problem. So that's kind of where no restraint at all is a serious problem.
Mike Smith (16:23):
Yeah. And that's one of those classic miscommunications. You don't want to leave it in the hands of a driver to decide when it's safe to pull away from the loading dock. If they don't feel motion in the back of that trailer sometimes, they think loading's done. And if there's no restraint there to keep them locked and secured to that building, they can pull away whenever they want. Your life as a forklift driver is literally in their hands. Lastly, and we can park on this one a minute because there's a little bit to unpack, but talk to me about when a restraint doesn't match a trailer. Why is that a big deal? I mean, I though if I just had a restraint or a dock lock on the wall, I'm good, right? But no, talk to me about that.
Jeff Gowen (17:02):
There are all different kinds of trailers and trucks that back into a loading dock. You can run into issues where you got your regular chair, which I think we're going to get into it later, is an ICC bar. It's pretty normal, that's standard over the road, but then you may have a trailer with a lift gate. Well, a restraint, you got to have a different restraint for each of those options. And it's important to get your service provider involved and they're going to educate you on which restraint is best for you, which is going to work for the majority of your trailers or all of them or whatever it may be. It's just there's many different trucks and trailers out there and a lot of locks too, so we got to make sure we have the right pairing.
Mike Smith (17:39):
Listen, we use a lot of acronyms in this show and the industry in general. You mentioned ICC already. I actually forget what ICC stands for, but I remember what rig stands for. What is a rig bar? What's a standard rig trailer?
Jeff Gowen (17:53):
It's the trailers that you see 99% of the time when you're driving down the road. There's a bar on the back of that trailer mounted below the actual deck of that trailer. It's designed to be there to be a safety feature. So if a car were to rear end a truck -
Mike Smith (18:10):
Can't go underneath it. Can't turn it into a convertible.
Jeff Gowen (18:12):
Bingo. Exactly what it is. So that's the standard. You see that most of the time. Now there's different ones out there, your one-offs and stuff too.
Mike Smith (18:19):
Yeah. And most of the time that's a trailer you see 90% of the time. Standard rig trailers, LTL trailers. And that rig bar, that rear impact guard is, that's what the whole restraint and rotating hook industry is built around. Most of them rotate up around that rig bar, catch it, secure it to your building, check. All right, let's talk about reinforced rigs or obstructed rigs or intermodal containers. What kind of restraint are you looking at using there?
Jeff Gowen (18:48):
Yeah. So with one of these, your intermodal type trailers, there's a lot of obstructions that don't let us grab on to that rear impact guard. There's not enough room to get around there, so that's where we want to look towards a wheel-based restraint. So instead of actually grabbing the trailer, like a bar on the trailer, let's grab the tires. Every vehicle's got tires, so let's grab that.
Mike Smith (19:09):
So also another great option, you can still go rotating hook.
Jeff Gowen (19:13):
Yes.
Mike Smith (19:13):
Talk to us about the SHR and what makes Rite-Hite so unique in that specific application.
Jeff Gowen (19:18):
Absolutely. So you have your regular rotating hook. It's meant for the ICC bar, but then Rite-Hite also has SHR, the shadow hook restraint. So this restraint is actually designed for your intermodal trailers and your obstructed rig bars to where it'll still grab the trailer, but what it'll do is it's got an actual shadow hook. So if that trailer does start pulling away, it locks itself in and it doesn't actually wrap around something, but it still locks it in place.
Mike Smith (19:45):
Excellent choice. If you've got sea containers over the road containers, intermodals, the SHR is a great option. Wheel-based restraints are an option too, which leads us to our next couple of categories. Let's just say I've got a lot of lift gates, trailers with Tommy gates on them, lift gates, hydraulic platforms, whatever you want to call them. Let's say I've got a lot of box trucks. They got weird rear configurations sometimes. They don't have a rig bar often. That's when we want to get into what type of restraint.
Jeff Gowen (20:13):
A wheel-based restraint. Yeah.
Mike Smith (20:15):
Everything's got a wheel, so you want to engage that wheel when there's nothing else back there to engage. And this is becoming a lot more popular nowadays, but automated loading and unloading. You got really heavy robots driving in the back of trucks, no human. It's a robot carrying double stacks of skids into a reefer trailer or a standard trailer, whatever. What type of restraint are you wanting to use in automatic unloading situations?
Jeff Gowen (20:41):
Yeah. I mean, we have a customer now that's got this situation. You want an STR is what we call it, and it is designed to actually support that trailer. So we're going to lock, we're going to grab onto it with the rotating hook, but it's also going to push up on the bottom of that ICC bar. And it's not going to lift your trailer or anything, but what it'll do is when you have that heavy, heavy automation going in and out, they don't like moves, bumps, and banging around. This will keep that trailer from doing that. It'll keep it super steady in that process.
Mike Smith (21:09):
And that's something unique to Rite-Hite. I mean, the STR restraint is something that Rite-Hite has pioneered yet again in the lock and restraint industry. So great explanation on everything. Hopefully we've given the listeners enough of a visual, even though we can't show pictures and stuff, to understand what's going on with those different types of trailer configurations and the type of restraint that needs to match up to it. The narrative here though, in conclusion, is you don't just back up to a dock position and assume because you have a restraint on the wall, you're good to go. You may need a trailer stand if you're not live loading. You may need to take a look at the type of trailer you have and make sure that you've got the proper restraint. There's a lot more to it than just backing up, having a restraint or lock and assuming everything's okay, right?
(21:54):
Let's take a look at an unplanned departure of a trailer from the angle of why it happens now. Okay? So we looked at the types of unplanned trailer departure. Again, I'm going to list some of the reasons why you expound on it a little bit and talk me through some of that. So the number one reason, and we kind of already touched on it, is human error.
(22:15):
What happens there?
Jeff Gowen (22:16):
We're not using the procedures in place, basically. Miscommunication, whether it be the truck driver though it was good to pull away or we didn't engage a restraint at all.
Mike Smith (22:26):
Or lights are burnt out or whatever. Yeah. Human error is probably the leading cause of unplanned trailer departure, sadly. Talk to me about process shortcuts, people taking shortcuts. And you could kind of take this back to human error, but process shortcuts.
Jeff Gowen (22:41):
This is a big one. Being in the field, I've seen this a ton. Whether let's just say we got one pallet or one package we want to throw in that trailer, oh, it's just going to take five minutes. That five minutes can turn into a whole lot more if there happens to be an accident. So we're not locking in, we won't lock the restraint or maybe not back in all the way, just a quick little in and out. That's where accidents happen.
Mike Smith (23:00):
Yeah. I mean, I do the same thing. I'm like, "I've done this a hundred times. I'm fine. It's the last trailer of the day. I don't need to lock it. I don't need to put the leveler. I don't even need a forklift to put this in the back of the truck. I'll just step over and I'll just place it in there by hand." And then before you know it, you're going on that ride. You don't want to go on. Nope. I've even seen people lose their footing and fall down in between the trailer and the leveler. Process shortcuts are a big reason this happens too, unfortunately. Talk to me about improper restraint procedure, specifically overrides.
Jeff Gowen (23:33):
Yeah.
Mike Smith (23:34):
What does lock override mean or restraint override? Why do you want to use it? And when you have to use it, how do you do it properly? Because this is one where people get tripped up to.
Jeff Gowen (23:44):
Yeah, absolutely. So let's just say we lock in a trailer and we get an alarm going off and it's like, why is this alarm going off? It's annoying. Let's turn it off. You turn it off. And that's
Mike Smith (23:53):
Where the mistake happens.
Jeff Gowen (23:54):
That's where the mistake is. That alarm is there for a reason. It's saying, "Hey, we've got an issue here, whether it's with the lock or with the trailer, and we need to take a minute, stop, figure out what's going on. We got to slow down and take a minute and just think about it." So the improper use of that is people just engage that restraint, press override. The noise goes away and they carry on about their day, but that alarm went off because we don't have a secure grab on that trailer.
Mike Smith (24:21):
So what are they supposed to do when the alarm goes off? If they don't hit override, what are they supposed to do?
Jeff Gowen (24:27):
Well, that's where you need to get somebody else involved. We need to get a manager or somebody involved, or maybe even your dock and door specialist out there, but take a look at that trailer. A lot of times your rig bar can be bent, and if that's the case, it's like, "Okay, let's take a minute here. Let's send this away."
Mike Smith (24:42):
You just hit on the first step, go outside and look. And that's where people get messed up. Yes, get with your manager, get with your leader, whatever. But the first step is go outside and look at the trailer, see what's obstructing it, see what's going on. Don't just press override. And you can sum up this whole discussion by reminding people, and I do this all the time when you're responding to these accidents, usually it's near misses when it's an override issue. The instructions on most lock manufacturers or restraint manufacturers, the override procedure is right there on the cover, and that's where it goes back to training. Just know that. Know that there's a right procedure to go through before you hit that override button, and that will prevent unplanned trailer departure as well. Talk to us about lack of interlocks. This is one of my favorite subjects.
(25:27):
Lack of interlocks. How does a lack of interlocks attribute to unplanned trailer departure?
Jeff Gowen (25:33):
Interlocks are the best.
Mike Smith (25:34):
They are the best. They keep us humans in check.
Jeff Gowen (25:38):
They do. They do. Basically, I guess take a minute, what is an interlock? The idea of an interlock is to create a sequence of operations for the person running this equipment. So a lack of interlocks means we have nothing. So you can open your dock door whenever you want to, you can engage your restraint whenever you want to and raise your leveler whenever you want to in whatever order that is. If you don't have any interlocks, that's how that works. There can be a lot of problems with that. If you don't have that, just have the trailer back in, put the leveler in and call it good. And then you run into, we're not even locking the trailer in, nothing to hold it in. So that's a big problem with your lack of interlocks, as well as you can have damage happen to your equipment itself without interlocks.
(26:16):
You can actually raise your leveler up on your door and then you've got dumped cables and you've run into a service call.
Mike Smith (26:22):
We could keep going on and on. There's a lot more reasons than that as to why this happens. We're going to put a pin in it for now. We mentioned at the beginning of this episode that this is going to be a two-part episode. So what we've covered so far is what is unplanned trailer departure? What do you do right after it happens? How do you respond? How do you stay calm? What do you do? And then we've talked about the types of unplanned trailer departure that there are, and we've talked about some of the reasons why it happens. Great place to stop, great place to pause and take a breather. In the next episode, we're going to talk about what you should do once you get your service provider on site, how they can help you, what are some different options for digging into this issue, doing some investigation and figuring out how you can have it not happen again, hopefully.
(27:13):
And then we're going to share with listeners our belief that this type of accident can be prevented, and how do you do that? So we're also going to be, besides that, sharing some really good resources with people. So if you've turned into this first episode and this has been helpful or beneficial, maybe this has happened to you, great. We're only pausing for a minute. We're going to pick this back up, finish it with a couple last arguments or comments, and then we are going to share some really good resources with people that you're going to want to have at your disposal because honestly, this doesn't have to happen, does it?
Jeff Gowen (27:47):
Not at all.
Mike Smith (27:48):
It is preventable.
Jeff Gowen (27:49):
100%.
Mike Smith (27:50):
All right. Well, thanks for being with us today. We will see you soon for episode two. Jeff, it was good to be with you.
Jeff Gowen (27:56):
It was great to be with you.
Mike Smith (27:59):
Thank you for listening to Clocking In, brought to you by Robert Dietrick Company. If this was helpful to you, share this episode with someone else who could benefit from it. Don't forget to follow the show, and if you want more insights like this via email, go to rd-co.com.