Prevent Fatalities with Better Truck Driver Training, Best Practices
BY John Ball
A safe and quality job site starts with well-trained truck drivers delivering HMA to the paver
The haul truck is not just the vessel that brings vital, perishable material to our job sites throughout each shift. It’s a large and lumbering piece of equipment. The unladen truck can be 50,000 pounds by itself. Add 18 to 23 tons of hot-mix asphalt (HMA), and you have a heavy vehicle for the driver to control. The heaviest one I’ve seen arrive on a job was about 50 tons. That was on a project in Montreal where it’s not uncommon for larger live-bottom trailers to bring heavy loads to the paving project.
No matter what size of truck they’re driving, if the driver hasn’t been properly trained and shown best practices for every aspect of loading and delivery, they can be a liability for their company, the general contractor and the traveling public. Let’s look at the main areas where they need training:
- Cleaning out the truck bed and getting out of the work zone
- At the plant and during loadout
- On the road, routes to and from the job
- Getting into the work zone and to the paver
- Charging the hopper
Before we look at some tips for training in each of these areas, let me share an example of why they’re all vital. During the 2024 construction season, I was helping a crew on a night project that involved paving one 12-foot lane of a five-lane highway. We followed the MUTCD and had barrels delineating the work zone; four state troopers were assisting with traffic control.
A subcontracted haul truck driver completed charging the hopper of the Shuttle Buggy around 3:15 a.m. and pulled away from the paving train. We didn’t know it, but the driver pulled over about a half of a mile ahead to clean out the bed of his triaxle while still within the safe confines of the work zone. He raised the body to clean it out and returned to traffic with the body still up.
About a quarter of a mile from his self-appointed cleanout area—still in the work zone—the elevated body struck and knocked down an overhead highway sign, resulting in debris in the road. The driver didn’t tell anyone what had happened, but continued to the plant, where he parked his damaged truck, signed out and went home.
Back at the debris field, tragedy was about to unfold. A motorcyclist entered the closed work zone at highway speeds and encountered the mangled signage. The tack truck driver saw this accident happen and was able to call for help, but the motorcyclist didn’t survive his injuries.
This loss of life could have been prevented if the driver had been trained on proper cleanout practices, if he had an alarm that alerted him when his truck body was elevated when moving at travel speeds, if he had stopped and asked for help after striking the highway sign, if the motorcyclist had heeded the signs telling him the highway was closed, and so on. A series of mistakes and lapses in judgment led to a terrible accident that we can only learn from now. Let’s look at a few lessons we can take away from this awful scene.
Clean out the bed and get out of the work zone safely
The main training category for this article is that of assigning a dedicated cleanout area for trucks and making sure all drivers understand where it is and how to use it safely. Each driver who will be bringing material to the site should know a designated cleanout area exists and should know where that area is.
If the work zone is exceptionally long and the cleanout area will “move” before the job is complete, then each area designated on a map should be pointed out to each truck driver. Each area should be highlighted with the date and/or time it will be available for drivers to use. This type of update is easy to indicate in today’s work zone apps. Check with your app provider to ensure all members of the team—including subcontracted drivers—have access to the information in real time.
When the cleanout area is available for drivers, it should have clear, legible signage in the languages your team members read. Lights and arrows should designate how to access the area and where cleaning can happen. Tools and safety equipment should be easy to use. Then additional lights and arrows should designate how to leave the area safely.
For nighttime work zones, the cleanout area needs additional lighting to not only give the truck drivers a well-lit work area, but also to make it painfully obvious to motorists that this is a dangerous construction area off to the side of the road and not a rest stop or place where the traveling public is welcome. Signage and arrows should make it clear this is a lighted area for large trucks/heavy equipment only. The last thing you want is for confused motorists to think they’ve come to the end of the work zone “early” and enter this well-lit area where a haul truck driver might be outside of his or her cab.
The driver uses a 3-inch putty knife or scraper to maneuver around the tailgate and hinges/dog ears to clean. This is also the time to reposition the mud flaps. They were lifted out of the way of the paver’s push rollers—now lower them back where they need to be for legal travel.
As cumbersome as it may seem, setting up a mechanical flagging system that clears the haul truck for return to traffic at the end of the cleanout area could prevent the type of accidents that happen from raised truck bodies. A system that prevents the truck from leaving the area if it can’t fit under a mechanical flagger’s arm will keep drivers from hitting bridges, overpasses, highway signs and other overhead obstructions. (Check out the Federal Highway Administration’s technical report “Review of Low-Clearance Early Device Warning Options for Illinois” for ideas on how LCDW systems are being used on bridges and other structures to reduce collisions here.)
Implement Procedures
The other training points mentioned at the beginning of this article can be covered when a company implements procedures and makes it clear those procedures are to be followed.
There absolutely should be a procedure in place for drivers to sign in, do a walk-around of the truck in a safe and well-lit location at the plant site, ensure previous maintenance items have been addressed, and check out the vehicle for the shift. When a shift is complete, there should be a procedure for the driver to do a walk-around of the truck in that same safe and well-lit location as before, perform cleaning of the equipment, ensure an easy and well-documented way to inform mechanics of any maintenance issues or worries, and to check in the vehicle at the end of the shift.
Have you cleaned the reflective tape, taillights, safety placards and other lighting lately? Make sure reflective tape, safety signs and lights on your haul truck aren’t obscured by grease or asphalt build-up. You want headlights hitting the tape to reflect light to the motoring public. You want them to see you. Your lights cannot do their job of protecting you, the crew and the public if they’re filthy and covered with grime. Get these and other training tips in this white paper from AsphaltPro.
To make truck traffic safer at the plant, to make loadout safer under the silos, to make travel safer along designated routes to and from the job site, to make backing to the paver a safer operation and to make charging the hopper safer, drivers should be aware of the proper procedures at each step. And they need to be told why.
The reason for using the three-drop method of loadout at the silo makes perfect sense to the seasoned plant operator and the paving superintendent out on the job site. But the subcontracted driver who’s been hauling asphalt for two hours has no idea why he must stop the truck, receive a drop, back it up, receive another drop, and so on. This may feel like wasted time to him when he could center the bed under the silo gate and receive one lump stockpile of 20 tons, then get on with delivering the load. He doesn’t understand—yet—that taking one lumped load leads to material segregation and contributes to problems when charging the hopper. This isn’t something he’s born knowing—he has to learn it, like each one of us had to learn it. (Watch the November issue for an article on how to load out different types of trucks most efficiently.)
When the driver gets to the paving site, depending on the type of project, he’ll have a variety of options for backing to the paver. The first and most important procedure is to locate the dump man when he gets to the job. In the pre-job meeting or tailgate talk, he’ll be told who the dump man is for the job—and that might be the paver operator or the foreman. (See the sidebar titled “You Can’t Skip the Tailgate Talk” for information.)
No matter what kind of project the driver is delivering to, the dump man will be the person who guides him and helps him get lined up to the paver’s push rollers. That person, normally, will be wearing a different colored shirt, vest and/or hat. He should have a safety baton or a safety whistle, as well, to acknowledge the driver and direct him. (See the article “Save on Costs with Your Professional Guide to Asphalt Mix Delivery, Part 3—An Independent Look at Best Haul Truck Practices” here for a detailed discussion of how to get to the job and deliver material to the hopper efficiently.)
For drivers who will be receiving millings in an empty bed, locating the ground man is just as important. This person is the driver’s second set of eyes; both driver and ground man must trust one another but this doesn’t leave room to forget good training. On a recent parking lot project, a haul truck driver watching the milling machine via his side mirror neglected to watch where he was going and ran into a parked work truck (See the sidebar titled “Train Drivers to Watch Where They’re Going” for details). This accident proves we need to keep all our senses on alert when in the field.
The haul truck driver can’t be expected to handle everything that’s happening around his truck when he gets to the job site, but we can give him a fighting chance at safe success when we train him on the proper, safe procedures expected of him. We must train the drivers who are controlling these large and lumbering vehicles that come so close to our co-workers, pricy equipment and motoring public if we want to have quality jobs with safe records.
John Ball is the proprietor of Top Quality Paving & Training, Manchester, New Hampshire. For more information, contact him at (603) 493-1458.