The Owner-Operator's Roadside Breakdown Checklist

Nobody is at their sharpest standing on a shoulder with traffic going by at seventy and a truck that just quit. That is exactly why the thinking gets done in advance — the first sixty seconds of a breakdown are the most dangerous part of it, and they are also the part people improvise.

This is the order to run it in. Print it, tape it in the cab, and put the dispatch number on the same card: Duckett Roadside Repair, (850) 495-0366, answered 24 hours a day.

The first sixty seconds

1. 1Hazards on. Immediately, before anything else, while you are still deciding what is wrong.
2. 2Get off the road if the truck will still move. A rough shoulder, an exit ramp, a lot — anything is better than a traffic lane. If you have a choice, take the one with room to work.
3. 3Park as far right as the surface will hold. Soft sand on a panhandle shoulder will swallow a jack.
4. 4Park brake set. Chocks in if you have them and the ground is not level.
5. 5Get your vest on before you open the door. Then get out on the passenger side.
6. 6Put your warning devices out.
7. 7Stand away from the truck, off the traffic side. Do not stand between your rig and traffic to make a phone call.

Triangles, done right

The federal rule is not complicated and it is not optional. Hazard lights come on immediately, and within ten minutes of stopping you place your warning devices. On a two-lane road you want one about ten feet behind the truck on the traffic side, one about a hundred feet back, and one about a hundred feet in front. On a divided or one-way road, all three go behind you at roughly ten, a hundred, and two hundred feet.

If you are stopped just past a curve or over a hill, that hundred-foot triangle is doing nothing for you. The far one has to go back where a driver can actually see it in time — out to five hundred feet if the sightline demands it. Walk it out, then look back at your own truck from where traffic is coming. If you cannot see your rig, neither can they.

A low-air warning is not a suggestion. Pull over the moment you hear it — do not try to make the next exit. When system pressure falls far enough, the spring brakes apply themselves, and they do not check first whether you are in a good spot.

What you can safely check yourself

You are not diagnosing anything from the shoulder. You are gathering information so the call you make is a good one.

• Look under the truck for a puddle and note the color. Green or pink usually means coolant. Amber to black means engine oil. Red can be transmission or power steering fluid. Clear and smelly is fuel. White crystals are DEF.
• Read the dash out loud into your phone — every lamp, and any code you can pull up. Write down the exact wording.
• Listen for air and watch the gauges. A hiss you can hear outside the cab is a leak, and how fast the system bleeds down tells a mechanic a great deal.
• Look at battery terminals for corrosion and check the cables are tight — if it cranked slow or clicked, this is the first suspect.
• Look at the tires — all of them, including the inners. A truck that suddenly pulls or shakes was often telling you about a tire.

What not to do

The list of things that turn a breakdown into an injury is short and every item on it is something drivers do all the time.

• Do not crawl under a loaded truck supported by a bottle jack on a shoulder. Slope plus soft ground plus weight is exactly how people get killed.
• Do not walk across live lanes. Not for a tool, not for a triangle, not for anything.
• Do not stand in front of a tire that is being aired up, or one that just failed. Stand off to the side.
• Do not keep cranking a battery that is clearly dead. You are cooking a starter you will now also have to pay for.
• Do not drive on with a dragging brake, a smoking hub, or a wheel making noise. That hub is on its way to a fire or a wheel-off.
• Do not bleed down an air system without chocks in place. When the air goes, so does whatever was holding the truck.
• Do not sit in the cab on the shoulder of an interstate if you can avoid it. Sitting in the truck is where drivers get hit.

Making the call so the right parts show up

The difference between a two-hour event and a five-hour event is usually the quality of the phone call. Have this ready before you dial.

1. 1Exact location — highway, direction, mile marker or exit, and which side you are on. A dropped pin beats your best guess.
2. 2Year, make, engine, and whether you are loaded.
3. 3What happened, in order, in plain words. What you heard, what you smelled, what the truck did.
4. 4The dash — every warning lamp and every code, exactly as written.
5. 5Whether it still runs, still builds air, and still moves.
6. 6How hard your appointment is, so the crew knows the clock.

What lives in the cab

None of this is exotic. All of it has saved somebody a night on the side of the road.

• Warning triangles, and enough of them
• A high-visibility vest, kept somewhere you can reach without getting out
• A real tire gauge and a good headlamp with fresh batteries
• Gloves, a basic tool roll, wheel chocks
• Spare fuses, bulbs, glad-hand seals, and a spare set of trailer light pigtails
• Jumper cables you actually trust
• Water, and a couple of days of patience

After it is fixed

Write it up. The defect goes on your inspection report, the repair goes in the file, and the invoice stays with it. A reported defect has to be corrected and the correction certified before the unit rolls again, and the time to have that paperwork straight is long before an inspector asks for it.

If you are working through this list right now on the side of I-10 or Highway 90, stop reading and call (850) 495-0366. Duckett runs mobile repair across the panhandle — Milton, Pace, Pensacola, Navarre, Crestview, Fort Walton Beach and the corridor between them — 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The crew comes to you.