Truck drivers who drive around with hazardous materials need to be particularly good drivers.

But in today’s story, one truck driver doesn’t like to follow the rules of the road.

This trucker cuts off another driver, and that driver decides to channel his road rage into revenge by following the truck driver and finding out more information about where he works.

Let’s see how the story plays out…

Troublesome Trucker Gets Got

Three bits of background info you need to know for this story:

I live near a main trucking bypass for my city, where trucks can get off the highway and zip over to the industrial district.

It’s a convenient shortcut across town, and I use it almost every day.

Sure, there are street races there sometimes, and more trains than your usual road.

But, it’s still super useful for getting around.

I had just got a new car when this happened

I work from home

He wasn’t about to let a trucker get away with cutting him off.

So, one day I dipped out to grab a bite to eat and was on my way back home when a semi-truck cuts me off.

I’m talking less than a foot of space.

Normally I’m about a ‘live and let live’ as they come.

However, I wasn’t having it that day.

Like any red blooded American, I had my cell phone on me.

So, I started recording & put it in my dash, and made sure I had the license plate read out loud several times.

I also got the name of the company from the side of the truck.

He followed the trucker to see what other driving mistakes he made.

But, gentle readers, I wasn’t content with that. Not one bit.

I documented every driving infraction I could reasonably justify while I followed this guy to his warehouse.

He changed lanes without signaling, went above the speed limit, sped around a school bus that had stopped at the train tracks, and didn’t slow down for the school zone.

Plus, cut off two more people and turned into the wrong lane after making a left.

He got all the info he needed and went home to do some online research.

See, I knew that there was a pretty good chance that he was headed for the industrial district that the byway ends at.

10 minutes later I knew the work address, a secondary number on the truck, and some kinda serial number on the truck’s container.

Finally, I turned around at the gates, armed with a whole bundle of knowledge.

I went home, and enjoyed my lunch while doing some light googling.

Little, fun things like the company name on the building, their company code of ethics, their board member’s names, and (most critically) their president of safety and compliance.

This wasn’t just any truck.

See, this wasn’t just any old trailer.

It wasn’t just a giant machine capable of crushing a car.

No, dear reader.

It was a tanker truck, with a safety placard on it.

Two fours and a three didn’t mean much to me….. until the previous summer, where on a long road trip my firefighter brother was telling me about how bonkers some of the chemicals are that get transported on our highways.

In short, whatever dearest truck driver was hauling was wicked scary stuff.

He found the safety and compliance guy on LinkedIn.

I digress.

After finding this safety & compliance dude, I connected with him on LinkedIn.

And, once connected with my new friend President McSafetypants on LinkedIn, I wrote up everything that I’d seen.

He reached out in less than an hour, and was downright impatient to have a phone call about it.

After letting him know all the details, and sending him a copy of the video, I left things well enough alone.

He found out what happened to the trucker.

A couple weeks later I ended up running into President McSafetypants at a pub near my house.

After buying him a couple of beers and bugging him for an hour, he told me that they not only fired the guy, but were reporting stuff to the DMV to try and get his CDL and hazardous material license revoked.

To the zoning committee who put a school next to an industrial trucking bypass: brilliant move.

To the trucker who put people’s lives in danger for no reason: seriously, stop it.

To President McSafetypants: Hey, actually, pretty good work there, bub. Keep it up.

This doesn’t even seem like petty revenge.

It seems like a good deed.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story…

The safety guy was the true hero.

He did a good deed.

This is why the safety guy cared…

The revenge was “impressive.”

Did he break any driving rules keeping up with the trucker?

I hope this trucker loses all of his licenses.

In this case, it’s definitely warranted.

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.