Results for last year’s annual Brake Safety Week inspection blitz are in with 16.2% of all vehicles inspected being put out of service. This coming just one year after 2013’s record-setting low of 13.5%.
Experts are noting however that the high number of out of service orders may be a result of the small number of inspections performed. Despite the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance’s stated goal of 30,000 brake inspections over the course of one week, only 13,305 trucks and buses were inspected. This number is significantly lower than last year’s roughly 20,000 inspections, and as such, could explain the unexpectedly high out of service rate.
Not all vehicles placed out of service were the result of faulty brakes however. Only 10.4% of the trucks inspected were placed out of service for brake adjustment issues and brake component problems made up only 9.3% of out of service orders.
The blitz was organized by the CVSA in conjunction with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration and state and local law enforcement.
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Source: overdrive, overdrive, etrucker
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Makes me wonder how many drivers bother with the pre-trip …
Ray, it’s amazing how many trailers I’ve pretripped only to find no brakes (roll on tug test) ice between shoes and drums, loose or missing bolts on s-cam assy’s, broken return springs, leaking wheel seals… The truth, I fear, is that some drivers (of pool rolling stock) would rather take the risk of a CSA hit, than take the time to get repairs and lose out on miles. Time is money – and I lost a lot catching up from other driver’s failure to pretrip…
To bad most aren’t qualified. Wrote me up yrs ago for four…I IMMEDIATELY took it yo shop at their “order” (limon colo) fmcsa folks said 4 bad brakes . Licenses qualified mechanic said 1. Took info back to scale house as “ordered” by wannabe cop and he refused to remove the 3 other brake write ups. I knew when that iduir wrote up 4 it was $$ time not about safet . Some if the s**t that came out if his mouth was making it hard not to laugh. I was embarrassed for him trying to act like he had a clue 🙁
I have worked as a Truck and Trailer mechanic for over 25 years mostly in large fleets, and as far as pretrips , i have to agree with Creedmore that drivers seem to refuse to do pretrips and post trips. I think it is more they become laid-back to there professions and then bitch about getting fined for infractions. I have attended road side and scale sites were one or more of my companys trucks were fined for what they belived was Out Of Service, only to check component and fine it was well within limits! I have found that a vast amount of DOT Inspectors are very poorly trained mechanics or “crack finders”. They seem to well skilled in legal B.S. to meet quotas. All I can say to all you Drivers out there have a mechanic check any issues DOT inspectors flag, as it has been my experience 95% of the time they are wrong. Learn your rights and know your Vehicle .
I can’t count how many times I picked up loaded trailers with flat tires..Bad leaking hubs …What’s more the local drivers from our Tampa terminal would all tell me that when the called dispatch and reported a bad trailer …dispatch would tell them to deliver it and Take it to the guyp plant and leave in the pool there to be loaded again…
I always carried bulbs and straps to repair almost every loaded trailed that I hooked to..The worst example was when they sent me to get a “Hot Load” on the yard….Where they ran a 24 hour shop…I got there and it was sitting on 4 flat tires …within sight of the tire shop….So I had to back it in and get them fixed before I would run that “Hot Load”…
If you “picked” a trl with flat tires than you are not doing your pre trip either. If like you said, you have done it “don’t know how many times”, then you should quit man.@
I have worked fleet and road service. I was a supervisor in a fleet setting twice and was told by my superiors to let and make people take equipment on the road to haul freight,that were classic oos criteria. It was a cost savings measure but every time new people take over they expand that cost savings measure so when their done not much gets fixed. I never could allow that equipment on the road . Some of it was so unsafe that I was in a lot of trouble having it fixed. Even accident causing failures that would have been catastrophic consequences where axles would break from under equipment. I can’t be too hard on them. They do miss more safety that’s more important than breaks. Which is good for companys.