A surprise inspection blitz was conducted by the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance focused on brake safety issues back in May. All told, 1,600 trucks were placed out of service during the blitz. And there’s more to come.
On May 15th, law enforcement officials partnered with the CVSA conducted a surprise inspection blitz in 45 U.S. states and territories and 10 Canadian provinces and territories. The focus of the enforcement was on brake safety. All told, 10,358 CMVs were inspected as part of the blitz; 8,738 in the U.S. and 1,620 in Canada.
The out-of-service rate in the U.S. was higher than in Canada at 16.6% and 13.5% respectively. Of those vehicles inspected, 16.1% (1,667) CMVs were placed out of service for safety-critical brake-related issues. The most common issues involved hoses and tubing, often kinked or rubbing together and wearing out.
“Brake hoses and tubing must be properly attached, undamaged, without leaks and appropriately flexible,” said CVSA President Jay Thompson. “Because they are such an important part of the braking system, the failure of hoses or tubing can cause problems for the entire braking system.”
This news is especially timely since the CVSA is holding their annual week-long Brake Safety Week between September 15th and 21st this year. Give your brakes and brake lines an extra close look during your pre-trip next time!
Source: truckinginfo, overdrive, ttnews, CVSA
Shogun says
Stands to reason. Most drivers are too fat and lazy to do pretrips and certainly can’t bend down and look underneath the vehicle (even though a lot of trailers have indicators on them). Combine that with a lack of basic mechanical knowledge, and I’m surprised it isn’t higher OOS.
Daniel says
Lack of knowledge is the biggest thing, really. Even those who intend to the right thing don’t know what they’re looking at. They think they’re good to go and it’s fuct. Regardless of brake chamber type, the gap between the shoes and drums is 0.020 to 0.030″ when properly adjusted at 100+PSI. You can visually see most brakes out of adjustment without measuring the pushrod stroke, but people don’t know what they’re looking at.
For all the theory in truck training, it’s useless if you can’t show them what bad looks like.
Don says
Amen
Butch McTavish says
Lazy drivers nobody does the required inspections daily
Don says
Sorry, but you are wrong to say,”nobody does the required inspections daily”. I do a pretrip, Post Trip on every tractor and trailer that I drive/pull. Depending on the defect found is my choice to drive/pull that trailer. If I find an OOS Defect that trailer is written up and Red Tagged.
Dan Gesegnet says
That’s the millennial “no habla, no bueno” attitude… Not my problem… until there is a problem
Fozzy says
There sure are a lot of gray haired millennials..
Dan Gesegnet says
Hey I resemble that remark
Adam says
That’s why I’m glad I’m an independent owner operator and can fix those problems myself or take it to a shop. As a company driver, you’re going to just keep being told they’ll get to it but freight first. If you say you’re not moving the truck until it’s fixed, more than likely they’ll either starve you out or fire you. That’s why companies write you up for the tiniest infractions. Then you’ll have something they can fire you for. It’s a no win situation for company drivers in a lot of cases.
Mr. Curmudgeon says
If a company driver is told that, find a new company. The outfit i have been with for 5 years has a formal electronic dvir process, and the expectation is that drivers will NOT pull unsafe equipment. I have taken craploads of equip oos in my five years. Keep getting my raises, as many loads as I can legally run, and have NEVER had it suggested to me that i run with something that isnt fmcsa compliant. So, not all companies are “most likely” the ones you describe.
Rick says
Bull…total crap.
Richie says
You are exactly right!
Don says
Let’s be honest. One needs to be PROPERLY trained to spot these things. In addition, it would require extensive crawling around under the truck and trailer given that access is denied by the skirting on my tractors and trailers. This discourages such inspections on daily base.
Further, by PROPER training, I am refering to not only being given a list of things to look for but practice under the supervision of a qualified mechanic over numerous inspections on numerous trucks. There are signs of problems that only someone trained in this way would spot and correctly diagnose.
Considering how any sort of real training is almost non-existent and being replaced with nonsense that is potentially dangerous, I don’t see any training of the above sort happening any time soon.
I have been driving for 13 years. I have never been properly trained to do a pre-trip inspection. Further, technology has changed leading to changes in what to look for and how to inspect. No updates have been made available either.
My best solution is to weasle as much info from mechanics as I can, not easy as they don’t like sharing privileged information, and working for companies that take excellent care of their equipment. This had worked for me.
Lawrence says
go to Walmart and they will show you how to do are you will not work there and no spinning the crank handle
Ri ma says
Don, you made some very good points about the skirts in the way of accessing the truck and trailer for inspection, plus I’m curious too about the training new drivers get about actually inspecting their equipment. I don’t even hear any one mention that before on the trucking channel xm radio.
Erik Kloeppel says
Don, good points. I’ve been driving 10 years and own two trucks. It wasn’t until this past winter I actually found somebody to show me *in detail* how to do an inspection.
Not that I’d been looking. I went through one of the schools – one with a good reputation- and thought I was doing it right.
Boy, was I wrong. Only one equipment fixit ticket in 10 years, but my friend showed me just exactly how lucky I had been ( or how forgiving my inspectors had been)
Nowadays, I’m unforgiving. I write up minor issues and fix major ones, not giving trailer owner a choice
sonny Pruitt says
Harold Ives made everyone go over to the shop and get trained on inspecting and adjusting brakes.at the end we were given a card stating that we were qualified to adjust our own brakes,so if they were out of adjustment we could fix it ourselves. Wonder how many companies do that now?or they probably made it against the law by now, anyway, if you couldn’t adjust brakes you weren’t leaving orientation in a truck.I miss that old man,he was a good guy. Then he nsold out to covenant, I drove for them for a few months and went home and drove locally before quitting altogether. If Harold was still around I’d probably still be driving a new w 900 otr.he knew where things were headed and got out.
Daniel says
Both my loads last night were OOS for brakes out of adjustment. It F N pisses me off because I get paid by the load and these drivers that should have been fired 15x over made money moving it and I’m the one not getting paid for doing the right thing.
The only saving grace is, when this company gets shut down, my record will be perfect and I will be standing at the top of a pile of worthless refugee drivers.
Jeff says
Who in their right mind is going to do a pretrip inspection the proper way where you need to crawl under the truck and inspect stuff in these urine infested and who knows what else truck stop parking lots. That problem needs to be addressed first before anyone is going to crawl under the truck. If you tell me your doing that and expect me to believe it then I have a bridge to sell you back home.
Mr. Curmudgeon says
Drivers can making excuses for not doing their inspections. Or… go to menards and buy yourself a $10 set of kneepads, a $3 madeinchiney headlamp and some nitrile dipped cotton gloves. You can get under the trailer like I and many others do without having to complain about it. Ya, it smells like pee, but better smelling pee than smelling diesel after your fuel tank ruptures after you buttblast that 4 wheeler because you couldnt stop… My $.02, your actual mileage may differ
Terry Barron says
In my 25 years and over two million miles of driving doubles and triples, I never had any issues during an inspection! My equipment was in perfect condition or it didn’t move unit was. But this is also due to a company that would fix any problems I would find. I would have tires changed out to lights not working. There is no reason to fail an inspection unless something happened after your pre-trip. Just lazy drivers! It’s their CSA Score! Mine was zero! Do they still keep score? I retired in 2014.
Justin says
I did a lot of local drop and hooks
And I would get rolling a little bit and gently apply the trailer brakes
If it didn’t work to suit me I’d grab my 9/16 wrench and go adjust them
Tighten the slack adjuster all the way and then back off 1 & 1/2 turns ?
I don’t remember exactly ,
I kept some extra large coveralls that I could quickly slip on and slide under the trailer and adjust them
A lot faster than calling in and waiting on a mechanics etc
That’s half a day wasted and not getting paid
D says
Who needs brakes when ya got Jake’s!!
Jeremy says
“…most common violations hoses and tubing” Remember when the most common violation in diesel weasel inspections was brake adjustment? What ever happened to that? I guess it would be fair to say disc brake systems slammed the brakes on that issue? So,what are the revenue rangers to do now?
Show me a tractor or trailer where all those lines aren’t either rubbing together or making contact with other components during normal down the road truckin’. All this bs is what it is. Cash grab,dig?
Daniel says
To be fair, leaking service lines are just as bad as brakes being out of adjustment. You can get away for short time with leaking supply lines so long as the air pressure is sufficient to disable spring brakes, but having an air leak on the service brakes means you don’t have strong brakes, regardless of the pushrod stroke. 🙂
Greg says
Whos going to do the inspection on the fully autonomous trucks when they start showing up.