Tips to avoid trouble with DOT officers?

That story has been around since the 80's! No one has ever proved it to be true! It was always somebodies brother or cousin or wife's best friend's 3rd ex-husband!

 

Keep your mouth shut and only answer what he asks. No long stories or explanations. The old buzzards have heard them all.

 

No matter what you do sometimes you are that 10th truck. Sometimes if you work for a bottom feeder company with high CSA scores you also have a target on you. No matter though. Conduct yourself as a professional keep your dang mouth closed and the encounter should end quickly.

 

I first started trucking in the early 1990s and heard that story, too. Also used to hear from pre-deregulation era drivers that the rules said the sleeper sheets had to be plain white, no patterns or colors, otherwise that was a violation. Of course, no one could show me the rule in print.

I'm glad to read on here that people actually READ the green book. On the three occasions I've had to buy a copy in a truck stop, the three-tooth chain-drive yokel in line ahead of me chimed in with, "Yeah, got me one a them books, too. I use it to keep my cb from floppin' around in the holder, hyul hyul hyul"......

I'm sure you do, Grover. Better get y'self another roller dog. There's no restaurant at the scalehouse.

The old hands told me, "Learn the rules, kid. They'll bury you at the coops if ya don't."

 

Exactly. There are numerous exceptions and exemptions to various rules that MIGHT apply to you, allowing you to do something that you otherwise would not be allowed to do. It is up to YOU to know these, because the man at the scale house sure as heck ain't going to bring them up! Also, the company might pressure you into doing something that goes against your better judgement...and the rule book likely will back you up. They won't tell you about the regs that say you don't have to drive just because you have the hours to do so...but there are a few that do just that.

All I hear when somebody says "the company MADE me do it" is "I have no clue what the rules are and I'm playing the game under somebody else's interpretation." When you choose to do that, you'll lose every time.

 

Just like you're supposed to do in the wild when confronted by a large predator...

don't make eye contact.

 

As for checking rod travel; they make these handy little devices. Available at nearly every truck stop near you...

 

But then drivers go to that "Make yourself look as big as you can, and make a lot of noise", and that NEVER works out well at the coops.

 

Perhaps so. This was supposed to be the person though who had posted it. I believe it was the period of time when MN was giving truckers a lot of grief. Wish I could remember the poster name.