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It's called cutting your losses. Alternately you can throw good money after bad until you have none left....

 

So what if you paid $400 for an ignition repair, you should have ordered the cap for the WW fluid as soon as you knew about it, had the FE replaced by the driver so she was legal and get the fifth wheel repaired or replace before you accepted any load. Tires and logs are on your driver, he/she should have told you that the tire was bald and had her stop and get those which are marginal replaced.

Have your driver do a good pre-trip and write down everything that needs replacing, and then have the take pictured of those items and send them all to you.

Remember these three important things about mitigating these problems -

1 - the driver is your eyes and ears, if you trust them to drive, then you should trust them to tell you when there is an issue with the truck - if not get rid of them and get another driver.

2 - this is a business, it takes money to maintain the truck, and if you have no maintenance fund to pull money out of, then you need to restructure your ledger and put money into it and spend the money - do not be cheap. From your comment about spending $400 on an ignition repair, it sounds like you are cheap.

3 - the real purpose of an inspection is to find these issues, be it a road side level one or a DOT annual. I as a owner/operator told those doing an inspection that I want them to find things wrong so a road side won't. As a fleet owner, I really drive that point home with some of these mechanics that we use regularly. I depend on them to do their job so I don't get dinged with violations, so you should to so maybe getting a bi-annual or better yet a quarterly inspection by a mechanic who will be honest about finding crap should be a goal.

 

This - absolutely

And this, but it won't alleviate 4600 lbs over on drives (where are trailer tandems at?!),

I figured the coiled hose to slides was the culprit -, but moot point.

Ex-Prime driver - forget it. It's a puppy mill.

Good luck - but remember your actions as a business owner reflects upon us all.

 

With those violations, I'd say you got off cheap and no "out of service".

I wonder if the inspector just commented that the tire was getting too worn but wasn't technically out of spec. I thought a tire out of spec was a automatic OOS?

 

Yes. But I think we all know the minimums.

If we're running around on borderline tread depths, then surely there's s hole in our business plans that needs addressing?

 

On you
1)If u seen truck Monday, tires don't go bald in 4 days unless there is a major problem.

2) washer cap.. you knew it was gone

3) extinguisher- again you knew it was used and needed another one.. not driver job to buy your truck supplies unless there is a system to reimburse

4) you hired a prime rookie, gonna have some bumps and bruises along the way, that's why they come cheap.

Drivers no no
1) over weight, can't move 4600 with fifth wheel so tandems were wrong to.
2) log book, if came from prime probaly was never even shown how to run paper.

Pay you fines, take your lumps and bruises and BOTH of you learn from your mistakes. lucky you wasn't out of service. Issues on both ends here and atleast your driver has a excuse of being a rookie. Good luck..

 

Thanks but no thanks for your opinion.

 

I just did a little research. According to the regulations, 3/32 on a steer and 1/32 on other tires will be a citation but won't be OOS.

I thought any tire violation was a auto OOS, but looks like I was wrong. One thing we do is run good tires so I've never had experience with a tread depth issue.

 

This guy will probably keep you behind but I hope not.

What's this? I've never taken one in 20 years.

 

I do raise the hood at least once a nth whether it needs it or not duh