What is the purpose and objectives of DOT inspection?

Agree

And yet. We as drivers have total control to stop that by just not going to work and yet we can’t get that to happen

If everyone stopped Monday AM I would think by lunch the president or someone important would be getting things changed

One day of no deliveries would be worse to the country than any ice or snow storm
People would buy up not just TP but everything else

 

Funny 9" of snow and some ice Walmart in town was emprty of a lot of the food. Probably 2 days of no deliveries.

 

Sooo... what they get ya for

 

I guarantee every one of these guys on here religiously preaching that they never would consider driving a truck with so much as a license plate light out, have never owned a truck in their life. Furthermore, they’ve never had a whopping big ticket for a bunch of tiny nitpick problems that aren’t one bit of a safety issue.

I have zero tolerance for driving with dangerous mechanical problems, but any owner operator out there can tell of the frustration of being ticketed for little things that are impossible to always keep fixed up.

I heard of a guy being ticketed for electrical tape wrapped around a brake hose. The mechanic put it on to keep track of where it went. The DOT officer claimed he was trying to fix an air leak. Seriously? With electrical tape?

When you pay the ticket and you pay the downtime, it makes a difference. I totally support the DOT and the laws they uphold, but when it gets to harassment that’s just too much.

 

I never wanted to be an OO. Just was not something that wanted to do. However, I also fixed a lot of the minor things that went wrong. An OO only has themselves to blame if they choose to operate with defects. Yes, I know some DOT officers can be PITAs. In my years driving I lost count of the times I was inspected. I would say maybe one in 20 to 25 had something listed as a defect. Almost every time I got a dirty inspection it started with me not doing my due diligence in regard to my pre/post trip. I only remember two inspections one in Florida and another in Mississippi when I ran into a "Richard" DOT officer. In both situations, I just sit still and quiet and let the officer rant. I will leave it to another thread to explain that in most cases a large fine is directly proportional to how hard a driver runneth their mouth!

 

DOT's objective is safety. Keeping safe trucks on the road. And let's face it there are unsafe trucks out there. However, most DOT inspectors seem to always take it to the extream and bang you for every violation as they can, and it has become profitable for states as a source of revenue. With that said, there used to be a DOT regulation, that you had to use only white sheets on your mattress. Not sure if it is still there, someone else maybe be able to answer this. But what does white sheets on your mattress have to do with safety?

 

Old friend of mine used to run coast to coast. On his weekly run to CA one of their weigh stations would always claim a air leak and write him up. So while at home he had the shop replace all the air lines from the button to the brakes. Guy still tried to claim a air leak. My buddy showed him numerous pages of replaced fittings and hoses and said show me!!!