passing a weigh station
Discussion in 'Trucking Industry Regulations' started by eighthoots, Oct 22, 2010.
Page 9 of 14
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Personally don't care whether they are open or not, if your so close to the truck in front of you that you can't tell whether they are open or not you are following too close and deserve a ticket for tailgating!Texas-Nana Thanks this. -
Not that close, I looked at the sign for those blinking yellow lights. no lights, no trucks, only a truck in distance driving past. Only when I turned the curve in front of the coop, see them lined up. If you guessed Carneys point...
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You must run at night, as West Hawk is open all day long, Monday to Friday. -
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Shoulders are not built to withstand constant 18 wheeler traffic. This is why when you go through construction zones that tell truckers to use the left lane is because they made the right lane out of the shoulder.
I refuse to stop at a full ramp because you are asking for trouble. You cause a wreck, you can't blame it on the DOT. I have never been pulled over for blowing a scale. Even when I was a rookie and blew by about 6 of them. Most DOT officers know to put the bypass/closed out when the ramp is full unless they are not paying attention.
Back to the prepass discussion, red lights are randomly generated depending on your companies safestats. The worse the company, the higher percentage of red lights.
The scale sign prevails. The light on it is controlled by a human. If it says closed or bypass, the DOT officer done that for a reason. Many times they go home and forget to turn off the prepass.
If you ever go inside pay attention to the prepass screen. Green light it displays your company name, etc in solid green. Red light it diplays the same in flashing red. Companies with no prepass shows nothing. The screen stays full of names. When they are busy with full ramps, their attention is on the scales and not so much the prepass. Knowing this and no prepass, I feel safe bypassing full ramps as they know no different. Heck they can't even see the truck to compare green light names.
Scales are part of the job and if everything is going smoothly, I have no concerns and stop. It's only when them dangerous full ramps you have to make a common sense decision. My common sense says gas on it! -
So anyway, there are huge rest stop signs and half size signs for the coop, plus all kinds of signs in the ditches that I basically was only glancing at....anyway...a trooper pulls in behind me and pulls me over...
I asked him what was going on, and he says "You missed the port of entry", and I take a moment and think about it and then I say, "What is a port of entry", as I thought those were just on the coasts. He response is "it is a weigh scale" and I go " Holy crap, I missed a weigh scale!!!" not very good the first day on the job, eh......He says, "Yeah, it does happen" I said I was watching for the speed limit signs on the left side of the rode, opposite of where the weigh scale signs were, cause in Iowa the construction speed limit is 45 mph, and I was surprised that it was 65 in SD. The trooper says, "Yeah, they don't seem to care if someone gets killed with the 65 mph speed limit"
Did I get a ticket for $165.....no...got a written warning though....
Also, I did not have my log book filled out for the prior 7 days, as this was my first day driving...another $165 fine...did I get a ticket....no...got a written warning though. Probably never get that lucky again, as DOT does not usually give out warnings, only real tickets with a real fine.
Anyway, most students should be filling out a log book while in school so they have the prior 7 days covered even if the any during any of the 7 days they do not have a license......
My instructor said they usually had the class do that, but for some reason they did not with my class....ooops.
I won't tell you all the details about my trainer co-driver being 19 years old and driving interstate and in the sleeper at the time I am stopped. Yikes...lucky for him he was in the sleeper. -
That was a good cop. New drivers will make easy mistakes. It takes awhile until you learn where they are all at. When you do your trip planning, take note on your truckers map where they are enroute. If you don't have one, buy one!
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Just sayin...
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