Have you been stopped by DOT lately?

I got one. I totally didn't do this...it happened to a friend of mine. Yeah, that's it.

Rolling down the US90 across the bottom of TX. New '99 VN610, 53' trailer. Stopped at the 66 in Alpine to grab some coffee.

Now, those of you who know the southwest know that Alpine is the hangout for every DOT bear on the planet. Being intelligent, my friend decides to get his logbook current to that day, just in case. Sure enough, a mile out of town, he gets lit up.

So my friend draws a couple of lines as the bear is walking up to his truck. The bear looks over his logbook and asks, "Where were you parked at Alpine?"

"Behind the 66, is that OK? They don't have a problem with that or anything, I hope."

Now, this bear knew my friend wasn't parked at that 66 for twelve hours. But...

...his truck was clean inside and out.
...his weight was legal.
...there was no apparent damage or safety defects on his vehicle.
...he didn't give the bear any attitude.

So my friend rolled on down the road with a clean slate. A lesson or two may be learned here. I might add that my friend is really uptight about having anything on his dash or filling up the passenger footwell. And he knows what a shower is.

Food for thought.

 

I got yanked to an abandonded parking lot in NC he saw me coming and pulled out in front of me and waved me over, he was just pickin on me for no good reason I dod nothing to cause him to pull me over, he also was on a rollaround thing underneath truck and trailer, finetoothed the logs and found nothing, I drive for roehl and I guess that would be why he found nothing, no citation, warning, violation, NOTHING. He just caused me to be an hr late for my mon morn appt. in lumberton the blinkety-blink!

 

Wow I came here to post exactly about this subject, I was in Minnesota on I90 about mm 220. I noticed a DOT coming up in the hammer lane, when he got next to my drives he slowed and i knew he was checking me out. I knew i was not speeding cause i had the cruse set on 70 (speed limit). he slowed down and pulled me over He came to the door and asked for all the usual stuff license, registration, medical card ext... he the asked for my log book, I log exactly to pc miller so he wasn't going to catch me there so i thought. this is what my log showed
1145am it was on line one finished a 10 hour break (total break time was 10.5 hours, i always at least go 10.25 for a break min)

1145 am line 1 dropped down to line 4 and showed a 15 minute pretip inspection from 1145 am to 1200
(pre trip was showed)

I told him i had a right turn sig that somebody had stole off my truck (they took the in tire plug socket)
I had wrote this down on the log

He went back to is car and 30 minutes later he am back and told me he went threw my logs and everything was good except 1 thing? i said what? he said i failed to draw a line from line 4 back up to line 3 after i showed my 15 minute pre trip inspection. He wrote up a violation form and i have to send that into my company
Violation for logs not being current

Needless to say i was not very happy and told him that was so petty and should be ashamed of himself to even write up such a thing... He said well i am not giving you ticket for it, I said because then you would know that i would show up to court and it would be dismissed. Violation form you can write anything down you want and can not be contested. What you officers don't understand when you write up such crap it still effects the driver, the company keeps a record of the driver and that is effected. But obviously you don't care about that but only meeting your dang quota. He then said maybe so

about 20 days ago I was inspected in Utah at the port and received a no violation found report, was thanked by he DOT there for keeping such clean logs and making it easy for them to go threw.

It is crazy what DOT is doing right now, I understand they have a job to do but come on they don't need to make such nonsense violation up.

They need to focus there effort onto the 17000+ MEXICAN trucks that will be driving anywhere in the country starting less then 2 weeks. I had thought they was already doing it but they are not fully allowing all of them. that will change in less then 2 weeks from today.....

That is who DOT needs to harass not the US drivers. US safety has been getting better and better, they need to solve the real problem and that's going to be Mexican trucks..

Safety should not be achieved by violations but rather threw education

by the way a violation he should of wrote me up for he didn't, for the turn signal on the cab extender that was missing the in tire socket.

 

Since the end of last summer, the scales on I-85 by LaGrange, GA have been getting pretty routine with random checks. I have been "noted" twice, but no actual citation was given.

The first time was my fault because I was in a hurry, and forgot to update my logs when I left Newnan. I had been off for two days, and hadn't made an entry since. It's only about 20 miles or so from Newnan to the scale, but the cop wouldn't cut me a break. Shut down for 10 hours.

The last time was in December. The guy was looking at my log for 30-40 minutes before I finally went over to him and asked how much longer. I was about to lose my load I needed to pick up. He went back 3 weeks, and found where I drove .75 over (14 hour violation). I had used my 8 hour break, but lost track of my new 14 hour mark.

He noted it on my record-which will now be in the DOT computer probably forever. I didn't think about it at the time, but I should have protested. Why did he need to go back 3 weeks, when the law only requires 7 days of logs?? He wasted my time, and then noted me on a petty violation.

 

I was out in the middel of nowhere, Mississippi this past Wednesday. I was waved over by a Mississippi Officer, and told he was going to do a level 2 inspection. He asked for my Driver's license, medical card, bills-of-lading, and my log book.

I told him that he ould have to jump in the truck to see my log book, and he gave me a funny look. I told him that I had an EOBR and logged on it as well. He waved his hand as if to say..."never mind".

Thirty minutes later, I got my print-out, with a clean inspection.

He did something that I had never seen performed before. He asked me to set my tractor brake, and release the trailer brakes. Then he had me step out of the truck, and to pull the emergency line gladhand from the trailer. He was watching to see how long it would take the brakes to set with sudden air loss. They set instantaneously, which meant the protection valve was working as it should have been.

He told me that I would be surprised at how many valves didn't work correctly. I Learned something that day, and will now be checking them...since that is an out-of-service, if the brakes don't set immediately with sudden air loss.