Got stopped today. Terrible DOT Officers.

Well, when I pulled into that inspection building the other day I saw banners on the walls trying to recruit new DOT people. Ask one of them guys about it and they stumbling all over each other finding me a card with info on it. 3200.00 a month?
I figure once the bypass transponders are working everywhere we are going to have an army of these rookies out cruisin the back roads!

 

The Janesville scale?

 

Naw this is the Washington state port entry Id/Wa stateline WB I-90.
The route Im running this week is pretty tight on the logbook and unfortunately thats the fastest way to come back to the whse.
Been going around that coop for about 25 yrs. Its obvious that it was designed more for inspections than anything else.
When you roll across the scale you can see nothing but windows with these DOT trainees peering out at you! Mostly ran I-94 and US2 through WI, never had the pleasure of being fleeced at the Janesville scale.

 

Used to two lane it from St Paul/Minneapolis to Chicago, ended up coming into windy on 14, deliver waterfront market South, then bounce to Menausha, WI and hook onto a preload of paper, and two lane back to twin cities, then I-94 or 12 west. 93 north from Missoula,MT, then 200 across to US 2 and into Washington state. Was some extra miles but kept me and my boss out of trouble, and 5000-5200 miles a week by the time I got home every Saturday, lol.
I dont run like that anymore, but to me its still not worth going through some of these nit pickin scales.
ETA: 395, 14 to vancouver, wa, then a tight little story book and a prayer up I-5 with 5-8 drops final in Surrey, BC

 

Janesville gave the laziest level one ever couple weeks ago.

 

What do they mean by warning when the violations come with full on CSA points for the carrier and PSP data for the driver?
Unless they feel it is a warning because there is no citation involved.

I got popped couple weeks back, hauling placard load-- made it past every scale across the country. Zipping along Arizona on I40 this state trooper sitting in the median jumps out and runs me down for a level 2 right on the side of the freeway. Says I have remnants of an old placard so that is a violation for improper placarding. Then opens the presealed trailer and hikes way back in there and finds a pallet of hazmat stuff not shrink wrapped. Boom violation. Both violations were OOS violations as well. Had to scrape off what little of the placard and wrap the hazmat pallet up with some tie wire that I had. Says it's only a 'warning'.

Yeah right-- OOS is a warning. Funny thing is the company told us to not use duct tape around the placards because some officer somewhere measured the placard and wrote the guy up for being 3/16ths of 5.248 millimeters short of the placard size regs.

OK so if the placard is 'too small' how can a placard that is 99.99% scraped off be considered a full placard??? Can't have it both ways MR DOT dude.

I look at is as they cannot find traditional things wrong with us like lights burned out, or brakes or air leaks, they have to dig down into the most BS regs to ding us and sooner or later someone is going to rack up too many BS regulations that don't really mean anything to crash risk and FMCSA is going to remove that driver from service. Then that driver is going to call his congressman and say 'hey I am a constituent who used to earn $80,000 a year in your district and have been blackballed from my job because of stickers.'

 

in the op's opening statement. he said his trailer sticker had an expiration date of 9/13/14 which means it's good till 9/13/15

don't know about the rest of you all. but to me, expires on such date. means that trailer is 12 months overdue. the inspection sticker isn't current.

now, if he woulda said ISSUED on 9/13/14.

 

Pretty sure that was just a typo. Guy seems to be on top of things.