Tandems all the way forward illegal???

Too much tail swing. Michigan and Minnesota don't like it, either. Then you have Calif---ya which demands it.

50 states with 50 sets of requirements. Welcome to trucking.

 

Maryland? All the way forward? Hum I better break out the old charts...

We did all the way forward when necessary provided it's under gross, under axle and at least 48 foot box. When the 53's showed up, things changed a little bit on both ends of that tandem rail.

 

If every state/province has different rules and regulations, how are drivers supposed to keep up and remain "professional"?

 

You consult the front pages of your Motor Carrier Atlas...specifically A-12 through A-17 in the Rand McNally edition...to ensure that your size/weight/axle spacing will be legal along the route you take. It used to be called "trip planning".

 

We are literally charged with the need to keep up with the laws in county, local, state and federal plus customs and other nations in which you run a big truck.

It never ends. There is a green book of regulations issued by FMCSA. That is one you will read over and over and over again. Then there is a stack of laws you will be reading about great and small from Federal, Customs, all the way down to the township you are trying to get out of with a load with different levels.

Everyone has their finger into the trucking, arent you glad to be a American, freely able to go about this wonderful work and not be prosecuted for any number of problems? It takes a lot of money as well.

Finally fighting with shippers and recievers. Appt times vs logs vs where you are at and where you are trying to go legally. You will also fight with weights. Some shippers will kick you out and say beat it. And there you are. Stuck.

Dispatchers like to threaten weak drivers who will do whatever whenever. Once they are discovered willing to run illegal because they don't say NO... a powerful magic word. That "No" then that person will be abused by happy dispatcher and then summarily fired.

Trucking is almost a impossible existance for anyone too stupid to know the law whatever it might be. And sometimes the lucky ones with some money, will lose a large portion learning what the law really is after the courts get through with them. And a even smaller percentage somehow managed to get through life on the road happy go lucky without so much as a couple of inspections and a occasional violation for weight etc.

For every one of these good drivers you probably have to turn over 50 more just to find the second good driver to go with the first.

 

It's "illegal" or they just frown upon it? I've never heard that but I don't run MD (thank God). I only have to really worry about TN and CA, only because I sometimes pick up loads going there

 

Maryland is called the Old Line State. In honor of certain Colonial units that are currently buried under certain modern day locations having given themselves to protect Washington's Army. We were a free state back then.

To be trucking in Maryland is to be frowned on. And then probably written up for something. It's a state in which you have to.. no must have everything in order when they snap and bark "Papers please."

And you wonder why I'll flew away to Arkansas. They can have that cesspool in Maryland, honestly all that frowning up there must be miserable to them.