How do you handle truck maintenance issues with your company?

Depends on the problem to be honest. Something like a set of bad brakes for example, you would tell them to go to hell. Something like a check engine light or a blown single on a trailer is fine. Its a judgment call mostly.

 

There’s no “removes the responsibility from you.”
So, how would you handle maintenance issues knowing that?

 

No different than bad weather. I’m the driver, I’m responsible.

 

Whatever affects safety is driver's responsibility (not always financial), all the rest is company's responsibility. Bear in mind that if check engine light leads to a stalled vehicle and accident then it's driver's responsibility as well because driver ignored a problem long enough.

 

My truck driving school won the award for best in the state five years in a row, and here's what they taught us:

If your company orders you to drive with violations, one thing you can do is pull in to the first open scalehouse you find, park out back by the inspection area, step inside, and inform them that your company ordered you to drive a truck with what you had deemed to be safety violations on your pretrip, and would friendly Mr. DOT officer please come outside and take a look at what you found, to help clear up the confusion because you don't think it's OK. What they'll do is inspect your truck and send all citations and fines to the company.

 

I’ve had successful inspections where the inspector asked if I wanted him to put something down.
I’ve also seen inspectors still give tickets to drivers that volunteered an inspection, as the law still required them to give it to the driver. Seems to depend on the guy though.

 

Not to mention it's chicken ####.

Sorry, but we were all thinking it.