I've been under the assumption that should DOT inspect you and find problems that we, the driver, are responsible for paying all of it. It has recently come to my attention that certain tickets will go to swift? Like what? Depending on the answers this gets it may drastically reduce my pretrip inspection time. Just kidding.
Avoid parts of the pre-trip and YOU still lose time for the inspection, the hour it takes to write you, all the BS from safety, etc.... better just to CYA and get things fixed... Its guys who half-arse things who get into accidents because of a broken part... or generally half-arse everything they do, get fired... then come on the forum whining because the got fired.
Never, NEVER let a company pay your tickets for you. They often get put aside and forgotten about. Then you go into Warrant status and more charges and court costs are added to it. You move on and a couple of years later you're arrested in an inspection for Failure to Appear, the original ticket and court costs. Your safety folks will assure you that you shouldn't worry- that's when you really better worry. If the ticket's in your name, no one else is responsible for following it through but you.
Ok so whoever told me that swift "paid" them didn't really know the whole picture. Thanks for the info.
Right, exactly - Swift (or any company) may contact DOT on their behalf, and begin the process to take care of something, but never actually pay the fine... and the fine is on you, so you're screwed. Many companies do this, with likely good intentions, to make sure you don't get your license suspended, and often help out with payroll deductions. Good friend of mine was with Knight, got an overweight ticket, sent it to his DM, DM initiated payroll deduction... but someone miscommunicated - the money was taken out of his pay, but the State of CA was never paid on his behalf... so he ended up with a warrant. An extra $150 in court fees and 3 days off to handle it, plus driving his personal rig from Phoenix to Palm Springs and back...
