Thoughts on fines

Don't work for a company with a poor safety rating.
Don't speed.
Don't haul hazmat.
Stay out of the Northeast area.
Keep your weights right.
Make sure you have the proper permits for your load.
Obey the bridge laws for the states you're running through.
Inspect your vehicle like you're supposed to and get it repaired when necessary.
Know your height and the height of the bridge in front of you.
Stay on truck routes (sometimes customers are off the beaten path though).
Keep the log current and all your paperwork in order.

If you follow those guidelines, you generally won't have any problems with the DOT and fines.

 

Well, with the current administration in office, and the lefties in Congress, (all of which have the transportation industry targeted for destruction) you can expect more and more regulations to come, with heavier fines and a steady decline, in both wages, and working conditions for drivers. Enjoy!

 

Welcome to the trucking industry, where short term thinking is the rule! Yes fighting parasite accident cases would be better in the long run, but so would decent freight rates, and they would rather cut rates for a load today, than have any money to stay in business tomorrow.

 

Fines are a tax under a different name. Argue all you want but its a fact. If the Fed and states were as serious about safety as they want you and the public to believe they would levy heavy penalties instead of "slap on the wrist" type fines. These petty fines are mostly considered just a part of doing business by trucking companies. States are cash strapped these days and its no secret the federal government is also. Trucks are a a prime source of revenue since there are thousands on the road every minute of every day. Instead of chicken feed three and four hundred dollar fines for common everyday violations raise the bar to around four-five thousand per violation...the results would probably be astounding. If this happened trucking companies would have to either clean up their act or go under. This would result in less money in the coiffures of the states and federal, so they have to keep fines fairly low or risk losing customers so to speak. How can anyone possibly believe a federal agency like the Department of Transportation is serious about safety when the penalties don't actually reflect it? Lobbyists like the ATA among others have the DOT wrapped around their finger..to a degree.. or there would have been huge changes in this industry already. Not that there haven't been some changes, I'm just saying.

 

all one has to do is look at the states that installed red light cameras and then shorten the yellow light duration to see it's not about safety give somebody from new jersey a $300 fine in calif think he will spend the time and money to to come back to calif to fight it....very few will, they will just pay the fine = easy money for california .....raise that same ticket to $1000 plus they will probably return to fight it costing calif money tying up the courts especially if the defendant wins

thats one of the reasons i stay mostly in a 200 mile radius of home .....iv'e taken every ticket i ever got to court and almost always won most them because the cop didn't show up or i apealed them or they were reduced to a lesser fine

 

So if i misspell a city in my logbook (and i go to quebec a lot and i have a hard time spelling some of their cities...like L'Assomption...), i should be fined $5,000, right? Great idea, right?

And besides that, i think you're wrong. For example, in quebec, and this is for *cars*, doing 60kmh over (thats only about 35mph) the limit will earn you a $900 ticket and TEN POINTS. And they have the same 12 points system we're using.

And yesterday I was at Flying J on Autoroute 15, sortie 21...and there was a local street racer gathering. Kids with rice burners hanging out, dancing and stuff, quite a lot more kids than ricer cars....every once in a while two cars would dissapear for 20 minutes or so....I bet I know what they were doing.

$900 is a lot to most people. Minimum wage is around $10 an hour, so thats a good 2 weeks wages to some kid if they get caught.

For a while Ontario and California (cali might still be doing it but ontario was forced to stop) were crushing street racers cars. Yup, you get caught going too fast and they crush your car.

THEY STILL DID IT....


And to most people, losing your car is a good $5000 down the drain...

 

Like other have said the rules and regs are not about saftey. If that was the case then they should hand out fix it tickets. Get it fixed and then next weight station you go by give them the ticket and that is the end to it. If you fail to turn in the ticket then fine you. I know officers have to do a pretrip prior to the starting a shift and they have all had a light go out durring there shift or something else fail.

 

Just going to put this out here-

Some of you have mentioned the stiff fines in Cali., and that they view truckers as rolling ATMs.

Here are some surprising numbers from the April 2010 State Controller's report:

Total revenues (from all sources) collected, year to date: $89.6 Billion
Revenue from traffic fines, year to date: $67.2 Million

Traffic fines account for .00075% of total revenues. a microscopic pimple on a politician's back-side, barely worth scratching. Let's say they have a meeting in Sacramento and, rubbing their greasy hands together, decide to double the traffic fines. It would still amount to only .0015%.

Here's a link for anyone who is interested:

http://www.sco.ca.gov/Files-ARD/CASH/april.pdf

Scroll down to page A-5.