What am I responsible for?

All of it, bruddah. Run.

 

Best find it or find a cop to have a talk with him

 

If anything goes wrong on the road, DOT will hold you responsible for driving an unsafe vehicle. After all, you did the pre-trip and still chose to drive the vehicle.

 

Yup, FMCSA and all state laws require you to perform a PreTrip inspection to ensure that the vehicle is safe and legal to drive.

If you drive the vehicle in that condition, you are guilty of failing to ensure that the vehicle is safe and legal, as well as driving a vehicle with all of those issues.

And while the owner will face points and possibly citations and fines, they won't prevent him from making a living, he just has to correct things.
You on the other hand, with all that on your CSA, may have a loss of income for some time as a result, plus if any of them are related to any accidents, it will make things that much worse for you and the others involved.

What to do now?

Review your state's PreTrip instructions, or even better, watch one of the pre trip inspection training videos on YouTube, and then do a thorough pre trip inspection on the truck, and WRITE IT UP!
Fill out a DVIR with all the deficiencies, including lack of paperwork, and give him a copy, and let him know that it needs to be fixed before you can drive it again.

If he balks at it, you don't want to work there any way!

If he doesn't want to fix it, and tries to push you to drive it, call the state commercial vehicle enforcement office (in California it is the Commercial division of the Highway Patrol, in some states it is part of the DOT, etc), and explain that you just started working for him, and the truck has issues the owner doesn't want to fix, can they work it out where they can inspect the truck, but without you getting written for anything? Whether by doing a terminal inspection, or an arranged meeting on the road, or whatever.

Depending on how you pull it off, you might not have a job there anymore, but the unsafe truck should be grounded until repaired at least, and if you document the condition of the truck, and that he refused to repair it, even if he tries to make trouble when future employers are doing employment checks, having it documented should keep you looking good.

And please make sure it gets fixed or reported.
I had a childhood friend killed driving a dump truck for a local guy that everybody loved, but who didn't like spending money on repairs, and then one day the brakes stopped working entirely on a steep grade...


I have driven for my share of cheap places, and have sometimes had to pick my battles on what to get fixed, but make sure that you take care of the safety issues, because you will carry the legal and moral burden if anything happens...

 

See that's the answer I woulda gave if I was loquacious

 

Protect that cdl and you'll never be unemployed.

 

And since @Chinatown is one of the leading employment counselors around, he knows what he is talking about! Lol