What are the most common out of service violations?

It depends where the crack is on the windshield. Essentially, cracks over 1/4 inch in the area cleaned by the wipers is a no-go

 

Brakes/seals/air leaks

 

Couple rust pin holes on a brake chamber earned me an oos in WY.
Was the forward left side chamber on the tractor..the one directly under the reefer drain tube.

 

Chaffing lines, brakes.

Brake-related violations regularly make up the majority of vehicle out-of-service violations, according to the CVSA, and considering the maintenance category broadly, close to a majority of vehicle violations in some states with a brake-heavy focus like North Dakota, Montana, Virginia, California and Texas. Those five states lead the nation for high percentages of brakes violations uncovered, calculated as a percent of all violations issued in the state. That's according to Overdrive's 2022 CSA's Data Trail annual update analyzing inspection and violation trends nationally.

 

Top 4 are brakes, lights, tires & paper work. Every year DOT does a big safety check. Those are the top 4. The order may change slightly.
.
.Brakes - out of adjustment, brake shoes warn below minimum specs
.Lights out or missing
.Tires - flat or mismatched size on same axle etc
.Paper work - valid drivers license, registration, proof of insurance and log book.

 

Not technically a violation, but I’ll add it on anyways.. overweight will get you shut down in a hurry. And then you have to get permission to break the seal and rearrange the load, which may require waiting on a company to come help out depending on what you’re hauling.

I learned really quickly to not trust someone’s scale ticket from 500 miles ago when doing a relay load.

900 dollars and 10 hours waiting on someone to come help me re-organize 750 pound barrels of honey that slid to the nose finally got me out of there. It was my fault for not weighing at the relay point, so I can’t blame anyone but me.

Moral of the story: scale your loads ASAP and every trailer you swap to, even if it was already scaled. The officer in the scale house didn’t cut me slack and didn’t let me slide the tandems further to cut down the overweight fine