Think you’ve got inspection frustration?

Overdrive‘s CSA survey, conducted in March of this year, offered a bevy of issues associated with the enforcement and carrier rating regime and asked survey respondents to choose their top three in order of importance. Here’s the results (you can click on the image for a larger version): 

Note the second item in the list. Readers have expressed to me in past a feeling that the new importance roadside violations of all stripes have garnered since institution of the CSA program have thrown another wrench into the driver-law enforcement relationship. To the negative.

Some law enforcement agree, to one degree or another, and view the entire situation as unfortunate. First Sergeant Tyler Utterback of the Indiana State Police called it “the chaos” out there, often a result of what he sees as continuing misunderstanding of the system among some drivers and officers. For instance, as he pointed out to a driver recently saddled with an out-of-service maintenance-related violation after a full Level I inspection, the violations may be hurting his carrier’s Vehicle Maintenance BASIC score, but the otherwise clean inspection helped his carrier’s Hours of Service, Driver Fitness and Controlled Substances/Alcohol scores. At once, from that driver’s perspective, the violation — stemming from a leaky wheel seal that he’d worked with the carrier on to fix several different times, he said, in recent memory — meant $100 foregone. 

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But in the end, law enforcement has a job to do just as the American truck driver. On this Memorial Day, as we pause to remember those who’ve given it all for the nation, you might also take a moment to do a little “it could be worse”-type reflection. Case in point: 

This Associated Press dispatch last week told the story of an Argentinean reefer hauler so apparently frustrated with the holdup he was getting at a particular food-inspection chokepoint that he, well, shut inspectors up in the reefer and just kept on driving. He was arrested two miles later.

Now that is frustrated, my friends. And a bit of intelligence fit for a Channel 19 conversation. Driver, did you ever hear the one about …

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Here’s wishing a good Memorial Day to you, whether you’re running the road or working the grill …