Roadcheck, the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance's international inspection blitz, launched Tuesday with an express focus on hours of service and tires, and scale houses across the nation were expected to roar to life.
It’s my job to figure out what’s happening around trucking. Most days, that means calls and emails to owner-ops, regulators, enforcement agencies and business leaders around the country to listen to, and sometimes kick the tires on, stories about hauling freight.
But during Roadcheck, the show goes live. In years past, this reporter has visited three states to quiz inspectors on what they’re looking for, how they make their judgment calls, and generally chew the fat on what officers see.
On Tuesday, without solid plans to meet a press officer or another point of contact, I made the call to head about 45 minutes down the road to see the DOT scales in Deerfield, Massachusetts, unannounced.
I hardly saw them at all. The spring bloom all but overtook the few signs marking the closed scales. In years past I had found Massachusetts state police accessible and knowledgable at that same coop, but not this time. Instead, it seemed a police SUV or two dotted every valley, and I passed an unusual number of passenger cars parked in front of flashing lights.
By the time I got to Whately, Massachusetts, and the diner there at the Whately Truck Plaza, I knew I'd missed the scales but all would be OK. Whately has one of the best, most intact old truck stop diners I’ve ever visited. From the look of some of the rigs parked in the lot, it'd maintained a constituency of local haulers who appreciated the watery coffee, plush booths and table-side juke boxes full of nostalgic tunes.
In the diner I talked to a guy named Ken who drove a beautiful Pete 379, and I asked if I could bother him with a few questions, hoping that his conversation and perhaps a cheeseburger could salvage the trip.
Had he seen any scales open? Yep, he had, 55 minutes north of me when I had driven 45 minutes south. I had guessed wrong on what scales might be open, but I was still in luck. He was in a good enough mood even after being inspected twice that day -- once just south of Burlington, Vermont, and once in White River Junction.
“Are you on paper logs in that thing?” I asked.
“Yes,” Ken said.
“Do they even know how to read those anymore?”
“I don’t think so,” he laughed.
Ken told me familiar stories about searching for a backhaul, jumping through hoops with brokers and keeping an older engine alive. I let him know I was a reporter, and that I write about this sort of thing. What did he think about English language proficiency? Were non-English speaking drivers really that much of a problem?
[Related: English language proficiency, non-domiciled CDLs for foreign citizens: Take the survey]
He spoke from experience about the long lines at guard shacks, seeing arms and faces leaning out of truck cabs speaking into a translation app, holding up lines. He talked about missed appointments, idling, running the reefer all night because the guard house couldn’t clear the line of trucks fast enough.
What about safety? He talked about passing truckers with their feet on the dash and a screen on the steering wheel. He talked about how if his truck wasn’t paid off, the trucking trade probably just wouldn’t pencil out for him anymore.
I thanked him for his time and gave him my information to stay in touch.
When Ken left we quickly acknowledged how cool it was to have a place like the diner to catch up and swap stories. Ken had the steak tips and recommended them. I ordered the Big Rig burger, a double-decker with slaw, bacon, and French fries, which is a true five-napkin burger and probably still big enough to be a good deal at $16.99.
About the time I was done eating some commotion took ahold of the dining room, all the staff and customers clustered around the big picture windows looking out at some police action at the convenience store across the lot. First one or two cop cars, then suddenly maybe as many as eight. Cops spoke to a few people on the curb. One person looked a bit shifty, but I didn’t see anyone cuffed or anything towed.
Finally letting my curiosity get the best of me I approached the murmuring crowd in the diner. “What’s going on?” I asked.
“Someone was in the store touching everything. ...” The waitress trailed off awkwardly. I frowned deeply.
“He was in there finger painting,” the line cook chimed in with a grin. They said they had seen him before.
Good thing I was done eating.
We awkwardly laughed about all that, and I paid and left. Now I’m curious. I approached the cops and broke the ice asking if there was a scale open nearby. “Why, are you overweight?” the cop said.
I laughed. “Well, I did just eat the Big Rig burger.”
He beeped the radio on his shoulder: “We got a possible overweight here at Whately.”
I guess he wasn’t kidding. His partner told me there probably wasn’t a scale anywhere nearby. I thanked him for his time and confessed I couldn’t help but wonder -- what was going on at the convenience store?
“I don’t know, I just got here,” he said. I wanted to ask about the sanitary condition of the store, but I just got in my car and left.
On the way home, I stopped at the intensely beautiful Guilford Welcome Center off I-91 right when you get into Vermont from Massachusetts. They had museum-type exhibits of Vermont’s agricultural routes, as well as a large, beautiful yard full of old farm machinery and implements called the “Meadows Exhibit.” The lilacs were all flowered out, and a handful of reefers hummed in the truck lot off to the side.
There are some beautiful things to see on the road, some real “stop and smell the flowers” moments you don’t get at home or online.
Is it true what people say in truck stops? I take Ken's word for it. The other tale from the waitress didn't strike me as a "stop and smell" matter, though.
I’ll be heading out to more Roadcheck events and talking to more state authorities about logbooks and ELDs, ELP and non-domiciled drivers, broker transparency, the Ice Pick Bandit, or whatever else impacts the lives of guys like Ken hauling produce. Follow along, stay safe and happy hauling.
[Related: Arkansas police testing English language skills at roadside? Social media says yes, but ...]
