The Main Conclusions after a day spent with DOT Inspectors
John Galt Group
Take aways from a day of DOT inspections (long read, but worthwhile if you care about inspections):
1. The main contributor to truck being pulled to inspections are:
a) Overweight (they give 500 lbs per axle group and 1000 lbs per total GVW leeway)
b) high company ISS score (so your inspections violations affects everybody else in the company)
c) obvious easy visible violations
2. When already pulled for inspection cops look at:
a) how clean and neat are you and your truck/trailer, out and even more important inside. If you have a clutterred dashboard that means you are a dezorganized person and most likely don't take care of your other stuff about the truck, so they can find violations)
b) the way you behave and speak with them ( they are people, the same as each of us, if you have a negative attitude then you will surely get a violation, so be nice, if you disagree with something you may ask a question or suggest there is another way the things could be in a polite and positive manner, then document, make pictures of the stuff you disagree and we can file a DataQ about it, but never argue or piss them off as that will not take you anywhere)
c) Violations you had in the past (they can see all inspections right away as its done, so they will see all inspections everywhere you had them, they will look to what kind of violations you had to make sure to check there too, and will look also what company's violations overall are)
d) they will give you some room and not cite you for all little things, but if you have an obvious violation they will definetely give you a violations and sometimes a ticket as well.
Overall general observations and things to note:
1. Never ask for an inspection yourself! - this will tell them you are prepared already for it and want to tip the balance to make the company's record better than it really should be, so in the best case they will refuse to inspect you, and in the worst case they will inspect you and pick on every tiny vioolation you have (even a forgotten bungee on the trailer will get you unsecured/spilling cargo violation)
2. Never have your logged time in 15 minute increments - this will tell them this is not an ELD and just a log done by hand (the same as paper log just on your phone) (An argument could be that #KeepTrucking offers the option that your log is logged in 1, 5 and 15 minutes increments, but you have to tell them this, because they don't know this, and even when you tell, they may agree or may not agree with it)
3. DOT officers specialize in one field - Inspectors are not knowladgeable in all areas so they may not observe all your violations even if you have them in multiple areas, they will specialize in one area (for example overweight and oversized trucks tickets is a easy pick, or brakes tires and lights, or log books, or load securement and so on), so they will check thoroughly their area and maybe not even know much about other areas.
4. They could be pretty unexperienced/unknowladgeable in what they are doing - for example they will have regular cops that have no idea about DOT get into weigh station to get their required hours/experience at truck inspections, they don't know much and they will ask lots of questions to the colleagues of theirs with more experience, other people are just lasy and don't give a damn about anything, and others love this kind of work and are seasoned inspectors and do their work very well, so you never know who inspects you, that's why be polite and nice with them and they may not see any issues at all.
5. They are not trained into ELD/AOBRD thing yet - so they will most often just ask you that you show them your log on your tablet, or just email it to them so they can check the hours, they will not know all the things to ask about ELD downlaod file and so on, specially with that many different ELD systems.