I'm talking about dispatch giving you flack when you take extra care to ensure equipment is up to snuff.

heh, well, if they do they can kiss my a**. Have you seen what is going to happen when CSA2010 rolls out. I'm going to do everything in my power to make sure I keep my score down.

I've got some vague ideas, but the way I see it, this is all about doing what you must to cover your derriere.
When I was Swift, I was a straight-out stickler to all aspects of whatever I knew the scale-houses would be after.
Logbooks were kept up to snuff, every visible inch of the combined unit that mattered was looked over and all the times I got pulled in, thumbs up and get out.

That's one of the good things I could possibly see coming out of this, dangerous "fly-by-nights" essentially being forced to change their game or shut down.

Bad side, drivers used to their rules, or having to work their way back up from a previous malady being kicked back down the proverbial stairway to "acceptance".

got that right. the new scale on 95 in south florida (mm 91 northbound) is pulling almost everything in. i highly sugest anyone going in to south florida south of ft. pierce to take the turnpike. the scale is almost never closed. they're building another one south bound now.

I agree, this is one good aspect of the new program, the bad part is if a light goes out by chance or a tire blows and you have to limp to a station to repair it, your screwed unless the scale is willing to cut you enough slack to repair it at the scale since there are many places, for saftey reasons, won't let you change the tire on the side of the road.

Never heard of anyone getting a fine for a light that went out.
When I was with a mentor in '06 with Swift, his right-front headlight was out due to a minor collision another truck had with him a few weeks prior.

All we got out of that was a fix-it ticket at the Klamath Falls scale.

yes, but under the new rules you will have points given to you for it. I'm ok with it needing to be fixed but it will still affect your score.

Points for those now?

The game of "root-out" seems to get popular by the milli-second and tends to spread to other career fields.
Lets just cross our fingers that the maintenance departments stay on point and knock off the "ignore-this" attitude.

let's hope, I hope with it being a situation where both company and driver have points for 3 years will get the companies off thier butts and those drivers that have the attitude, throw the problem onto the next driver. We can hope.

In the meantime, let's keep doing what we're doing and get into chewing gum as well.
In the heat of a sketchy situation, such as some ghey scale inspection, I found that popping and chewing Bubbalicious does plenty to calm the nerves.