Quote:
Originally Posted by GMAN
There is little that a carrier or owner can do to insure that a truck or driver won't be put out of service. The carrier or owner cannot make repairs unless the driver does his job and a proper pre trip. The driver must also inform the owner or carrier so that repairs can be made. It should be up to the driver to determine if his load is legal and that everything is in proper working order. For instance, if a driver picks up a loaded trailer then it is up to him to determine if the load is legal by finding the first CAT scale and weighing his load. It is up to the driver to determine whether he has enough hours to make a delivery in a timely manner. I understand that there are some carriers who may encourage drivers to push the limit, but it is ultimately up to the driver to determine whether he can legally run a load or not. There has been some discussion about having a driver's record follow him rather than the carrier. The thought is to get the bad drivers out of the business. If a driver constantly has out of service or other violations then he isn't safely doing his job. The feds want to get these drivers out of trucking.
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Have you looked at the scoring that is being proposed in regards to the driver? These are some pretty heavy handed new rules coming down. I always tried my best to run legal, but it is not always possible to do in every situation, this is just a reality of the business. We are not machines, no matter what we know or how good we are at our jobs. And that is how I interpreted the new regs for drivers, we are machines and we will comply. And if we don't, we will be punished to the full extent of the law with SAFER as the weapon.
And yes, get the bad drivers off the road, I have no issues with that line of thinking. But again, I go back to these new rules and how they score a driver. As I said earlier, one DOT cop with an attitude could literally ruin a driver and or company in under an hour if he wanted to. The new scoring system is rather complicated and runs on multipliers along with allowing a DOT officer to make assumptions with no proof. Like MN and their little roadside fatigue survey, do you have a cell phone... This is apart of the new CSA regulations and it is coming to your neighborhood soon.
I would not take this stuff lightly and you guys really need to read up on it. It is already being tested in several states, and so far, it has been a nightmare for more than one trucking company. And it looks like it could honestly take many of the smaller outfits right out of business with the fines alone. Just do some searching, there is allot of info out there.
Here is a good place to start
CSA2010
And here, check the left sidebar for all of the scoring, shocking to say the least.
http://www.csa2010.com/