LOL, yeah I remember those days when the CSA was in the low teens. 4 months later and WHAM! 97.6% All it takes is for an inspector or two to re-interpret how the rules should be applied. Violations show up on CSA even though I plead not guilty to the charges and am awaiting court appearance. Nice.

 

That really does suck and I hope it turns out as well as it can for you.

The ladder I just bought is a 13 foot, multi-position, 300lb capacity job that (I just found out for sure today) folds down small enough to easily fit into one of my trailer tool boxes and actually lay flat. With some of these DOT geniuses, I wonder if they could get away with saying that bungeeing tarps to the top of a headache rack would constitute improperly secured equipment.

 

And when you BEAT it in court it STILL stays on the CSA.........ask me how I know........LOL

You have to go thru the "data Q" to contest it, then it goes to the officer who wrote it, and most likeley he will laugh and throw it in the trash, of course he might admit he was wrong and then....................HUH?......sorry, day dreamin again.

The CSA system is stacked AGAINST the driver.

 

They can pretty much say or write ANYTHING they want, then its up to YOU to fight it.

And GONE are the days where they will point something out and let you correct it, now they write it up and then tell you correct it.

I have not looked at what my score is, nor will I.

Basically I couldnt care less, when and if I get a letter like rank got, I will deal with it, no need getting all stressed out over some points, I haul 75% or more of unregulated (exempt) commodities, I can trip lease anything else I need to haul, so having my own authority is really not even nessesary.

 

yeah.....the driver and the company. the violations stay with the company even if the driver leaves....which I'm sure you know. Yeah, I've been through the data q process before under the old safe stat system. I won that and had the fatality removed from the record but it was still a PITA, just like everything else in this business. You spend way more time complying with regs than you do do running the business.

I'm going to have to spend $2400 in legal fees to fight this BS and when I win.....will I get my money back? Nope. What a crock. Reminds me of Boss Hogg on the Dukes of Hazzard.

 

Yeah, but I bet you won't meet anyone in this process who looks like Daisy Duke.

 

Yep. I can tell your first hand that something like that will get you ~27 CSA points and OOS. One of our drivers was ticketed in the Marsellus shale area of PA for having chains on the catwalk tied down with bungees. 27 points and OOS. Bungees are not a securement device. They have no WLL. Any that does not have a WLL (or, in the case of chain, a grade stamped into the links) is not a securement device. I guess I'll have to ask the judge why people are allowed to put bags of salt, brooms, shovels, windshield washer, reefer fuel and all manner of things back there.

I used to have a rubbermaid tote secured to my catwalk with bungees similar to the milk crates that people have used for years. I was written up in at the Gan scale in ON (no CSA points) and the DOT man told me I needed to get a strap with a WLL on there or he would charge me $300 next time he saw me. So I did. Then the DOT man in Corfu, NY was going to write me up because he just didn't like rubbermaid I guess. That's when I decided to dig that old headache rack out of the scrap pile and put it on my truck. BTW, the only reason he didn't was because he found a chain with a bent link and he put me OOS for "damaged tie down".... (another 27 points).

I want to know how they can ticket flatbedders for "failing to prevent loose or shifting cargo" when we are secured wayy better than 99% of dry van loads. All of those over turned vans got that way because loose cargo shifted.

 

They're not allowed, there was a purolator (or fedex or ups I cant remember) delivery driver charged for having a bag of salt bungeed to the back step of the truck here in Ontario.

 

I don’t mind the rules, whatever they are. I can always comply, as long as we (one DOT officer to the next and me) agree on what they are. My BIG gripe is that enforcement is NOT uniform. There’s an interesting study that an investment arm of Well-Fargo did about CSA, and they found that one of the biggest problems is that some states inspect much more than others and some states have a knack of finding violations much more frequently than others. The result is if one carrier frequents these overly aggressive states and is very safe and compliant, it still may have worse CSA scores than a “renegade” carrier that runs only in states that are much more laid back about inspections and violations.

I really like the aforementioned study because it was conducted by an investment firm that doesn’t have much of a dog in the fight. The study was commissioned to determine whether or not investors should avoid investing in carriers with high CSA scores. The conclusion is that CSA scores have little or no correlation to how safe a carrier is. This study is posted on the NASTC website. Try this link if you are interested. They want you to give them your name, company name and email address before they will allow you to download the report. I think NASTC wants to see how many carriers (and who) are interested enough to download the report.

Wells Fargo CSA Study PDF request form

 

I guess straps it is, then. See, this is a great example of how and why CAD is so valuable for the few who actually use it to trade information. You might have just saved me a lot of time, money and grief.