Off-duty not driving serving time
09/18/2008
FRESNO, Calif. -- Five truckers in this state have been sentenced to jail time and made to pay really stiff fines after pleading guilty to cooking their logbooks.
Sukhwinder Singh, Tarsem Singh Pahal, Bhinder Singh RAJU, Daljit Singh, and Jaspreet Singh were sentenced for keeping false driver's log books while employed as truck drivers for Nijjar Brothers Trucking, Inc. of Madera, Calif.
Sukhwinder Singh, the company’s safety director, was sentenced to six months’ house arrest and two years’ probation.
All of the defendants were ordered to leave trucking until such time as the they receive permission from the parole office to return.
Coincidentally, during the investigation of the logbook situation a driver for Nijjar Brothers caused a four-vehicle collision, killing a father and his 13-year-old son and seriously injuring six others.
The driver, Baljinder Singh, had been driving for at least 19 hours. He, too, was subsequently convicted and sentenced for falsifying his logbook entries.
The criminal charges were laid after an Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) uncovered widespread noncompliance with HOS rules as well as head-office support for the logbook violations.
In most cases the FMCSA sends the carrier, the executives and drivers involved a Notice of Claim telling them that they’re liable to be fined if they don’t shape up. If the violations seem particularly widespread within a company, the carrier can be told to cease operations until they put a corrective plan is put into action.
It’s only when the FMCSA deems the violations to be deliberate and very serious that they call in the DOT, which in turn can call in the local federal prosecutor.
According to experts, logbook tampering becomes a felony in California if the parties involved know the tampering is going on and don’t do anything about it or worse, helped with the violations.