Worst Day Ever

Clean voluntary inspections will help your score..... in the insurance business we go by percentage..... how many times you were inspected and how many times you were found with violations gives us an I idea on how you run.... get everything done and submit to voluntary level 3 inspections at weigh stations but first make sure your truck is top notch. and even though there is no citations, those infractions get reported to the DOT and reflect on your record even though they are reported under the authority of the company you are running for but it helps other companies know who is a problem driver. Even though there is the FCSMA, there is another site that the insurance companies follow called the CAB report. it tells us everything you do on the road. happy you are safe Susan.... that is what matters.

Is there any way that the points reduce.. like with clean inspections other than dropping off in 3 years?

So you are suggesting to request an inspection when passing through a scale? I know you mean well with that advice, but it's far from practical and definitely not the norm. It's like asking the school yard Bully to take a couple of swings at your head, just to test your reflexes.

For the most part, if a scale is actively performing inspections and you are not "pulled" chances are all of the bay's are taken, inspectors are all busy, thus requiring a longer wait time. IMO I would not suggest to ask for an inspection,...time is precious out here plus I believe there is a risk of unnecessary scrutiny by an over-zealous DOT officer.

I believe Susan's best use of time is to appeal the trumped-up CSA score through the websites offered by BugSmasher.

Well I could just state something I have seen work for some of my customers and it enabled them to improve their score and reduce their insurance payments because they rate you on a percentage basis. I have seen a lot of customers get a ticket for not having enough inspections also since I have to pull up all their inspections records. so if you have 4 inspections and have 2 violations they rate you at 50% which is a very high score whereas if you make sure that your rig is tip top and submit to a few more inspections that percentage will keep going down. From what I have heard from most DOT experts those tickets are very hard to get rid of but always worth a try.

Clean voluntary inspections will help your score..... in the insurance business we go by percentage..... how many times you were inspected and how many times you were found with violations gives us an I idea on how you run.... get everything done and submit to voluntary level 3 inspections at weigh stations but first make sure your truck is top notch. and even though there is no citations, those infractions get reported to the DOT and reflect on your record even though they are reported under the authority of the company you are running for but it helps other companies know who is a problem driver. Even though there is the FCSMA, there is another site that the insurance companies follow called the CAB report. it tells us everything you do on the road. happy you are safe Susan.... that is what matters.

Is there any way that the points reduce.. like with clean inspections other than dropping off in 3 years?

So you are suggesting to request an inspection when passing through a scale? I know you mean well with that advice, but it's far from practical and definitely not the norm. It's like asking the school yard Bully to take a couple of swings at your head, just to test your reflexes.

For the most part, if a scale is actively performing inspections and you are not "pulled" chances are all of the bay's are taken, inspectors are all busy, thus requiring a longer wait time. IMO I would not suggest to ask for an inspection,...time is precious out here plus I believe there is a risk of unnecessary scrutiny by an over-zealous DOT officer.

I believe Susan's best use of time is to appeal the trumped-up CSA score through the websites offered by BugSmasher.

There is no citation to dispute.. that's the problem per my safety director. He says there is no way to dispute any of it successfully.

And also the FMCSA only reflect your last 24 months of inspections: US Inspection results for 24 months prior to: 05/09/2017, whereas the dreaded CAB report that no agent wants to see but that this darn insurance companies use goes back to the dinosaurs ages.

yep that is what I thought.... the only way to fix those is to improve your ratio of successful inspections. All the violation codes they gave you are equipment related .... 0 way to fight them. As you can see below you have 4 inspections types and the national averages for each so this company for example: Vehicle: 17 inspections: 9 OOS : 52.9% RATIO NAT'AVERAGE : 20.72% very high which means bad insurance scoe so the only way he can ameliorate that score will be by passing more inspections other wise he will be paying an arm and a leg in insurance , he currently pays $95k for 4 trucks whereas the guy with 7 trucks is paying $45k because of clean inspections Inspections:

Inspection Type

Vehicle

Driver

Hazmat

IEP

Inspections 17 35 0 0

Out of Service 9 5 0 0

Out of Service % 52.9% 14.3% % 0%

Nat'l Average % (2009- 2010) 20.72% 5.51% 4.50% N/A

There is no citation to dispute.. that's the problem per my safety director. He says there is no way to dispute any of it successfully.

I'm super late to the party here...

I almost had this happen to me last year. I picked up a trailer and drove about 70 miles with it and then shut down. Didn't notice anything on the pretrip when I picked it up or the next morning either. I drove around to the front of the store I was parked behind and went in for some groceries. When I came back out I checked my connections and releases to make sure no one pulled anything while I was inside. That's when I noticed my trailer lines underneath the trailer dragging on the ground instead of strung up like they're supposed to be. Don't know how I missed it on my pretrip that morning. I just took some pliers and resecured the lines to the bottom of the trailer--didn't have any more problems with them the rest of the trip. But now part of my pretrip is to give the air lines underneath the trailer a good yank just to be sure.

So one year has passed with no roadside inspections. I'm trying to figure out what my current PSP is lol. I know that high initial score was the x3 multiplier so now I should be at x2. After listing those violations someone came up with 14 points (x3) wouldn't have equaled the 56 some odd points I was told by my company. Now since 3 of those were OOS wouldn't that have added an extra 2 points to each of those (and weighted 6x3=18)?

Does this sound right? 14x2=28 + 6x2=12 for a grand total of 40ish now? OMGosh. Here is to making it one more year with either no inspections or clean ones.

I hope none of you ever have the experience of getting a DOT roadside inspection when something has already broken and you're waiting on the shoulder for a tow truck. I so despise the state of Indiana.

Oh yeah.. and as we were leaving with truck and trailer in tow, just on the other side of the overpass.. the DOT officer was watching to make sure I didn't try to pull that trailer. Glad I stuck to my guns and refused when tow driver tried to convince me that my pulling that trailer was the same as him towing it.

So sorry, glad you're ok though.