Level 1 Inspection. Overweight, Beyond 150 Mile Logging Exemption , No Brake Lights!!!!!

Little bit of click bait. Title is basically true but everything worked out ok.

My company operates under the 150 air miles exemption for logging. We don't have e-logs and normally do not fill out paper log books, we do keep a daily trip sheet which has basically all the same info. We are allowed to go beyond 150 miles 8 days out of 30, we just need to fill out a paper log for each of those days.

Today I started out with a trip from Cincinnati to Orrville, Ohio, Google Maps says about 180 air miles. I had done the same trip yesterday so for the second day in a row I started a paper log sheet. Once I got empty I was sent a few miles north to Rittman, Ohio to pickup at a Morton Salt facility.

Anyone who has hauled salt already knows this is where the overweight issue comes from. Bills said 45k. I am in a day cab and I know my empty weight is somewhere around 32k depending on fuel and trailer model so I wasn't concerned about gross weight. The load came pretty far back so I decided that I needed the tandems forward based upon my rough estimate using my suspension gauge.

Get loaded and get onto I76 heading west towards I71 to head home. I am very rarely on 76 but as I'm heading down the ramp it occurs to me that there is a weigh station somewhere around here. I had convinced myself that it was behind me right about the time I see the sign and it is open. Sure enough I get the red arrow and they ask me to come back around and get axle weights. Guess what 78.2 gross, 10.6 steers, 29.8 drives and 37.6 tandems!!! "Sir, please pull around back and I'll be right out."

Officer comes out and shows me the weights and says he will let me fix it but he is going to do a Level 1 inspection. Asks for all my documents and then asks if I drive out of Cincinnati. I say yes and he mentions the distance, apparently our DOT number says that we operate under the 150 rule. I say yes and that I am running a paper log today. I pulled it out and he seemed impressed!

Does the inspection and everything is going great until he is finishing up with the trailer lights, this is an almost brand new 2023 Utility trailer. Turn signals great, brake lights? Nothing. We try a couple times then I get out and fiddle with the pigtail and they finally come on. We decide that it is probably the pigtail. He issues a warning on the trailer and passes the truck and puts on the orange pass sticker.

I slide my tandems and he calls out the weights as I go back over 11K steers, 33.8 drives and 33.4 tandems. Says good to go and have a nice day.

All in all a pretty good result but I was struck by a couple of things:

First was how badly I did at estimating the tandem position. I have probably CAT scaled 2 loads over the last 5 years. Been over scales lots of times with heavy loads and never had an issue.

Second was seeing how smoothly the log situation went. I have always assumed that it would be a big production explaining why I am not running elogs , or logs at all for that matter. My current log book starts in April and has occasional entries up until today. Some times I go weeks without logging then weeks like this one I may log multiple days. I gave him the entire book and when he gave them back he said they looked good.

Final thing was attitude. I was friendly and non confrontational. He was the same and I actually enjoyed the interaction. There was a driver next to me and he kept running his mouth complaining about everything. Needless to say his inspection was going on when mine started and still going on after I left.

Nice post. It’s cool to see a post about someone using the air mile radius exemption and how it works in real life scenarios. I don’t operate in the 150 air mile radius currently but most of our daycabs don’t go outside it. We don’t use the exemption though so we just keep elogs all the time. Rumor is we got caught years ago during an audit with alot of our drivers not even keeping time sheets or anything and DOT gave us an ultimatum to either take a huge fine or run elogs in all our trucks and we chose the elogs. Don’t know if that’s true but it sounds plausible.

The load came pretty far back so I decided that I needed the tandems forward based upon my rough estimate using my suspension gauge.

This part confused me. I haven’t pulled a box in several years but in my experience if the load comes pretty far back I would keep the tandems a little further back to try and avoid tandems being overweight like they ended up in your case. Obviously you’re experienced and know what you’re doing..just curious why you moved them so far forward if the load came pretty far back?

I was the one confused. Defiantly should have had them back. Not sure what I was thinking.

This part confused me. I haven’t pulled a box in several years but in my experience if the load comes pretty far back I would keep the tandems a little further back to try and avoid tandems being overweight like they ended up in your case. Obviously you’re experienced and know what you’re doing..just curious why you moved them so far forward if the load came pretty far back?

I was the one confused. Defiantly should have had them back. Not sure what I was thinking.

This part confused me. I haven’t pulled a box in several years but in my experience if the load comes pretty far back I would keep the tandems a little further back to try and avoid tandems being overweight like they ended up in your case. Obviously you’re experienced and know what you’re doing..just curious why you moved them so far forward if the load came pretty far back?

Oh gotcha lol. Glad they were lenient. Idk about y’all but DOT been out in force in Colorado. Before this year I’ve only been inspected once in over 5 years of driving. This last month I’ve been pulled in for a level 3 and then literally the very next week pulled in at a checkpoint and had my license ran. I also never see truck accidents and then I passed three in two consecutive days last week, all of them pretty bad (one was a a fatality for sure…it was even in the news). It’s been an interesting summer

Were the trailer lights working when you did your pre-trip?

Everything worked using the exterior light test function before I left. Also confirmed with yard spotter that they were working when I dropped trailer. Obvious intermittent issue. Shop has a new pigtail for me. 2 trailers so far today working fine.

Were the trailer lights working when you did your pre-trip?