Less than 10% of trucks going through Delta are safe: police
 

so.. lets hear from truckers on this subject... I mean, yah.. there are 100s of cars on the road that are a risk with bad tires, bad brakes, cracked windshields... but we're talking about huge huge rigs here... just how safe are they and what have the 'resident' truckers seen/heard about how some drivers maintain their rigs? are they really a huge safety issue? I know I still get a bit freaked out passing big rigs and so I pass them as fast as I can.

I mean.. 1 bad rig could cause death and destruction on a much larger level than a few cars.



Less than 10% of trucks going through Delta are safe: police | News1130


DELTA (NEWS1130) – There may be a good reason you might feel nervous driving past a semi or dump truck.

A focused commercial truck inspection in Delta last week found less than 10 per cent of trucks on our roads are safe. Despite that, police don’t want you to be worried while you’re on the road.

Sergeant Ciaran Feenan says they did a visual inspection of 429 trucks and only 37 passed. They checked things like brakes, tires, lights, load security, driver licensing, and fatigue.

In BC, he says Delta has the highest ratio of commercial vehicles on the road. “It’s generally what we expected but we do want people to know that is if a focused inspection. There are thousands of vehicles traveling on our roads every day and it’s focusing on the ones that shouldn’t be out there.”

Louise Yako with the BC Trucking Association maintains safety is a priority for them. “We are doing what we think we can and should do in order to improve safety on the road. So… this is a good reminder that there are things that should be focused on every day.”

She adds there is a requirement for truck drivers to conduct daily inspections before hitting the road.

This was Delta’s seventh annual blitz. Feenan says inspectors do them all across the province year-round. More than 200 trucks had obvious violations; 184 have been taken out of service and three were impounded. One driver was unlicenced.

My perspective?

Describe "safe" for me.

I don't think 392 vehicles from their inspection had frames with rust holes, no brakes and a driver doing bennies after driving for 6 days straight.

These things tend to be worst case scenario. They also tend to pop up every now and then to make sure that budgets stay ever increasing.

A guy that ran a dump truck lived in our building and told me one day he got pulled over by a commercial inspection. Left with $1000 in fines for small things. Did I feel that he was unsafe the day before? No. Did I feel that I was so much safer after they taxed him $1000? Once again, no.

i agree with grid, it's kind of one sided to say 90% failed... what did they fail? what constitutes a fail.. how many of the 392 that failed, failed for potentially life threatening mechanical issues? this seems more like the media being the media than anything else..

184 taken out of service and people think it's a minor issue or cash grab?

This is a huge problem. There are lots of vehicle inspectors out there who will pass your truck for a couple hundred cash. ICBC pulls the licenses of them all the time and more keep popping up. There would be no demand for these scammers (inspectors) if there wasn't a steady stream of truck owners lining up for their services. A co-worker at Transport Canada did lots of investigations into commercial vehicles (trucks, buses, cabs) and couldn't believe the crap he came across.
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Company Hino truck got VI'd last month cause a driver didn't pull into the weigh station (driver got ticketed). They dinged for stuff like chipped markers/lights, improper decal on the side and that the exhaust tip was too pointy and could hurt someone.
The truck mechanically feels great though, no weird vibrations and everything worked so I never thought anything was really wrong with it.

Agreed with Gridlock.

Some of the shit they fine you is dumb. These inspectors should also look at idiots who can't tie down stuff on their cars like mattresses, etc

Well, let's keep in mind that there is a wide variety of commercial vehicles that get dragged into these things.

The trucks that haul containers from port are usually shit trucks with a less than stellar maintenance program.

...but all I'm saying is I've also heard a lot of stories where they are dinging you for minor items, and you add in a news article that likes to skip the finer details and it comes out looking like worst case scenario.

Yeah, we need the entire breakdown of this.
I believe it's a work truck over 5500 gvw. So this would include your daily work truck as well.

I deal with trucks every day and I've stopped being surprised by how many of them shouldn't be on the road. One truck had floor boards so rotted that a forklift actually fell through it. I've had countless trucks with the rear roll up door busted, so they simply left it open and drove around like that. One day I had a container truck drop off a shipment that had just arrived at the docks and in the process of backing into the loading bay, the entire container came loose off the frame and slid right off. I'm just glad that happened in an isolated area and now while he was turning a corner on a major road.

Most of the major local companies that own their own trucks tend to look after them pretty well (ie: Unisource will go out of their way to make sure all of their trucks and trailers are 100%). It's usually the smaller companies and O/O's that are being dinged more often for infractions. I'll bet that the most frequent ticket that's handed out are tail lights and loads not being strapped down properly. No, they're not major issues but the former can be a huge issue at night time and the latter is a disaster waiting to happen should the driver have to brake or swerve suddenly.

I've actually thought joining the CVSE in the past solely because of how many shitty trucks I've seen first hand that were on the road.

Overgreased tie rod ends and ball joints or a small oil leak could cause a non pass aka fail.

I have lost count of how many times I've seen these large commercial trucks (usually along Marine Drive, Stewardson Way, Front Street, Brunette) that have nearly or completely blad tires. If you tell me that is not a safety hazard, I dunno what is.

The truckers that failed the road side inspections are the ones asking for it. Their trucks aren't kept in tip top shape, aren't cleaned, and the O/Os run freight so cheap that they can't afford to up keep their truck. Then these O/O grease the shops pockets to pass them so they can continue under cutting each other.

I'm so glad that I'm not in the sea container hauling business, you can barely make a living with whats going on there.

Ha!

After the port strike, like to the minute within the settlement that Reddy had created a system where the pricing was all standardized and such, we get a call saying, "we're ready to start hauling the backlog...and don't worry man, we'll do something on the money"

This.

Let's remember that, unlike your car, these rigs are under a LOT of physical stress day in and day out. They park out in the elements rather than in a nice, cozy garage. Mechanicals are exposed to direct weather all the time. They pack tons (literally) of extra weight around that puts loads on axles, suspension, frames, etc.

You can drive your car for months or years without needed to do anything to the brakes... these trucks NEED to have their brakes checked on a daily basis. If the brakes go soft on your car, you can probably still gear down and get it under control without incident. If the brakes aren't at 100% on a truck, well... remember that dump truck incident in West Van? The asphalt truck at Horseshoe Bay? The brakes are strained at the best of times, never mind if the guy is overloaded to make a few extra bucks. One set of brakes not working out of eight may be the difference between stopping, and... well, disaster.

Improperly secured load is a big one. Remember a logging truck that lost its load on the Upper Levels, crushing two women in a car on the other side of the highway? A few tons of round objects don't need to shift very much for things to get very, very dicey, very fast.

Combine that with weak brakes (or worse, braked that don't all activate evenly), or shitty suspension components, and you've got a serious problem.

So yeah, damn those fucking pigs for being out there spoiling people's day! You'd think they'd have something better to do, like chasing down street-racing ricers and shit!

not to knock on or favour any one but unless you're EI, you dont stand a chance at making any kind of decent money hauling cans from ports.

Drove past this today and all I could think was that at least it slid forward.

I don't know if they are the same as containers, but they'd forget to lock the pins on the cans all the time. The company I worked for got a machine that you can stack containers. Hoping they bought some insurance to match, because we were the type of company that would forget to lock pins.

Also, remember that the trailers have nothing to do with the driver. You might have an excellent driver with a great truck hauling a shit trailer.

As soon as a driver hooks a trailer to his truck, it becomes his responsibility. Drivers AFAIK are required to check the trailer's brakes, tires, frame, electrics, and mechanicals for proper operation as well. Dragging around a trailer with bad or no brakes and something goes wrong, "it ain't my scope" is NOT going to wash. Once that trailer is connected to YOUR tractor, the whole thing becomes YOUR truck and YOUR responsibility.

This is probably why we see trucks spewing thick dark smoke.
They don't get properly maintained and aren't checked upon frequently enough.

Air care for a car might be important, but have much more displacement and pollution generated than your average car on the road.

Plus, what's an average commute, 35-50 minutes?

Consider a truck that spends all day on the road.

Oh absolutely!

I'm just saying, they hook up to #19, inspect it all they want but if they don't see the problem, they don't see the problem.

They go in for inspections on regular intervals as well.

This is ridiculous. I will try to avoid driving behind of those kind of trucks.

It looks like the chain that moves the bin forward and backward on that transfer trailer failed when the driver braked hard for the light

heres a video of the same type of transfer trailer found here

skip to the 40sec mark

Truckers know the danger their trucks pose to the general public when not up to snuff, they also know that they are scrutinized and are supposed to do a pre trip inspection EVERY day of operation. If 184 were pulled off the road for not meeting those standards then thats a huge problem not just a cash grab. remember these trucks arent lowered with loud fatr cans and HID's modded in. These are work trucks. Trucks dont get pulled out of service for cracked or chipped lights they dont get pulled out of service for loads not being secure. They get ticketed and loads get secured or left behind till they can be.
Trucks do get pulled out of service for broken frames, bald or flat tires (yes lots have flat dead tires on the inside of the dually set leading to the outside one being over loaded) fucked brakes and then the driver relies on the engine brake, worn out king pins in the front suspension leading to a 200 pound knuckle with a 300 pound wheel tire brake attached to it flying off.
These stops are not cash grabs they are needed.