Hazmat Trucks to Get Special Attention During Next Month’s Roadcheck Event

This story appears in the May 19 print edition of Transport Topics.

An army of 10,000 commercial vehicle inspectors will fan out across North America on June 3-5 for the 27th annual Roadcheck enforcement program, with the goal of inspecting 75,000 trucks and buses.

The Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance said the focus of this year’s event will be hazardous materials, also known as dangerous goods in Canada.

The U.S. kickoff June 3 will be at FedEx Field in Landover, Maryland, with Anne Ferro, head of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration scheduled to attend.

“The goal of Roadcheck is to have high-visibility inspection and outreach,” said Stephen Keppler, CVSA’s executive director. His group, based in Greenbelt, Maryland, represents law enforcement organizations that do truck and bus safety inspections for state, provincial and local governments.

The inspectors will perform many Level 1 inspections, the most demanding type, which call for thorough examinations of the vehicle, the driver and his or her records.

During the three-day stretch in 2013, inspectors examined more than 73,000 trucks and buses. They placed 4.2% of drivers out of service, down from 4.6% in 2012.

The vehicle inspections resulted in much higher out-of-service rates: 20.6% last year, down from 20.9% in 2012.

Keppler said it is not the case that 1 in 5 trucks nationwide are too unsafe to roll down the highways.

“The tactics in law enforcement have changed,” he said. U.S. inspectors used to pull over trucks at random, but now they are looking for bad trucks that most likely will have problems.

“The results from Roadcheck are not a reflection of the status of the industry,” he said.

In contrast, Canada still uses random inspection, and its out-of-service rates are consistently lower than those in the United States, Keppler said.

J.J. Keller & Associates, an information services vendor to trucking, said motor carriers should see Roadcheck as an opportunity to improve federal Compliance, Safety, Accountability scores.

“It’s a perfect opportunity to get some good inspection data on your company into the record,” said Thomas Bray, Keller’s transportation editor. “It’s not a secret this event is coming.”

Bray said the trucking companies with the best, or lowest CSA scores, get there because they get lots of good inspection results. Lots of bad inspections yield high scores, the worst outcome, he said, because inspectors are very eager to find those trucks and inspect them.

American Trucking Associations endorses Roadcheck.

“What CVSA members do each and every day at roadside inspections, and particularly during Roadcheck, is an important component of keeping our industry and our highways safe,” ATA spokesman Sean McNally said.

McNally added that ATA also promotes additional traffic enforcement-initiated inspections, where law enforcement officers pull over trucks seen operating unsafely.

Keppler said an important part of this year’s inspections will be dry vans hauling hazardous materials. Tank trucks often transport extremely dangerous commodities, including gasoline and chemicals. Because they do it with such great frequency, he said, those drivers and carriers are very good at it and usually have enviable hazmat scores.

In contrast, less-than-truckload carriers sometimes haul small amounts of hazardous materials mixed in with ordinary freight. Keppler said some of those drivers occasionally gloss over hazmat rules.

A frequent problem found among LTL hazmat haulers is poor blocking and bracing of loads within a trailer, Keppler said.

In Roadcheck 2013, brake problems led to nearly half of the out-of-service citations. Other frequently cited problems were lights, tires and wheels and unsafe loading.

Brake problems are usually not obvious by watching a truck roll by, but Keller’s Bray said light and tire issues often are readily apparent. He advised fleet managers to keep their vehicles well maintained and to have drivers brush up on rules.

Among driver OOS citations, hours-of-service violations, including false logs, led to 65% of revocations of operating authority.

Using an electronic logging device for HOS compliance would eliminate many of those citations, Bray said. FMCSA issued a proposed rule earlier this year that would require drivers to use ELDs in nearly all trucks.