Inspectors Champion Returns as Judge for 2014 Competition

Canard, left, by John Sommers II for Transport Topics

This story appears in the Aug. 11 print edition of Transport Topics.

When would-be champions ask Derek Canard, the Arkansas Highway Police corporal who won the 2013 North American Inspectors Championship, how best to approach the competition, his message is simple.

“Pay attention to detail, and do what you do every day on the side of the road,” Canard said.

Forty-nine inspectors will be competing for the top prize at this year’s competition Aug. 11-15 in Pittsburgh.

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The event is held annually in conjunction with the National Truck Driving Championships and is sponsored by the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance — the state, provincial and local police agencies that enforce trucking and bus laws in North America.

Canard will be judging this year instead of competing but said one thing won’t change.

“Every year I went, I learned something new; it helped me to strengthen my skills,” said Canard, who competed several years before winning the title.

The skill strengthening is a critical part of the event, said CVSA officials, who use it to provide intensive training sessions. That benefits the agencies that paid to send the inspectors after they first won state championships.

“What they get back is a better inspector and an inspector who can now [share] the information he’s learned,” said CVSA’s president, Sgt. Thomas Fuller of the New York State Police. “So it’s a win-win scenario for the agencies.”

The relationships built during the competition won’t end when the inspectors leave Pittsburgh, Fuller said.

“When the feds write a regulation, it’s not always crystal clear; we all know that, so people like to get opinions,” he said. “Well, if I’m the champion from my jurisdiction, who’s the best person for me to call? Maybe a champion from another jurisdiction.”

“They continue on with their relationships, and they call each other and talk to each other, and they solve problems that way,” he added.

And CVSA has an underlying motive in the competition and training — promoting the uniformity that develops when jurisdictions are talking to one another, Fuller said.

“You have to look at it from a trucker’s point of view,” he said. “You drive through 20 different jurisdictions; do you want to be treated 20 different ways?”

Skilled inspectors generate “better data quality, and better data quality is what everybody’s striving for to help out companies and enforcement,” Fuller said. Good data allow law enforcement and industry to spot and correct deficiencies, he said.

Stephen Keppler, CVSA’s executive director, said that, to further strengthen inspector skills, CVSA uses real-world data when developing the competition tests.

“When we’re designing those elements, we use data and information from the field to help construct the problems,” Keppler said, “things like where we’re seeing trends in the inspection data or if we’re seeing inconsistencies.”