MO DOT

Knew was coming and now has started here.

MO Brown Shirt DOT Enforcement Group is situating prowling check points across five counties out here, stopping Ton and 3/4T Trucks with ANY form of trailer where do not have F Tags. I fully expected being stopped when hauled the derelict crawler away.

Local Contractor, newer Dodge Ton dually trucks with Cummins, thought was smart only 18k license tags, Two not only overweight(By close to a Ton) but drivers had NO CDL, 30,000GVWR on Cab Tags, no DOT Numbers and NO Company name signage on truck sides. Was written up in local rag we got this morning. Both were towed.

Sounds like hunting season out here for deer except over there it’s hunting by local brown shirts hunting for drivers to ticket. Damn I love where I live... There is a reason the state is named Misery

They are doing their job, at least for what they are getting payed to do. I wish DOT would go after more of them.
If they met the requirements those vehicles would have been on there way. Trying to circumvent the rules by
running peanut trucks.

Would rather see these twits removed from the road than kill someone and insurance say Not Our Problem then employer calls Bankrupt and the families get squat. ules written for EVERYONE, perform By the rules and all is good, pays your money takes your chances is your own fault.

Need a Truck buy a 'Truck' not a glorified SUV, need truck drivers pay for the licenses and the qualifications.

I don't know. I see the same people in four different battered mini vans a year. A common theme, three donut spares, exhaust dragging, at least one window patched with plastic & duct tape. Six runny nosed kids wrestling in the back, "Dad" & mom smoking away. Some have home made license plates, others state supplied. NONE have valid inspection stickers. I've not once seen one of them pulled over by a DOT officer. I guess safety is not a concern with them, only trucks.

They get stopped here by state patrol, county sheriff, city police. And a DOT officer at least in this state is a commercial division with a main concern of commercial vehicles.
As far as people driving unsafe personal vehicles that's a concern for city, county and state law enforcement. DOT has way fewer officers than standard law enforcement has
so their primary concern is commercial vehicles. As far as what dad and mom are doing when children are present is a concern for child protective services. As far as the situation
the family is in that's for them to straighten out-if they can. Or they can ask for help.

Around here, drive a truck, it costs $200 to talk to a DOT officer. Drive a pickup, it doesn't matter what you tow, or on what kind of trailer, you drive on by.

mitch504 said:

Around here, drive a truck, it costs $200 to talk to a DOT officer. Drive a pickup, it doesn't matter what you tow, or on what kind of trailer, you drive on by.

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That's changed out here somewhat, DOT is starting to put more emphasis on pickups, one tons and ton and a half rigs pulling 35 and 40 foot goose necks. I know most are stopped for
insecure loads and it goes from there.

I asked some DOT officers why they ignored pickups and single axle trucks. They said it was too hard to keep up with what laws applied to them.

mitch504 said:

I asked some DOT officers why they ignored pickups and single axle trucks. They said it was too hard to keep up with what laws applied to them.

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That almost sounds like it's just a little work than I want to do response.

The sad part is they try to find fault even for minor things. Years ago I got pulled over by the truck unit. I was driving a 1 ton carrying a 40HP tractor on a trailer. One guy asks for my license and registration while the other one is going over my trailer and truck with a fine toothed comb. He said your chains are all tight, tires, lights, safety chains and everything else is good. Then the first guy gives me a $150 ticket because I didn't have GVW stickers on the side of the truck. I explained that the registry where I got the plates only told me I have to register the truck and trailer together when I asked what was required.

The guy guessed I was over the weight that didn't require stickers(4500kg's, just under 10,000lbs.). A couple of people said I should have fought it if they didn't actually pull out a portable scale and weigh everything. About a month later a cop actually told me for something like that they can use a little discretion and often give you 24 hours to comply with the requirement if you're otherwise safe. It ticked me off because there are guys hauling stuff around on trailers that should never be on the road yet I get a ticket because of not having some stickers on the side of the truck. It was a technicality not a safety issue. Most guys hauling skid steers with pick ups don't have any stickers and are likely over 4500kg's.

Welder Dave said:

The sad part is they try to find fault even for minor things. Years ago I got pulled over by the truck unit. I was driving a 1 ton carrying a 40HP tractor on a trailer. One guy asks for my license and registration while the other one is going over my trailer and truck with a fine toothed comb. He said your chains are all tight, tires, lights, safety chains and everything else is good. Then the first guy gives me a $150 ticket because I didn't have GVW stickers on the side of the truck. I explained that the registry where I got the plates only told me I have to register the truck and trailer together when I asked what was required.

The guy guessed I was over the weight that didn't require stickers(4500kg's, just under 10,000lbs.). A couple of people said I should have fought it if they didn't actually pull out a portable scale and weigh everything. About a month later a cop actually told me for something like that they can use a little discretion and often give you 24 hours to comply with the requirement if you're otherwise safe. It ticked me off because there are guys hauling stuff around on trailers that should never be on the road yet I get a ticket because of not having some stickers on the side of the truck. It was a technicality not a safety issue. Most guys hauling skid steers with pick ups don't have any stickers and are likely over 4500kg's.

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I'd bet 90% of pickups pulling trailers grossing over 4500 kg's don't have weights on them, mine doesn't and never has. It's not something DOT here ever enforces.

I don't have a problem if it's a legit ticket, but the looking for a reason for a ticket is just BS, I don't care how well the truck is looked after, if they want to give you a ticket they will find something. Every time they do a road stop blitz they come out to the news with a massive headline hundreds of unsafe trucks off the road and put out of service. What they don't say is why, a tire more then 10% under max inflation is out of service. I mean, if a tire is 89 psi instead of 90, imagine how unsafe that is? Obviously some are unsafe, I bet like 10% of the trucks they pull off the road are actually posing a safety risk. When they do them at least they catch the idiots pulling skidsteers in dump trailers not tied down, or other insane things that pickups generally get away with. Other then those times, they don't seem to bother them. Or in the winter when they sit outside the snow dump and hand out ticket for not tarping snow, even though it's basically known you don't have to tarp snow, I would get it if they just went after the really insane loads or one's they see it falling off, but when they do it, it's any load that isn't tarped gets a ticket. I wish they would go more after any unsafe load too, not just commercial. If you're pulling a rv they won't give you a second look no matter how unsafe.

Driver my dad had (fired after this incident) got 3 tickets in one stop. She being the genius she was, figured the flashing lights at the scales didn't apply to her and figured she didn't need to stop in a loaded tandem dump truck. So of course they chased her down and brought her back to the scales where she got a $300ish ticket for failing to stop at scales, $500ish for having restricted plates (was just over the boundary, stupid ticket IMO should have just warned), and $300ish for unsecure load because of some dirt on side boards. Expensive day! Had 8 other trucks going that day, all of which were smart enough to stop and got waived through, a few had restricted plates also and would have been screwed, but a lot better off actually pulling into the scales......

The city truck inspectors stopped me on QE2 close to 23 ave. and that was back in the mid to late 90's. I've always heard the truck units were the worst. 10 minutes of one guy telling me I have everything safe and the other guy gives a $150 ticket because I don't have stickers on the side of the truck. Big power trip for some I suspect.

I do have 24000 lb license on my pickup
GVW on it with the trailer that is doable
So supposedly with any over 12000 license supposed to have name and weight on side
Not done that since my Dodge in the 80s
No one else here does and small business I know seldom marks any of their light trucks
Been told that MO let that statute slide some years back so will eventually find out or the day will come the pickup will go away

One of the young guys we see a lot of called me one day. He was working on Martha's Vineyard MA but his boss sent him to Vermont for a load of something or other. He was driving a 3 year old truck in good condition, GVWR at 25000. No CDL required. State police stopped him, claimed that out of state trucks require CDL at lesser weight. They red flagged the truck. He had to have his mother drive 60 miles each way to transport him. His citation specified a class A CDL driver had to drive it to Mass state line.

I sure doubt that sort of BS would hold up in court, or anybody could show in statute law such a law, but who can take the time for that?

The real problem is each state having/requiring a different set of rules/regulations. The lower 48 should be the same across the board. And some of those regulations when written
50 years ago need to be revised. And most DOT will cut some slack when they see a person is trying to do it right, but fresh DOT officers have a tendency of trying the new
sheriff in town approach.

We have our share of Name Makers in the State Brown Shirts. They want to be something they are not or cannot achieve by applying the rules so rules get 'Adjusted'. My ex boss used the old Pete to deliver a sold trailer bobtail coming back a Washington MO Franklin COUNTY DOT pulled him over and does inspection, issues a warning for No Conspicuity tape on Rear Cab Corners as ONLY thing could respond to, I noted to that boss is NOT a requirement except for trailers and box trucks, he still put it on.

I also believe they have quotas to meet or get brownie points for more citations.

I know a area DOT officer-WSP-DOT has no quotas. There are so many violation rolling at any one time a DOT officer doesn't have to look hard to fill a ticket book. The OTR's don't normally
get random pull overs unless something is obvious. OTR's cross so many port of entry scales that pull random inspections the roving DOT spend there time on the local's in their area.
Now with that said some officers with the WSP will call in randomly on vehicle plate numbers. I remember years ago a impound we had to do the driver had three license's-home was S.D.
That driver had 11 failures to appear. The biggest violations/most common are improper paper work, out of date or no vehicle inspection that's current on tractors/trailers. The other is the
use of farm tabs hauling commercially. In my area the possibility of getting stopped just to check for off road fuel in pickups is about 8%. Dump trucks is another vehicle that DOT keeps
a eye on, must have 9" free board from edge of load to top of box, and no there is no such thing as a dump truck not being responsible for broken windshields. If anything falls of a
commercial vehicle it's deemed insecure load. Top rail/edge of box and tailgate must be free of loose material. Lowboys the deck must be swept clean, all load chains and hooks must be
system 7.