Blue Ink Tech Blog

Truck drivers have been using records of duty status (RODS) for over eighty years now. In the past, drivers would fill out a physical logbook for their RODS. But nowadays this is done with an electronic logbook since it can keep better track of your data and hours-of-service (HOS) rules. 

Getting a truck properly loaded and balanced is almost a science in the trucking industry. There are a lot of tools that help drivers understand how much they are hauling and how to adjust the truck and trailer to fit inside the required weight restrictions for gross and axle weights.

Trucking is one of the most competitive industries to be in. There are over 4.5 million trucks on the road in the US and they are all looking for loads to haul. With the amount of available trucks able to take loads the competition is high and the profit margins are low. New carriers have a lot working against them while trying to build a reputation for themselves and earn their way to consistent steady work.

We recently compiled violation data collected by the FMCSA to show trends in enforcement over the course of the year. We are looking at overweight violation trends over the year and when compared to our "DOT Violations issued by State in September" post we can see a similar trend among all violations issued. 

If the data continues the following its current trend it's possible that the industry will be in a period of heavy enforcement over the next 3-5 months. Below you can see the overweight violations that were issued from 2021 to September 2022 and the trend that the data follows.

Below is the trend of overweight violations issued by each state so far this year. You can see which state are more aggressive or more lax when it comes to issuing overweigh violations for semi trucks.

These violations include overweight on axles, gross and tires load limits. 

Overweight violations are some of the more costly violations in the trucking industry. Depending which state you are in you could pay a lot for every pound you are over the required limits. If you have traveled over bridges overloaded the violations can cost much more.

Being sure to scale every load is an effective way to make sure that you are always legal. Onboard scaling systems can also help drivers know if they are above or below their legal limits. These scaling systems cost much less than the cost of getting an over weight violation.

If you are ever issued a violation for something that you know you were with in the bounds of the law then you can file a DataQ with the FMCSA and have it reviewed and removed from affecting your CSA score.

Alabama

The Crash Indicator Behavior Analysis and Safety Improvement Category (BASIC) is one of seven categories that the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) uses to determine how a motor carrier ranks relative to other carriers with a similar number of safety events (i.e., inspections, violations, or crashes). This is used to determine a carrier's CSA score.