Out of Service violations

All Merchandise

North American Standard Out-of-Service Criteria Handbook and Pictorial Edition

 

the only thing that can put you out of service is a 4 wheeler with a light bar or a 4 wheeler parked at the scale

things you absolootely should n0t drive on: hub seal leaks, tires showing metal thru rubber, loose or broken steering/suspension (springs, hangars, steering link bar thing). those 3 are time bombs that will literally kill people if they go off, and there's no mitigating or controlling who's windshield u place the hub assembly through when it comes off at 65 mph. everything else is "safety"... lights, leaks, brakes. I say brakes because there's gd 10 hubs worth of brakes, and if you lose everything they all spring default to ON. most are disk brakes now anyways. plus even with losing brakes, it's still a chose your own adventure scenario

 

The green book ( FMCSA / DOT ) has a list of OOS items , both driver relsted and vehicle related . Also if it would fail a pre trip , it will fail in a DOT insp. And depending on there mood , can also put you OOS .

 

Flat tires and leaking air lines.
I've heard loose brakes.

And cop attitude can vary greatly.

 

Flat tires are easy to spot.

Leaking air lines and loose brakes not so much during an inspection.
We don't actually get down below to measure the brakes like they might do in an inspection. It takes two people to work it.
And they can say whatever.

And leaking air lines? I was inspected in IL once and the officer 'found' chafed air lines in an area that does not touch anything.
About 18" from the glad hands both air lines were 'chafed', which actually looked like cut down with a razor. Very smooth cuts.
As he was 'inspecting' things I was required to stay in the drivers seat.

 

Montana claims to have some type of listening device. Middle of the night he heard my blue line at the glad hand. And parked me. I waited till daylight and fixed the line and left.

As for loose brakes. Most standard trailers can be seen from the other side. If there's any gap between brake and drum. Others will require sticking head down inside.

Nice adjustments will have brakes kissing drums.

Course. If you have drums that should have been changed 2 brake jobs ago. Makes it tough. And you have to eyeball the brakes.

 

Idaho is installing some sort of gismo to detect bad tires at their scale houses .

 

I think it was Florida DOT that I saw a video of with infrared technology to discover warm (low) tires

 

Alberta has equipment at Coutts that scans for hot brakes (differential temps between brakes, really).