Violations – How To Avoid them. One of our very own, a member of the Hotshot-USA Resource Network of Groups and a longtime Owner Operator of a Hotshot and Semi truck authority, once led a life as a DOT officer. He often chimes in to give me advice about certain posts, comments, his experiences, and topics. He has been a wealth of knowledge for our groups.
He often gives me his view and stories of how he used to deal with Hotshot Trucks, CDL and Non-CDL. Yes, as we all thought, they are easy targets and prey for violations. He confirmed that they understand that many of the drivers run illegally and their little tricks to elude their detection. Also, they do have a quota which they call contacts.
So, last night’s topic of the day on our HOTSHOT TRUCKING group drew more comments than most. Everyone wanted to weigh in. In the post, a longtime member was telling us how he was arrested and had to make a bond for being over 2601 lbs. and not having a CDL. Most wanted to call him names and a liar about the violations, but it turned out that he posted his ticket and mentioned other ex-law enforcement and drivers that it had happen to. Confirming that this was a real threat.
Many states, Counties or Cities may require you to post a roadside bond and if you do not or are not able, then you will be arrested onsite. Take Oklahoma for instance. You run their weigh station and they chase you down. You will be required to pay for a ticket on demand, roadside or not.
So I asked him to write up some tips and things that he used to look for when dealing with Hotshot and here is what he described.
Things officers look for in hotshots and 7/10 find violations.
1. Bed on truck and 40ft trailer– easy overlength ticket violation.
2. Numbers on windows. Alot of those will roll windows down and blow scales. Also, are usually arrogant and make mistakes on paperwork logs, etc.
3. Magnetic numbers. They usually pull on weekends for personal use and usually unplug ELD so lots of ELD violations and falsified logs.
4. Numbers written with shoe polish or on paper and taped to vehicle. Alot of times its not the correct numbers.
5. Plates for wrong weight on camper haulers. Usually run 10k plates, and no numbers. Easy overweight tickets.
6. 3 car haulers running Non-CDL. Most overload their trailers and are easy overweight violations.
7. Non-CDL hotshots in general. Most de-rate their trailer and believe the myth if they’re under 26 that they’re good. Again, easy tickets due to most de-rating trailer and loading it over the new weight rating. Ex-trailer de-rates to 12k, they load a container 10k on it and weigh less than 26k, but trailer now weighs over 12k.
There’s tons more but those were my favorites and more often than not you stick to only those your going to find violations for days. Hotshots make themselves easy targets by these simple things.
Hotshots that look clean and have their shit together are just quick easy stops when your trying to get your contacts in for the day. As your driving around pay attention to who gets stopped the most or just look in the groups at who bitches about being messed with and they’ll more often fall into to those categorie. or just the ones that are lazy with their securement.
