Overdrive Magazine | Trucking Business News & Owner Operator Info
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/748284
November 2016 | Overdrive | 37 used for hours enforcement and shared with states that request them. "We've been working closely with our neighbors for a long time for commercial vehicle en- forcement," he says, particularly Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Nevada and Canadian partners to the north. Overdrive's CSA's Data Trail has shown that Oregon, Nevada and nearby Wyo- ming are among the top 10 states with an intense focus on the log book during inspections. Montana also has appeared in the top 10 in the recent past. Washington, however, doesn't seem to reach for one particular area of violation, and Curl credits the state patrol's inspec- tors for a balanced approach. His last inspection in Washington, at the Bow Hill port of entry on I-5 south of Bellingham, "was a pretty thorough inspection. They did a thorough job, and they were fair." Curl, a board member for the Own- er-Operator Independent Drivers Asso- ciation, much prefers the kind of hours enforcement enabled by the external plate readers Washington employs to the intru- sive route the federal government wants to take by mandating electronic logging devices. Not that plate readers – or ELDs, for that matter – are foolproof by any means. A close friend of Curl's was about to be ticketed at a scale in Washington for log falsification. He knew something was wrong, however, as his log book was well in order. He "asked them to pull up a picture of the truck" they were using for assessing the falsification. The record, captured by a plate reader, included a picture of a "truck that was totally a different color" – proof that the plate was a clear misread. Keep that in mind when traveling the Pacific Northwest. Moving violations as a percentage of all violations 6.1 2012 2013 2014 2015 Washington National average 6.4 6.8 8.1 4.3 4.5 4.6 4.6 Category Maintenance Lights Brakes Tires Moving violations Hours of service Percentage of all violations 63.3% 13.3% 14.9% 3.9% 8.1% 10% National rank of percentage 29 32 27 32 17 29 INSPECTIONS PER LANE-MILE: 8 NATIONAL RANK: 5 FOR INSPECTION INTENSITY NATIONWIDE VIOLATION PROFILE 41 PERCENT: SHARE OF WASHING- TON'S INSPECTIONS IN 2015 THAT WAS VIOLATION-FREE. THE STATE RANKS 20TH AMONG STATES WITH LOW CLEAN-INSPECTIONS PERCENTAGES. Source: Unless otherwise noted, all numbers based on 2015 federal data analyzed by RigDig Business Intelligence (rigdig. com/bi) Washington ranks No. 5 nationwide for a high intensity of inspections performed at roadside (48 percent of the time) and in fixed locations (52 percent) by its roughly 200 personnel dedi- cated to truck enforcement. That's balanced by a strong record on clean inspections – 41 per- cent show no violations – that helps owner-op- erators' CSA scores; the national average is 41.4 percent. A refocusing of patrolling troopers in 2015 led to a significant boost in the share of moving violations in which truckers were cited. Owner-operator Tilden Curl, in his role as an Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association board member and driver ad- vocate, has been increasingly active in the National Truck Parking Coalition. His home area of Olympia, Washington, now more or less part of the Seattle metro area, marks a northern edge of a roughly 500-square- mile densely populated area. If you don't include three truck stops at the north, south and eastern edges, the area contains "only about 200 to 300 truck parking spaces. … There's just nothing there, really," Curl says. Yet "just shy of 15,000 commercial motor vehicles a day go through here. How are these folks supposed to park for their 30-min- ute break or just find a place to stop? Basically, the lack of concern about it is astonishing to me." Capt. Mike Dahl of the state patrol agrees and has made it part of his concern, though he admittedly has made little progress. When we talked in October, he had just met with a state senator about the parking issue. "We're looking to get a fairly large [weigh station] just outside of Seattle metro on I-90," he says. "Part of that is we'd like to add 20 to 25 more parking stalls exclusively for truck parking." Part of his conversation with the senator also emphasized expansion of existing facilities. "There should be some parking consideration, whether we can accommodate even a handful" of new spaces, he says. As for existing scales, they're open to truckers for parking, "as long as we're not an open scale," Dahl says. That excludes most of the ports of entry, given their usual 24/7 operation. PARKING NEEDS ON WASHINGTON'S RADAR BAD STATES FOR TRUCK PARKING Washington – No. 8 Oregon – No. 20 California – No. 1 States along the I-5 corridor ranked fairly high for the biggest truck-parking issues in Overdrive's December 2015 analysis of the problem. That ranking was based in part on data from the Jason's Law survey and Overdrive's own reader survey about the parking issue.