Inspection is Hip Posted by DC Cargo Mall on June 03, 2013

The rules out there for truck securement are not there just to keep you on your toes. They exist to keep you alive and to keep your cargo in one piece.

 Let’s face it. Truckers would be out of business if not for the need to move the cargo that they haul.

  It all revolves around the cargo and its securement, but at the end of the day, it’s up to you to ensure that these standards placed by the FMCSA are adhered to in a no-kidding manner.

And it isn’t because inspections crop up on the roadside and you want to be prepared. Because whether the principal is watching the student or not, the school is there for his knowledge bank to inflate, and ultimately, for his own benefit. Trucking isn’t all that different.

Secure your load properly, and the value of hiring you to transport loads has just gone up one-hundred percent!  Similar to the graded student, your ranking is recorded with authority, and whatever decisions you make or don’t, will come back to bite you in the face, good or otherwise.

Take Y. Tager for example. He is out of the business before his time and is now working at a factory, screwing caps on bottles. He says he is qualified for the trucking industry and devastated to be removed of the privilege to continue. He was extremely knowledgeable in all the ins and outs, the rules, and the tricks.

“I knew how to pull the wool over various authorities’ eyes, as far as load securement goes.” He reminisces thoughtfully. “But,” He adds, “In the long run, I’m screwed.” Tager explained that on one of his routes, where he side stepped a couple violations, and got by without quite enough ratchet straps, it happened. He even remembers the song that blasted from his old radio as he swerved ‘round the bend and the contents of his trailer broke loose. The entire truck went on a mad frenzy and picked up momentum as it swirled into a circle, hitting an empty parked bus, and downing a tree.

“I got lucky,” he reminds us.  “I could have died in a few seconds flat. The bus could have been full. My cushioned seats happened to save my life but it was then that it hit me that it isn’t about whose watching and who isn’t. It’s about you making sure to watch yourself. I had a clean slated record of CSA compliance rankings like you wouldn’t believe, in spite of my violations, because hiding was my expertise. But in 20/20 hindsight, I obviously needed to inspect my truck's safety for my own benefit.”

He concludes that he is lucky today that he has not wound up in jail from killing someone in the accident, and that he has not wound up dead. His truck license though, is a thing of the past, and as he finishes capping on his last few bottles at the factory for the day, he shows us a beautiful picture on his now tiny mobile phone, of a shiny red truck with his smiling face in the window.

He advises to replace damaged parts instead of repairing them, or to at least spend well-worth amounts on proper repairs instead of doing it yourself, and to inspect details often.

“My truck is gone, and some of my dignity too, because that was my passion. I learnt the hard way, but I share my story so that others learn the easy way, and don’t follow my path.”

He learnt to think of inspections as a doctors’ visit for his child. “You want them to be okay, right? Even if you take care of them, you want the professionals to come and say yeah, that’s a guy we want hauling our stuff around, we feel safe around him on the road. That’s my dream.”