It’s a dirty job, and Jeff Norling is glad to be doing it.
Norling, a Kansas Highway Patrol technical trooper, is part of the patrol’s MCSAP unit, affiliated with the Motor Carrier Safety Assistance Program that brings federal dollars into the state to enforce safety for the trucking industry.
The MCSAP program is intended to make the roads safer for the truckers and for drivers of other vehicles. To accomplish that, Norling does hands-on inspections in, around and under 18-wheelers and other commercial vehicles.
“My wife has gone through a gallon of Shout since I started this job,” he said, joking about the dirt and grease that collect on his uniform as a result.
He estimated that 80 to 85 percent of the truck inspections are done on the roadside or in check lanes.
“On the roadside, we try to pick a safe location where we can pull them over,” Norling said.
“The biggest thing I can say is the inspections are done to gain compliance with the regulations and to ensure public safety.”
Ferreting out mechanical problems and other violations — and making sure they’re corrected — means fewer hazards lurking for other drivers on the highways.
Two of the most common problems he’s found are defective tires and front axle brakes out of adjustment, “meaning he doesn’t have any stopping capability with his front brakes,” Norling said. Flat tires can sling rubber at other motorists and leave dangerous debris on the highways.
Norling did a random check on Interstate 35 just east of Emporia this month to illustrate what the inspections entail.
The random inspection proved that point when he stopped a semi pulling a loaded flatbed trailer from the Port of Houston to Canada.
“What I find is that, generally speaking, most of the trucks on the road are safe,” Norling said before the inspection. “It’s not a very high percentage that gets placed out of service for major violations.”
The driver of the truck, Wilf Senft, works for Coastland Carriers of Okotoks, Alberta, Canada. Senft was pleased to see the trooper looking over the truck, and responded quickly each time Norling requested cooperation. Senft furnished an up-to-date driver’s log, pushed the brakes on cue as the trooper slid around under the trailer on a creeper to check each of them, pulled open the truck’s gaping hood to let Norling look for defects or loose parts, flashed and blinked his lights, and cooperated in a variety of other component checks that are part of the inspection process.
Senft said he initially had been surprised when the trooper pulled up behind him with lights flashing.
“Well, I know I wasn’t speeding,” Senft described his first thought. “I’m sure there’s some reason he wants me.”
Senft said that being pulled over is more common now than before 9/11.
“We’re used to the Department of Transportation doing this, and now the state troopers are doing it as well,” he said. “It’s an excellent program.”
Senft was hauling over-sized transformers from the Port of Houston to a power station in the north country of Canada; they’d been shipped in from Brazil. He felt reassured that his rig and its load were being singled out for inspection.
“We have to, all of us, be very conscious of what we’re hauling,” Senft said. “Something might be planted. We’re not in a situation any more where everybody’s nice.”
Senft and his truck passed Norling’s Level 1 inspection — which takes 45 minutes to an hour — without a problem.
MCSAP has six levels of inspection, according to Capt. Dan Meyer, unit commander. The checks also include “walk-arounds” to check key components and the driver, drivers-only, special studies and inspections of carriers’ terminals. Because Kansas has no approved route for radioactive shipments, Level 6 inspections are not done, although training has been done in preparation for when and if it occurs.
“If a truck driver gets a clean bill of health from us during a Level 1 inspection, it counts for annual inspection,” Meyer said. “So that’s how in-depth an inspection is.”
Inspections are recorded and available to troopers to can give them a good idea of a company’s record.
“It can say brakes or driver issues or traffic laws or load securement. It will help you identify what the problems are,” he said. “It doesn’t mean don’t look at everything else; it just means they’ve got a history of these violations.”
Too many failed inspections, accidents or complaints can prompt a thorough investigation at the carrier’s terminal.
In recent years, the New Entrant Program has helped start-up carriers run a safer business.
“The intent of that is that if you decide (to open a trucking business), you go online and you get a Department of Transportation number, and if you want to go interstate, you’ll be placed into the New Entrant Program,” Meyer said.
The goal is to set up the business, obtain proper permits, begin operations and “hopefully, you have an inspection or two under your belt,” he said. “Then the audit comes in and cleans up and helps tweak what you’re doing and correct it.”
Audits include going over driver qualification files, background checks, pre-employment drug screenings and 10 years of employment history on driving.
“You’ve got an obligation to verify my background,” Meyer said. “If I’ve been trucking for 20 years and I’ve moved from job to job every year, you could potentially have your work cut out for you.”
Safety audits take about a day; compliance reviews, which are much more in-depth, can take up to two weeks on a large company with 1,000 or more vehicles.
On the other side of the safety coin, Meyer said that Kansas has initiated a new program, “Trucks On Patrol for Safety,” where troopers can see first-hand how passenger vehicles operate around commercial trucks.
Troopers equipped with cameras and radar ride in the cabs of semis with professional drivers.
“We get to observe traffic violations that occur in and around a large truck,” Meyer said. The state can spend up to 5 percent of its MCSAP funds on the project.
Meyer said that in a three-year congressional study focused on about 1,000 vehicle crashes, the leading contributing factor was not attributed to the large trucks, but to vehicles operating around them.
A 2005 study showed that 5.7 percent of all traffic collisions involved large trucks; however, 17.7 percent of fatal collisions involved large trucks.
“We find that large trucks were assigned a contributing factor only 32 percent of the time,” Meyer said. “And that doesn’t mean they were at fault, but that they were a contributing factor. The other 68 percent of the time, the contributing factor was assigned to the other vehicle.
“So that shows we have a big need to educate the motoring public of the need to operate safely around the large trucks, and that’s what we hope to address through the TOPS program,” he said.
“People need to rethink how they drive around these trucks,” Meyer said. “We’ve got to do something to bring these truck collisions down.”
Defensive driving
The following facts and safety tips can help passenger vehicles share the road safely with commercial trucks, and additional information is available at www.kshighway patrol.org and www.fmcsa.dot.gov.
• A large truck can weigh up to 20 times the average passenger vehicle weight. The truck requires the length of a football field to stop at 60 miles per hour; a car going 60 can stop in a fraction of that distance.
• When passing a truck, do not pull back into its lane until you can see it in your rear-view mirror, to avoid being rear-ended by a truck that cannot slow in time.
• If you cannot see the truck driver’s mirrors, he cannot see your car or pickup.
• Don’t get caught in the “squeeze.” When trucks swing wide to the left to safely turn right, they cannot see vehicles directly behind or beside them, and serious accidents can result. Give trucks plenty of room to maneuver.
• Allow ample space between a truck and your passenger vehicle. The driver can see a hazard in front of him that you cannot see from behind him. Give himtime to react.
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