What DOT officers usually check? Every trucker should know!

Hello, it’s Truck Dispatcher Training. I am going to tell you what every trucker should know about DOT inspections and what usually DOT officers look for.What issues should be noted?

DOT officers usually have a whole list of things they want to check and they also stick to priorities and what they want to look for.So for some reason your number was picked and got on a weigh station. First things that they are usually going to be looking for are your log book, hours of service, capability to fax or email that statement\page\of your last 7-14 days of e-logs.After that they are going to do a quick truck inspection, but you never know what depth of inspection they are going to do on you. They usually pay attention to things that are glaring or that are dangerous.There can be a couple of questions, for example “who is the owner of the truck?” and “can you open the hood?”. Yes, they always want you to open the hood, and then they look around all truck. All this time you have to be in the car and of course, you will be worried and guess what they can find.One more thing that they can check is anything from your airlines. They will make sure nothing is rattling,moving or rubbing on your airlines under the truck. DOT officers also will look for any leaks, for example oil leaks. If you have it, they will not put you out of service and they will not write up on it, but anyway they will let you know.

What else will they look in the truck?
It is your tire, they will want to make sure that it won`t worn down. Truck tread depth wear on either side groove patterns can affect your tires.Then, probably, they will check all of your lines for your brakes and your hydraulic lines.They will move around the truck and everything here can matter to them.The major thing DOT officers are going to do is make you sit behind the wheel and make you rock your steering wheel slightly and at this time they will look at the steering column or the steering pump.What will they want to check?
That there is almost zero play. The steering wheel must be slightly doing shim back and forth. They will watch how much play, if there is any at either end on this rod. They also will check at leaf springs, because you steering components or something they can visually see can be broken.They won’t look for rust or something like this. They will look for defective parts that can be a hazard. If you need to push the brake pedal and you get a rubbed through the airline and you don’t have full capacity of your brakes obviously that will be a danger.

Next they will check truck mirrors. DOT officers must make sure that all of your mirrors work,that they aren’t broken. And of course let’s speak about your air lines. They will check each and they will want to make sure that the rubbing and the vibration will run through on all airlines.There is a very small chance that they won’t check this.Next you are going to get a light test on your truck. You will turn on and turn off every light,turn your right signal on, turn your left signal on, turn your four-ways on. Depending on the