Preventing Lighting Violations

Welcome to CSA Basics.

CSA Basics.

The podcast where we talk about all things related to safety, compliance, and insurance for the trucking industry. We're here to help you save money, save time, and save lives. Now, here's your host, CEO of Carrier Risk Solutions, Sam Tucker.

All right, so if you go back to your Safety Measurement System, you go back and look at your CSA Basic scores and dig into each of the violations and inspections that you received over the last 24 months, I bet if you tried to look at them in a way and take it all together, You'll see that those inspections are actually caused by one of those 5 violations for the most part. And specifically too, even the B, the burnt light bulbs, is the key that gets most drivers pulled over to begin with. And if a driver is pulled over by a police officer or a federal inspector and they have lighting issues, then they say, okay, well, that's kind of a gateway. So if we can pull them over and say, okay, you got a lighting issue, Let's see what else is going on. So that's when you're going to check the logbooks and check the tire tread depths and check driver's licenses and things like that. So if you get pulled over initially because of the burnt light bulbs, then that kind of leads as a gateway to other things that the officer can find when they're conducting a Level 1, 2, or 3 inspection. So the idea here is, okay, so now we've identified it, how do we actually prevent it from happening? Now, I'm not a simple man, but I like simple solutions. So we try not to make things any harder than they have to be. And I certainly don't recommend going out and spending all kinds of money on having each driver outfitted with an electrical testing device and all these other things too. And you could even say, you know, put a spare light for each light that possibly could go out in each truck at all times. And some folks can get that extreme with this. But, you know, what it really boils down to is just good old-fashioned pre-trip inspections. And I'm a realist. I completely understand that all drivers are not going to conduct a full and thorough pre-trip inspection every time they go out. But also being a realist, understand that doing so or doing even a cursory inspection of the truck and trailer can prevent so many problems going forward. So my first level of trying to combat the brake, or I'm sorry, not the brake, but the lighting problem is simply have drivers focus on doing a complete light inspection maybe once a week or maybe once every 2 weeks. You know, I'm not asking the world of them, but it's really just going out there every once or 2 weeks, Taking a look around the whole truck and looking at each of the lights, because what you'll see is they'll say, oh, well, you know, I just noticed this was out, or it was working this morning when I conducted my pre-trip. But we all know that's really not the case. I mean, typically lights don't just burn out. I mean, usually there's a reason behind it. And a lot of the lights that are on commercial tractors and trailers these days are designed to last a really long time, sometimes for the life of the truck and trailer. So with that being said, You know, the whole, oh, well, it was working this morning, doesn't really hold water for the most part. And what you'll find is in most cases, the drivers just aren't conducting their pre-trip inspections, or at least a thorough enough pre-trip inspection for the most part. And also what we tend to find is this issue is really, really problematic for fleets that have a lot of owner-operators or a lot of leased drivers working for them. So in those situations, it's common that you're not actually seeing the truck that the driver is operating, on a regular basis. So as a fleet owner, then you have that extra duty responsibility to make sure that truck is in optimal working condition. But at the same time too, you may not have as personal responsibility for it, or the relationship that you have with that driver or operator may be such that they're responsible for the maintenance. So they say, okay, well, it's my responsibility to maintain the truck, and they don't want you seeing it on a regular basis. But the real problem with that is obviously that it's your CSA scores Your basic scores that are at risk here. So it's really imperative on you as the business owner, as the fleet owner, to look at the situation and say, okay, I have to take responsibility for the maintenance of these trucks to an extent to make sure that I know everything is working as it's supposed to. And there's a number of different ways you can make that happen. We find that a really cool opportunity is what's called a mid-trip inspection. Now you can find these at most TA Petro locations or Love's Truck Stop, locations do them as well, and even Pilot Flying J. All the major truck stops take care of these. But basically what mid-trip inspection is, it's really like a 13-15 point inspection of the truck and trailer, and they cost about $10 per truck and $10 per trailer too. So for like $20, you can have an independent third party go through the truck and trailer and pretty much make sure that if nothing else, all the lights are working. But I Everything else that goes along with these mid-trip inspections. So this is actually a pretty inexpensive and quick way to determine if all the lights are working and a number of other things with the truck too. Now with that being said, I wouldn't say you have to do that on a regular basis. I would say maybe once a month if the situation is such that it's pretty extreme or you're seeing a regular occurrence with drivers just across the fleet that this is occurring with, you might want to pick out some sample drivers and have them take care of that. Now that, like I said earlier, that's a little bit more of an invasive situation if you find that the problem is widespread across the fleet, but it can even get a little more basic. So I mean, again, having the drivers understand what's causing the problem is also important. So it could be something as simple as a loose wiring harness, it could be something as simple as a fuse being blown. So if the driver has the ability to change light bulbs, that's also a good thing too. So if they do discover that the light is out, they can actually repair that or have that repaired pretty quickly. Now with all that being said, again, I think the most important thing is to focus on having a thorough pre-trip inspection being completed. And if that's not the case and you see that you're having widespread problems across the enterprise, across the whole fleet, then you should step it up a little bit and say, okay, what can we do to kind of nip this in the bud? All right, so one trend we've seen recently too in dealing with problem is that some fleets are starting to switch over to primarily using LED lights on all their trucks and trailers. So this is not really a cheap alternative for the most part, but if a light does go out, you can actually have these replaced on a reasonably inexpensive basis, and it actually prevents it from ever— pretty much ever reoccurring again, because for the life of the tractor or trailer that you have that, you're almost guaranteed not to blow out one of the multi-diode LED lights. So that makes that an extremely effective way of dealing with the problem of any kind of burnt tail lights especially. But we're also seeing some LED headlights enter the market too, although those are much less common. All right, so if you've identified a lighting issue with your trucks and trailers, then these are a couple of ways that you can try to take care of those before they become too problematic in your roadside inspection history. But like I said, the most important, easiest, and cheapest way of handling the whole situation to begin with is It's just having your drivers do a little bit better of a pre-trip inspection or post-trip inspection on a somewhat regular basis. Again, so we're not saying that they have to go out there once a day and make sure that all the lights are working, although we'd like that to happen, obviously. What we are saying is that if they get out there even once a week or once every 2 weeks and make sure all the lights are working, then that generally suffices and takes care of any issues before they start bubbling up on you.

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