Games of Trust

When I was putting together a story about the International Registration Plan earlier this year, I interviewed a lady named Beth Wendorff. With her husband and their sons, Beth runs a 12-truck cattle-hauling operation in Raymond, Alta. She has one of the toughest jobs you’ll find at a small carrier: she’s the paper wrangler. Beth takes care of the little things-like making sure every truck leaves the yard properly licensed.

I asked Beth what lessons she could pass on to carriers in eastern Canada who were joining IRP in the spring. “If you hire an outside agency to do your licensing,” she says, “find one you trust. You’re going to be audited some time, and when it happens, you want no surprises. You don’t want a service bureau that lets you down.”

I bring this up having read the lead story in our Dispatches section this month. It has to do with a handful of service bureaus that are exploiting a loophole in IRP rules to defraud jurisdictions of vehicle registration money. Now that Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, and Atlantic Canada have a taste for the IRP prorate process, a lot of folks who run fleets there are looking for help to manage their licensing.

Don’t get burned. This is an unregulated industry-if you can paint your name on a shingle and tack it to a post, you can call yourself a tax and licensing agency. Ask for a written quote from any potential service bureau, including a breakdown to see how much the government fees are versus what the service bureau wants to charge you (lump-sum quotes make it easy to hide service fees). Ask for references, and beware of vendors selling cheap plates. Rest assured, you’ll pay for them later.

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RoadCheck 2001-the North America-wide roadside inspection blitz-is scheduled for June 5-7 this year. RoadCheck is a snipe hunt, as far as I’m concerned, a feel-good exercise for the enforcement community that has little impact on reducing collisions. Statistics bear this out: heavy trucks are involved in less than 2% of all highway accidents, and of these, 97% of the trucks had “no apparent mechanical defect” at the time.

While the link between trucks with mechanical defects and accidents may be tenuous, what RoadCheck shows-with consistency-is that brake defects are the leading cause of out-of-service violations. In Canada, the frequency of vehicles with brake defects serious enough to warrant them being removed from service is 4%.

In general, I think mechanical defects are a symptom of a larger problem: managers who don’t see the value in operating sound vehicles. But brakes are different: the S-cam, a 30-year-old design, is still a misunderstood piece of equipment despite the best efforts of brake manufacturers, enforcement officials, and some of the most whip-smart safety managers I’ve met.

Jim Park’s story on downhill braking this month feels like a physics lesson in places, but he doesn’t let you forget that brake engineers aren’t the guys holding the reins on 138,000 pounds. His plain-language explanation of how brakes work-and how best to use them when you’re at the wheel-is well worth your time.