Moving Words – OSS Rules

Timothy Brady

“The government cannot enforce its mountain of laws and regulations without voluntary compliance”. Charles Murray

With the summer moving season in full swing, it’s a good idea to review with your van operators the changes to the Out Of Service Rules recently introduced by the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance.

Let’s look at adjustments to the rules that are in the truck driver’s favor.

1. If the truck lights aren’t on at night, but they’re operational, that’s no longer an OOS violation, though it’s still a violation of state laws to drive in the dark without lights.
   
   The CVSA decided that since the inspector hadn’t begun the inspection when the truck was observed without lights, and that the lights are working properly when inspected, it’s not an OOS violation.
2. Another lighting-related matter that gives van operators a break is that “violations for lamps such as color, height or position, should be documented as violations, but are not considered OOS unless they are inoperative.”
   
   The situation that generated this adjustment in the rules was that many dump-style trucks have lots of falling debris around them during loading and unloading (and truck drivers want to keep their lights from being damaged), so that may deviate from the regulations regarding light placement.
3. A better way for the regulations to handle the aspects of auto-inflation systems for tires is if a tire has a leak in the tread area, which is a violation, it won’t be an OOS violation unless the tire loses pressure.
   
   If the tire is auto-inflated and holding pressure, that’s just a normal violation, not OOS. If the leak gets worse and the system can’t keep it pumped up to within 50% of the max air pressure for the tire, that does become an OOS violation.

Now for amendments and changes to other OSS criteria:

1. There is new terminology regarding camshaft bushings in brake systems. This rule change was developed from “several situations during inspections where a missing camshaft bushing on the brake assembly was discovered. Most of the time if the camshaft bushings are bad enough it will manifest itself in braking defect that the current OOS criteria cover, but not always. When the camshaft bushing is gone altogether, but the camshaft is jammed into the spider casting, the brakes aren’t working but aren’t out of adjustment.”
   
   Language has been amended to the OOS criteria specific to worn camshaft bushings, which is not a violation, but missing camshaft bushings are included in the 20% criterion and counts as one defective brake. The section on the 20% criterion was also amended, adding a watermark to all the pages on the 20% rule so people aren’t confused between what falls under this rule and what are just general brake regulations.
2. After a very peculiar incident at a scale, it was discovered there was nothing in OOS criteria to deal with a vehicle that’s not coupled to a coupling device at all. The pintle hook on the back of the truck was there, but the trailer hitch ring was jammed underneath the bumper of the truck.
   
   An edit was made to the section to include the latch not secured or not in use. This brought to the regulators’ attention trailer balls and mismatched hitches. It also brought to their attention whether a trailer ball is marked with its size and coupled with the wrong hitch, which is a violation. Worn-out trailer balls that don’t display the size won’t get caught up in this.

“Success is built on organization, determination, and experience, not to mention following the regulations, so of course it’s no easy matter.” – Frank Rijkaard