For the second time this month, and the third time in less than six weeks, BC Highway Patrol officers have stopped and fined semi truck drivers in northern BC.
A pair of drivers are facing thousands of dollars in fines after ignoring an order to fix their “poorly” maintained truck, the BCHP said in a release.
On July 28, around 11:20 am, a Commercial Vehicle Safety and Enforcement (CVSE) officer stopped a black semi-truck that was not pulling a trailer on Highway 97 near Fort Nelson.
The two tandem drivers told the officer they needed to get gas and, despite being allowed to go fill, did not return for the required inspection.
A little while later, BCHP officers tracked the drivers down while they were doing roadside repairs to the truck.
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Further inspection of the truck found it had no functioning rear suspension and that the drive’s logs were not in order.
The drivers were handed $1,018 in fines, given a list of local mechanics and ordered to fix the problem before driving again.
Later that evening, at about 6 pm, the same BCHP officer saw the same truck driving down the highway.
The truck was stopped and the drivers, who were both residents of Alberta, were handed an additional five tickets totalling $1,927.
According to the news release, the truck was issued “notice and order,” the licence plates were seized and the truck was towed directly to the nearest mechanic at the drivers’ expense.
“Not only do bad commercial truck drivers make the roads unsafe for everyone, they also undercut the reputation of good truck drivers,” said Cpl. Michael McLaughlin with BCHP.
“Following safety and maintenance laws costs money. Our job as police is to make breaking the law more expensive.”
This is the second time this month that BCHP officers have had to stop an unsafe semi-truck on this stretch of highway. An “overweight, under-secured and unsafe” transport truck was taken off the road on July 7.
Two and a half weeks before that, on June 19, a truck was damaged while doing a u-turn.
Those tandem drivers were also fined for having falsified log books.
