How well do you know the 20% rule for brake violations?

Speaker 1:

CCJs 10 44 is brought to you by Chevron Delo, heavy duty diesel engine oil. Now there's even more reasons to choose delo. How well do you understand the 20% rule when it comes to brake violations during a roadside inspection? You're watching CCJs 10 44, a weekly episode that brings you the latest trucking industry news and updates from the editors of CCJ. Don't forget to subscribe and hit the bell for notifications so you'll never miss an installment of 10 44. Hey everybody, welcome back. I'm Jason Cannon and my co-host. On the other side is Matt Cole. Brake violations discovered during roadside inspections have been the number one out of service violation since forever, but fleet operators do have a little, very little wiggle room with the 20% rule. Now that's a rule that can keep a truck or a trailer on the road as long as less than 20% of certain components of a vehicle service brakes are not defective.

Speaker 2:

In a tractor trailer combination, you've got 10 brakes. So the simple math is as long as nine of those brakes are functioning properly and the one faulty brake doesn't affect the rest of the truck, the truck is not placed out of service.

Speaker 3:

In a nutshell, the way I think of the 20% is a violation or a defect that only impacts one brake is typically going to fall under the 20%. Something that impacts the entire vehicle is going to fall under a standalone out of service violation. So an out of adjustment brake only impacts that one brake, right? So that's usually going to be a 20% violation. Inoperable parking brakes or emergency brakes impact the entire truck or the entire combination. So that's a standalone out of service. That's kind of the easiest way I can think of is if it's isolated to one brake, it's generally going to be under the 20% rule. If it impacts everything, it falls under just a standalone out of service. 20% of the total brakes in the combination is what's required to put it out of service for defective brakes. However, if it's on the steering axle, there are certain violations on the steer axle that will be out of service by themselves and they contribute to the 20%.

So like a mismatched air chamber for instance, on the front steer axle. So you got to type 24 on the left and a type 30 or whatever on the right. So if they're mismatched, you're going to have not only braking problems, but you're also going to have handling problems on the front steer axle, right? Because you're going to have increased braking on one side, it's going to pull the vehicle from one side to the other. So if the slack adjusters are mismatched brake chambers, anything like that on the steer axle can impact more than just that single brake. I think people just don't always understand how it impacts other parts of the vehicle too. So that's why the steer axle's important. It's not that we need more braking on the steer axle necessarily, but it's that it impacts your steering capabilities and everything else, and people don't always think about that. I've seen plenty of drivers, especially old school drivers that have disconnected their front brakes or removed their front brakes entirely and things like that, and that causes issues for sure, for handling purposes and everything else. But every inch of stopping distance makes a difference though when you're sitting in a Prius right behind or right in front of a truck that's coming at you. So that extra 50 feet of stopping distance because a brake is out of adjustment can make a world of difference for somebody.

Speaker 1:

One thing to make clear is that any given defect on an individual brake isn't weighted. So if the pad thickness on one brake is too thin, for example, that's 10% because that entire brake chamber is considered out of compliance, and there's the consideration of which axle the violation is found and on what part of the combination the defects are found.

Speaker 3:

If you look at the outer service criteria, there's a section that says 20% brakes. It's like a five page section that lists the defects for the 20% criteria. So brake linings, brake adjustment, all those kinds of things are 20%, and when I say 20%, we're talking about the entire combination. So if it's a truck and a trailer, it includes all the brakes. So a truck tractor typically has six brakes, a trailer has four, so you're looking at a 10 brake combination, and that's how it's treated when you're calculating the 20%. So it would take two defects on that 10 brake vehicle to get you to the 20%. Then in addition to that, we have the front steer axle. So the front steer axle is included in the 20%, but it also has certain violations that are standalone. Not all of them, but some of them are standalone violations that we'll put it out of service.

So for instance, an inoperable brake where it's doing nothing, when you press on the brake pedal, if that's on the steer axle, that's going to automatically put that truck out of service because it's on the steer axle and it will affect the handling and the braking, and that violation is also part of the 20%. And the reason that it's done that way is the 20% looks at the overall vehicle. So let's say you have that one inoperable brake on the truck tractor on the steer axle, and you have one inoperable brake on the trailer, you're going to add those together. So now you have two out of 10 for that total combination. So now that truck tractor is going to be placed out of service and the trailer is going to be placed out of service because they both contributed to the 20% to get you to the 20%.

On the flip side, if all of the violations are on the tractor, then the tractor will be placed out of service and the trailer is okay to go. So they could bring another truck out and pick up that trailer and drive it off if it's in the 20% section of the outer service criteria, it doesn't matter if it's a brake lining or out of adjustment or whatever, they all hold the same severity. The biggest thing is understanding that everything like you said, holds the same weight. So 20% is based on the total number of breaks and it's either defective, which counts as a hundred percent defective, break towards your 20% or it's not defective. That's really the only way it works. And then the steer axle is treated separately, but it also contributes to the 20% at the same time. But those are the two things that usually hang people up. As far as confusing points,

Speaker 2:

Not all commercial vehicles are the same, and they don't have the same number of brakes, which is why the rule draws a line in the sand at 20% rather than giving operators a mulligan for one break. Jeremy explains, after work from TED 44 sponsor Chevron lubricants,

Speaker 4:

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Speaker 3:

It comes down to getting a hazard off the road. So it's an imminent hazard to the public if you reach a certain threshold. So one break out of adjustment is probably not going to cause a collision. It's not great. We don't want you to have a defective break, but it's probably not an imminent hazard to the public. But when we've done efficiency testings with performance based brake testing and everything else, we've seen that when you reach 20%, that's when you really start having increased stopping distance and you start having more issues. So that's where that focus is at. So I mean, if you're just driving a pickup truck, which could be a commercial vehicle, and let's say one out of the four breaks is defective, that automatically puts you at 25%. So you've exceeded the 20%. The more breaks you have, then obviously the more defects you're allowed to have before you get placed out of service.

But either way, any of those defects are going to be violations no matter what. It's just whether it rises to the out of service criteria is what we're talking about. The way the out of service criteria reads is the number of defective brakes is equal to or greater than 20% of the service brakes on the vehicle or combination. So on a four brake vehicle like a pickup truck, yeah, one breakout is going to put you at 20% or 25%, which is above 20. It's going to be out of service by itself. So one mulligan is a lot more forgiving on a 20 brake vehicle like an oversized load than it is on a pickup truck. So that one brake is going to really mess up a pickup truck that only has four brakes because now you're down to three versus being down to nine on a combination.

So that's where it kind of comes down to. I think I always come back to what the point of the out of service criteria is, and everybody kind of thinks that it's a punishment or something, and it really isn't. The whole point of the out of service criteria is there's a lot of legwork that goes into it and a lot of study that goes into it to determine at what point it becomes an imminent hazard to the public. We're not just talking a violation now, we're talking this as a safety issue, and that's where that 20% comes into play.

Speaker 1:

It's simple to understand why brakes get so much emphasis when it comes to safety inspections. If you're going to get 80,000 pounds up the highway speed, you have to be able to stop it. You can't fight physics, but that doesn't stop fleet operators from trying. When it comes to brake violations,

Speaker 3:

It's definitely the largest category that gets placed out of service, I can say that. So traditionally, whether you're looking at last year's F-M-C-S-A data or you're looking at road check data from last year or anything else, it's always the number one violation, and that's because it encompasses a lot of components. It could be your brake linings, it could be your chamber, it could be your push rod travel. It could be a million different things that caused that 20%, but the 20% is an umbrella. So for road check last year it was 25% of the out service violations were 20% violations. So I mean, that's pretty significant because the way it's documented, let's say you have three breaks that are out of adjustment. Out of 10, you're going to receive three violations for the brakes, one for each defective brake, and then because it reached the 20% rule, there'll be an additional violation for violating the 20% rule. So it actually turned out to four violations.

Speaker 2:

The 25 or so percent of trucks that are parked with brake violations overshadows the 75% give or take that roll through a roadside check with no violations or those that fall in the less than 20% violation.

Speaker 3:

The only time we measure brakes is on a level one inspection, like a full inspection, and I would say I don't have a number specifically, but the vast majority of them did not have brake defects. I would say probably 70% or something if I had to come up with a number and then I would say out of the ones with defective brakes, this is just my experience, but probably half of them only had one, and I usually looked at truck trailer combinations. That's mainly what I focused on. So you might find one on occasion, and in that case it's just a writeup. They go and get it repaired. No big deal. I think what stood out to me was if the company a lot of the time doesn't have a safety mechanism in place or a maintenance plan in place, that's where I would see multiple violations.

If they're just running rough shot out there and not really following a maintenance program, that's where you're going to see 2, 3, 4. I've seen six and seven brakes out of adjustment or defective or completely inoperable on certain vehicles, but there's a reason for that in general. The other, on the flip side, the ones that have one break out of adjustment usually have a safety plan, and a lot of the time what I noticed is the drivers are adjusting their own brakes, and after 1994, I'm sure they came out with automatic slack adjusters and those function differently. So the old school drivers that used to pull out a wrench and adjust their brakes are trying to do the same thing with the automatic slack adjusters, and it's not working right. It doesn't correct the defect. It goes right back to what it was, and in fact, it sometimes causes more damage by trying to adjust it without the proper tools. So that's where I would see the one violation here. And there is usually drivers trying to adjust their own brakes and they just don't do it right.

Speaker 1:

A truck found with less than 20% violation isn't necessarily placed out of service right then and there, but it's not issued a free pass either. What the driver receives can depend on where and who conducts the inspection.

Speaker 3:

The punitive measure would come from a citation, so this is confused by drivers and carriers a lot. There's two different documents you may get during an inspection. One is the inspection report, and that inspection report is not really a punitive measure per se. It's designed to make the carrier alert to the fact that there was a violation discovered. It doesn't make you go to court. It doesn't make you pay fines, but as you know, it does have a safety score that follows it. That has to be repaired before the vehicle is dispatched. So if it's one break and it's not out of service, they can continue their trip, they can drop their load, do what they're doing, but they need to get it repaired before they get dispatched to another trip. Now, if there's a punitive measure, that's usually up to the inspector's discretion or the officer's discretion, and it can vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. I can tell you for me, I would write citations, which is a separate document that does carry points sometimes for the driver. That does cause you to go to court and pay a fine. That is a punitive measure per se. But for me, I mean every inspector's a little different. For me, there had to be egregious violations, and so a defective break, I wouldn't personally necessarily write a ticket for that, but I would certainly put it on the inspection report because it needs to be repaired before that vehicle's dispatched.

Speaker 2:

Jeremy noted that there's about five pages in the CVSA out of service manual dedicated to the 20% rule, but some violations and component defects are more common than others.

Speaker 3:

The biggest one by far is brake adjustment, going underneath measuring brakes, and one is an eighth of an inch or half an inch over what it's supposed to be. So there's no question that's by far the number one issue that contributes to the 20%. And then this is just my experience. I'm not pulling data on this, but I can tell you generally the next thing I would find would be pieces that we're missing. So like the clevis pin that holds your slack adjuster in place, that falls out and somebody doesn't replace it. So the slack adjuster is just pushing the push rod out, but it's not connected to anything, so it's not actually performing its function. So those little clevis pins and cotter pins that fall out and don't get replaced, that would be another common one that I ran into a lot. Just they rattle out, they fall out hitting bumps all day, and then the other big one would be brake linings that are too thin. Honestly, I didn't get those as much as you would think. Usually what I would see, at least in Arizona was they would get dry rotted and heat damaged to the point where they would crack and have all kinds of issues with the pads themselves. But as far as the lining thickness, I didn't really see that as a real common violation, but those are probably the biggest things that contribute to the 20%.

Speaker 1:

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