Carlsbad Puts Brake to Truck Overloads

Carlsbad had a problem. The trucks were rumbling and the roads were crumbling. So whom do you call?

Weight Watchers.

Nope, not the folks who promise you a trim tummy, but a squad of Carlsbad police officers outfitted with a chunky set of scales and a prime mission in mind--to make sure the semis and other rigs using the city’s streets and byways aren’t overweight.

Although the California Highway Patrol has been operating truck scales about as long as there have been highways to patrol, Carlsbad is the first city in San Diego County to regularly monitor the weight of trucks on its roadways.

A few heavyweight trucks may not sound like such a big deal, but highway engineers and traffic safety officers think otherwise.

Safety Threat

All those overloaded tractor-trailers and 18-wheelers wreak havoc with the roadbed, causing streets to crack and crumble well before their time, they say.

Moreover, the roly-poly rigs pose a safety threat to other motorists, police warn. The vehicles are designed to haul only so much weight, and, when the load greatly exceeds that amount, brakes can fail and a truck can become a lumbering, out-of-control projectile.

“Considering what we may be preventing, I think we’re doing a real service,” said Officer Richard Kates, a team member. “In the two years prior to this program, we had three or four truck accidents. Since then, we’ve had only one commercial vehicle accident, and it wasn’t the truck’s fault.”

The Carlsbad Police Department began its program about 18 months ago, dispatching its team of officers to flag down trucks suspected of being on the heavy side and issue the offending truckers a ticket.

Not just any ticket, mind you. Big tickets. Hefty tickets. Tickets carrying fines sometimes in excess of $3,000. During the first year of the innovative program, officers in Carlsbad issued more than $100,000 in tickets under the new setup.

Now city officials in Oceanside, who can spot a sure bet when they see it, are gearing up to launch a similar effort during the coming weeks. They hope to reap sizable dividends, particularly in the form of reduced wear and tear on the streets.

“It’s going to save a lot of money,” said Glenn Prentice, the city’s public services director. “There’s no question it should stop the rapid deterioration of our streets.”

Prentice has witnessed first-hand the damage that overloaded trucks can do to a street. College Boulevard was completed in Oceanside just a little more than a year ago, but the street is already giving way in spots, a predicament Prentice blames on overloaded trucks.

With a mile of roadway costing $200,000 to $400,000 to pave, “we’re talking about big bucks,” Prentice said.

Checkpoints Set Up

The Oceanside program will be handled much like the Carlsbad truck watch.

About once a week, Carlsbad’s commercial vehicle enforcement team heads out on the highway, setting up along one of the routes typically traveled by big rigs.

When officers spot a truck that appears overloaded, they wave the vehicle over to the side of the road.

“It’s pretty easy to tell an overweight truck,” said Kates. “If you see them pulling a hill real slow or the tires appear squashed down, they’re probably carrying too much.”

The officers push the scales under the truck, one scale per set of tires, and roll the vehicle up onto the pancake-flat devices. A digital display screen reads out the weight.

In addition, the officers conduct a general safety check, inspecting more than a dozen items on each vehicle, among them the brake lines, the tires and wheels.

At first, truckers were miffed by the program. Although weight limits have been on the state vehicle code books for years, truckers operating within city limits had enjoyed a free ride, with no active enforcement in effect in most cities, said Sgt. Mike Shipley, who helps run the Carlsbad effort.

“We did receive a little resistance in the beginning, but things have toned down now,” Shipley said, noting that the city conducted an education program to make truckers aware that enforcement was coming.

Word Gets Out

Although the team still finds plenty of trucks to tag for obesity, word has gotten out and drivers are increasingly stepping in line with the law, Shipley said. Trucks pulled over lately are not nearly as overweight as those snagged during the early days of the program, he said.

Many truckers will simply try to avoid getting caught. When police are out with their scales, the CB radio waves--the longtime communications link for truckers--are busy.

“They all have radios and they all use them,” said Carlsbad Chief Bob Vales. “There can be trucks all over El Camino Real, but, within an hour of us hitting the streets, you can’t find one.”

Police say the most flagrant violators of the weight laws tend to be trash trucks that use Carlsbad’s back streets to reach the county trash dump in San Marcos and the independent dirt haulers that service the region’s booming construction industry.

Kates said the point of the program is not to hand out tickets carrying huge fines, but to keep the trucks lean.

“We’d like to see them all comply,” he said. “Unfortunately, it seems to take a few tickets to get the point across.”