MONROE – Smack. Ding. Crack.
Too often, that’s what happens on Snohomish County roads when rocks fly off trucks and crack windshields.
“It’s a pet peeve of everyone that lives out here,” Washington State Patrol trooper Kirk Rudeen said.
Now, troopers are cracking down on the problem.
On Wednesday, a pair of specially trained officers were stopping trucks near Monroe, getting the drivers to clean up their rigs and their acts.
An average of 2,500 trucks rumble down U.S. 2 every day, traveling to and from a dozen gravel pits between Gold Bar and Snohomish.
In the course of two hours, troopers stopped two dump trucks and wrote about $1,300 worth of tickets. One driver will need to face a judge to explain why he was driving a loaded truck without the proper license.
That truck, owned by Les Wear Backhoe of Snohomish, had 11 violations. The company has a history of equipment problems, troopers said.
“It’s overweight with equipment defects and a driver not qualified to operate it,” commercial vehicle division trooper Doug Sackman said.
The tailgate was loose, there was an air leak in the brakes, and a boulder that troopers estimated at about 300 pounds sat precariously on the rim of the dump truck’s bed.
“That’s going to kill somebody if it falls off,” Sackman said.
For truckers, who get paid based on how much they can deliver in as little time as possible, sometimes profits come before safety, troopers said.
Les Wear Jr., the owner of the dump truck with all the violations, said he was short-staffed and threw the unqualified driver into the dump truck to keep the operation moving.
When asked about the unsafe load, Wear, 24, said he thought it looked OK.
“I didn’t think it was too insecure myself,” he said.
Troopers disagreed. A curve or a bump in the road easily could have sent the boulder flying, Rudeen said.
The truck was ordered out of service until the problems are fixed.
If troopers stop the truck again and the repairs haven’t been made, the truck will be impounded and the company fined as much as $10,000.
That usually doesn’t happen, Sackman said. Most truckers are professionals who follow the law.
“We’re not out here to hammer the industry,” he said. “It’s just a few bad eggs that screw it up for everybody else.”
And dump trucks aren’t always responsible for causing those broken windshields, said Norm Miller, a spokesman for the Washington Trucking Association.
“Ninety-nine percent or more of broken windshields are caused by rocks on the road,” he said. “Very rarely does debris come off a truck.”
Even if people do think a truck is responsible for cracking a windshield, it’s hard to get companies to agree to pay for repairs, said Dave Overstreet, a spokesman for AAA Washington.
“You’ve got a tough row to hoe if you’re going to prove it,” he said.
While troopers with the commercial vehicle division are mostly focused on going after truckers, they also pay attention to what passenger cars are doing near trucks, trooper Tom Nickelson said.
“Most collisions around semis are caused by cars,” he said.
Drivers should use caution near trucks. Trucks take longer to stop, have lots of blind spots, are harder to control and weigh as much as 25 times more than a car, he said.
Wednesday’s one-day enforcement was expected to have a lingering effect, Rudeen said.
Since truckers use radios to talk to each other, they usually know quickly where troopers are working.
Pulling just one truck over on a busy highway has a ripple effect. Loads come down, tarps go up, Rudeen said.
“That’s ‘mission accomplished’ right there,” he said. “And we’ve been able to accomplish that by stopping one truck.”
Reporter Jackson Holtz: 425-339-3437 or jholtz@heraldnet.com.
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