So, originally this wasn't what Hub #3 in Ask a REAL Truck Driver was going to be about but it happened recently and so I figured I might as well put it down while it was fresh in my memory...

So there I was on a Friday morning sitting in my truck waiting to get loaded and mapping out my route from Massachusettes to Minnesota. It was pretty much an ordinary morning and I happened to be in a pretty good mood since I was leaving the northeast and going back out west( I hate going to the northeast). The day was beautiful and my load wasn't going to be a heavy one, a total of 7 pallets( most loads are generally anywhere from 20 to 30) and a gross weight of 12,580(product and pallets).

Fast forward to later on in the afternoon and I'm in Friday rush hour afternoon traffic, around 1530 to be exact. Traffic isn't too bad and I'm driving pretty slow, about 5 less than the speed limit because honestly I'm not too familiar with the roadways of the city I'm in since out of my total of almost 8 years driving I have rarely been to this state. I think maybe twice in 8 years, this being either my 2nd or 3rd time.

So I'm crusing along and I'm really looking at the clearance signs because even though I'm on an interstate and all interstates are supposed to have a minimum of 13'6'' clearance I'm unfamiliar with the area and the last thing I want to do is top my trailer or truck on a bridge or overpass. I see something bright out of the corner of my eye as I'm passing an exit and I happen to catch it as I pass by.

It's a bright orange truck detour sign! Great, so I was suppose to get off at that exit and I didn't make it. At that moment I started to consider my options and what might potentially happen if I continued down the road.

Obviously there was a reason why they were sending trucks around this particular stretch of interstate. Maybe the clearances up ahead were too low for a big rig which if that was the case if I continued I might run into the very embarrassing scenario of having to call the state troopers out to stop traffic so that I could back my rig up all the way back down the interstate to the previous exit. Or maybe all exits after the one I had just passed were all too low for me as well. There really was no way of knowing at that particular moment without stopping the truck in mid traffic and looking at my map.

Or perhaps the reason for the detour was a weight restriction, which I quickly decided was the most common scenario since these roads weren't that old as to have a clearance less than 13'6".

Another choice might have been to try my luck and exit at the very next possible exit ramp. This scenario above all really did not sit very well with me because if you've ever driven a big rig for any amount of time and have experience driving in the northeast you know that once you get off the beaten path there can be any amount of pitfalls. One way roads that take you to the middle of nowhere, low clearances, double parked cars on either side of the streets one a narrow two lane road, intersections where there isn't any amount of room for a truck to make a safe turn without clearing out the entire road and even then you might side swipe a parked car, light pole, mail box, etc. and these are but a few.

This problem, in my experience, is almost exclusively a problem you find in the northeast and that's because most of the northeast is old and was built in a time where there weren't any of these huge trucks on the roads. Anywhere else in the US with the exception of the older cities like Chicago and such this really isn't much of a problem, if you get lost or don't know where you are it's easy to find your way back. Oh, and did I mention the hellacious traffic in the northeast where nobody slows down, gives a damn if you are lost, and it's all about me, me, me, I have to get where I'm going, me, me , me! The land that courtesy while driving has forgotten.

Anyways, all this went through my mind in just a few seconds and so I decided to just stay the course and try my luck with the interstate and I wasn't the only one because several other drivers did the same thing, not that that's any excuse by the way, just a note.

So I'm driving along second guessing myself the entire to as to whether I should have gotten off at that exit or that exit or that exit....

And I see traffic start to slow down, real fast, too fast. I glance back in  my mirror and sure enough, there is a state trooper flying through traffic with his lights on and he's got me locked in his sights. As soon as he pulled in behind me he turned his lights off, not really sure what that was about except maybe he was running my plates.

Now it's just a matter of time and I'm waiting for him to turn the lights on again so I'll know for absolutely sure.

He does and I pull over. Immediately he jumps out of his car and turns to face traffic and starts walking away from me and into the traffic, I'm thinking to myself "What the hell is he doing"? And then I see it, he's pulling over another trucker that was in traffic behind the both of us.

Normally I an tell if the officer is going to give me a ticket by the way he approaches the situation and in this case Iknew I wasn't going to get a warning. It was just something about the way he was using his body language that I could tell he was approaching me with that "I'm the law, boy!" attitude.

He starts by asking me for my paperwork  and then he begins that cop thing where they ask the same damn questions over and over again but just in different ways, trying to trip you up or catch you in a lie. I had nothing to hide, so naturally my story was consistent because it was the truth. But that wasn't good enough for him so he asks me to step out and break the seal on the trailer.

Beaking the seal on a loaded trailer before you get to the consignee and get their approval is just asking for problems, but I know better than to argue with law enforcement and so I do what he asks. As I'm walking back I remember that this particular seal on this load is a cable seal and not just plastic which means I'm going to need something to break it so Istop and let the officer know that I need to get something. I open my door and grab what we call a tire thumper. Basically, it's just a little club that we bang our tires with and listen to the sound, it lets us know if the tire needs air by the way that it sounds when banged.

Some might ask, why not just use an air gauge? The simple answer is that we have 18 wheels and using a tire thumper is another acceptable way to perform a safety inspection without taking an hour to check tire pressure alone.

Immediately he says "Give me that", so I gave him the thumper and we walked to the back of the truck where he proceeded to ask me the same questions over and over again. In the end he didn't have me break the seal at all, he just told me to wait in the truck, so I did what I was told.

Thirty minutes later he comes back with the citation and explains to me that I broke two different laws, one for being over the weight restrictions for the bridge and the other for an axle restriction but that he was going to give me the lesser of the two tickets which was $85 dollars. The other citation for the axle restriction would have been for $3,000 dollars!

I asked him a few questions about the sign being after the exit and not before but I could see that he was becoming agitated at the fact that he cut me a break but I was still questioning the ticket so I dropped it. Then I just asked him for my tire thumper back and he said ok, I'll get it and be back.

Afew minutes later he comes back and says that he's not going to give it to me after all because it was illegal to have a blunt object in his state. I couldn't believe that this trooper was going to actaully take my property especially since I knew that what he was saying was total BS. I considered the thought of getting a $3,000 dollar citation and again I dropped it.

So here I am rolling down the interstate and getting more and more pissed at the BS that this trooper just pulled on me so I decided to call his barracks and ask for my property back.

To make a long story short, the trooper that answered the phone at the barracks was no less of a d*ck. He wouldn't answer my questions and gave me the run around the entire time. That's when Idecided to get some help and have someone call them on my behalf.All of a sudden they were eager to help and resolve the situation and within 30 minutes the trooper that had stopped me called me on my cell.

We argued for a while going back and forth. He first tried to give me a guilt trip saying that he was "Surprised that I would call and get him in trouble after he cut me a break". I informed him that my intention wasn't to get him in trouble but to recover my property and that he shouldn't be surprised that a law abiding citizen would want his personal property back after it was confiscated for no good reason.

Then he tried some intimidation tactics but I wasn't biting. We argued some more and I asked him to mail me my property, he said no way he was mailing it and that if I wanted it I would have to come down to the barracks and get it. Even though he already knew that I didn't live in his state he insisted that I would have to get it next time I was in town.

We ended the conversation but never resolved the issue so I concluded that I would have to follow this up through other channels.

Not more than 15 minutes later I received a phone call but wasn't able to answer it. It was that same trooper calling to tell me that he was going to mail me my article but that I should be advised that if he ever saw me in his state that he would issue me that $3,000 dollar citation, especially if he caught me on that bridge again. He left this message, on my voice mail, which is now eternally saved on my phone and I'm currently looking for a way to somehow get it off and onto youtube, lol.

So what's the moral of this story.I don't know. Maybe it's plan your trips a little better in advance, maybe it's don't back down when you know you're right, maybe it's not over yet and we'll see what happens.  If anybody knows how to download voicemail onto youtube leave me a comment on how to do it.

'Til next time yall.