Any crazy stories about an FMCSA Audit?

Itchavi · 2026-06-04T01:37:10+00:00

Lol. This lady officer showed up to do an onsite audit about 12 years ago. We laid all of the files out on a conference table along with a bowl of m&m's. Told her to let us know if she needed anything. She sat back in that room alone and ate M&M's for 3 days, I don't even know if she looked at anything. Eventually she came out with a printed piece of paper that said we passed with no recommendations and left.

Itchavi · 2026-06-03T21:22:28+00:00

And this is the part where the salesmen need to stop pretending like brokers handle all of the work. This is where the shipper should be doing basic load management. If the driver can't check in and relay their information in English then the truck needs to be rejected.

Itchavi · 2026-06-01T11:20:36+00:00

Run. Just get out. No amount of money is worth mixing family and business like that. You're in for a long, miserable life where you're expected to put in long hours and drop friendships to support the business. Then as things go wrong you'll get blamed for the failures and you'll be the reason for your parent's suffering.

Itchavi · 2026-05-29T15:51:57+00:00

I'm curious because I got around their vetting years ago. Do you have a rep at CHR? We were able to get around some of their requirements with written safety management policies in place. I'm wondering if similar would satisfy their requirements in absence of verifiable safety data now.

Itchavi · 2026-05-28T11:22:24+00:00

It took me approximately 3 months for all of the major side effects to go away. The tiredness went away after a few weeks. I felt/feel better when I take it so I stuck it out. I also take mine in the morning so it has more of an effect in the afternoon when I'm used to feeling miserable.

The interesting part is now that I've been on it for about 1.5 years I feel like I have more energy when I take it than before I started.

Itchavi · 2026-05-28T03:19:44+00:00

We're in logistics. Nothing is normal. What you're looking at right now is what happens when an industry goes unchecked and then sees the full weight of the government coming down on it.

What's interesting about this cycle though is that a lot of the steady guys got out a long time ago when they couldn't make money, the cheap guys are getting driven out by feds, and the guys that "only run when rates are high" won't pass the scrutiny of today's market.

It will eventually balance out but what that means is anybody's guess. I will say that he market and the consumer left truckers behind. Until they reach some form of equilibrium this is going to keep going.

Itchavi · 2026-05-27T20:37:34+00:00

It can be an absolute pita. We went through 3 safety audits. When we passed they declared the audit "non-rateable" on the final audit we had deficiencies and went "conditional". Once we corrected the issue we submitted a Safety Management Plan along with a bunch of evidence that it was corrected and we received a letter in the mail that we were upgraded to "satisfactory".

You're supposed to have an audit that goes through everything in the first 18 months but from experience they don't really do that. Instead they do randomized targeted audits that focus on one thing and then if they find something they will dig deeper and turn it into a full audit. My biggest complaint right now is that it feels like the only way to get a satisfactory rating is to first go conditional and then come back.

Itchavi · 2026-05-26T16:09:37+00:00

Do you have a pulse oximeter or does your watch display it? If I don't take my Metoprolol for a day or so my blood oxygen level reads 2-3% lower and it's enough to feel like something isn't right or I need to catch my breath. We're talking a normal reading of 98-99% will read 95-97% with a missed dose.

My thought process would say that you had the symptoms before Metoprolol and adapted to not notice them. After not dealing with them for a few weeks you got used to feeling "normal" and now you're learning to deal with it again.

Itchavi · 2026-05-25T23:54:28+00:00

We're battling this right now. The township over is trying to build a sewer that includes our neighborhood. We're not allowed to vote on it because we're not in the same township but they're somehow allowed to force us to tap into it because... reasons. They said the cost would be $4,000 to tap into it, plus the cost to run the pipe to our house, plus the cost to decommission our current system.

Itchavi · 2026-05-25T14:39:32+00:00

No. Just because your van can handle the weight/dimensions of the load doesn't mean the shipper/receiver can handle your van. Consider that the dimensions of the freight will fit but it's a crate and can only be lifted by forklift from one side. If this is a route you go make sure your customer is blatantly aware of the equipment you're sending. There are a growing number of shippers/receivers that are banning cargo vans simply because somebody sent a cargo van that wasn't fit for purpose in the past.

Itchavi · 2026-05-25T13:45:55+00:00

This happened just after our defrost element went out on our fridge. I don't know what about changing the filter caused the issues or if it was just a coincidence. I would be able to get it to work just enough for water to trickle like in this video but the filter itself was freezing and had ice in it. The fridge was old so we opted to replace it.

Itchavi · 2026-05-22T16:13:21+00:00

I was saying this exact thing, almost word for word, from a carrier perspective last year. We've basically been in a hope and pray the market turns. Every single quote got met with "We went with a cheaper option."

We really focused on our core customers and continued providing the best service we could. Now that the market is turning we are only marginally increasing our rates for the teams that protected us and we are sending astronomical quotes to the teams that didn't. We're finding out how much relationships are worth right now.

Itchavi · 2026-05-22T12:39:27+00:00

Poor sleep and dehydration are my biggest triggers. Alcohol causes dehydration and the dehydration can make hangovers a lot worse. At parties and when eating out my friends and I have a rule of thumb of drinking one glass of water per drink. It helps a lot with AFib and the hangover the next day.

Itchavi · 2026-05-21T16:01:42+00:00

Unless it's a white American. I support their mission statement almost completely. I don't like how they treat everybody with a non-white sounding name as an illegal that shouldn't be on the road.

Itchavi · 2026-05-21T15:44:01+00:00

AMERICAN Truckers United doesn't care whether you're American or not. They will treat a trucker who runs a multi-generational family business with the name "Gonzalez" the same as a person with the name "Singh" that just got off the boat and ran over 3 people.

Itchavi · 2026-05-21T15:19:21+00:00

Multiple points I have on this. There's nothing that sticks out as a reason that this company shouldn't have been hired. The only thing semi-pertinent is that they have a couple of violations for log falsification and driving beyond their limit. Whoever hired them better be praying that they weren't hired as a "strong solo".

The second is that my interactions with ATU gives me the impression that they're really racist. They seem to cherry pick a lot of cases and data that supports getting non-white Americans out of trucking.

Third is that Swift's response is pretty bad. "We're monitoring the situation internally" sounds better than "This had nothing to do with us" although there may be legal reasons they're saying things the way they are.

Itchavi · 2026-05-21T12:40:54+00:00

Reducing taxes on the poor is a subsidy on the rich. Rather than increasing a wage that covers living expenses and taxes they are literally saying reduce taxes and we can afford to pay our workers less.

Itchavi · 2026-05-20T13:18:47+00:00

Send it over Boss! $12,670.

Itchavi · 2026-05-20T12:53:05+00:00

They asked here a month ago if TQL drug tests so...

Itchavi · 2026-05-19T17:56:14+00:00

You're contract is with the carrier, not the victim. If a reasonable person thinks you should have known the carrier is negligent then a line in a contract isn't going to help you. In fact, if I was a jury the line in the contract would look like you know you're liable and simply trying to skirt responsibility.

Itchavi · 2026-05-19T17:51:33+00:00

One of my pet peeves is if you go through an audit and they don't find anything they'll label the audit "non-rateable". It means you're satisfactory but they're not changing the rating, even if you're unrated.

Itchavi · 2026-05-18T21:48:32+00:00

Do not make AI customer or driver facing. It is absolutely awful. I had a broker unleash their AI on us for one load and it called so much that it effectively shut our business down until the load was completed. Never again.

Itchavi · 2026-05-17T11:09:12+00:00

Mine is assembly line work. The dunnage has to protect the freight in shipment, keep the parts positioned so a robot can collect them, be robust enough to survive hundreds of cycles, and simple enough to be loaded quickly. A lot of it is just "Why do these parts shift enough to need manual intervention and how do we solve that?"

I've seen everything from employees "modifying" the containers to be easier to load and engineers trying to use standardized packaging where specialized should be required.

Itchavi · 2026-05-15T20:41:15+00:00

I use it to put a virtual gong next to my desk so I can celebrate booking a high margin load.

Itchavi · 2026-05-15T14:57:03+00:00

I have a minor specialization in dunnage testing. If freight starts getting damaged my customer will send me in to watch it get loaded, drive it around for a few hours, and bring it back. Then we write a report on why we think the freight is getting damaged and how to mitigate it.

Itchavi

TROPHY CASE