California Highway Patrol — BIT Inspection Requirements

(CHP 800H (REV 08–07) OPI 062)

WHAT IS BIT?

THE BIENNIAL INSPECTION OF TERMINALS

The Cal­i­for­nia Com­mer­cial Motor Vehi­cle Safe­ty Act of 1988, com­mon­ly referred to as the Bien­ni­al Inspec­tion of Ter­mi­nals (BIT) Pro­gram, was enact­ed by the Cal­i­for­nia Leg­is­la­ture in an effort to alle­vi­ate the grow­ing num­ber of truck relat­ed col­li­sions on California’s high­ways. Pri­mar­i­ly, the intent is to ensure every truck ter­mi­nal through­out the state is inspect­ed by the Cal­i­for­nia High­way Patrol (CHP) on a reg­u­lar basis, there­by cre­at­ing a lev­el field for all motor car­ri­ers statewide.Ter­mi­nal inspec­tions have been con­duct­ed by the CHP since 1965 as a tool to deter­mine if motor car­ri­ers are com­ply­ing with Motor Car­ri­er Safe­ty reg­u­la­tions on an on-going basis, par­tic­u­lar­ly with regard to the legal require­ment to main­tain com­mer­cial motor vehi­cles accord­ing to a sched­uled main­te­nance (pre­ven­tive main­te­nance) pro­gram. Each motor car­ri­er is per­mit­ted to estab­lish his or her own main­te­nance pro­gram. The CHP’s role is to deter­mine whether car­ri­ers’ select­ed main­te­nance sched­ules are ade­quate to pre­vent col­li­sions or mechan­i­cal break­downs involv­ing the vehi­cles, and all required main­te­nance and dri­ver records are pre­pared and retained as required by law. These same basic require­ments are applied to all car­ri­ers, large and small.Sec­tion 34501.12 of the Cal­i­for­nia Vehi­cle Code (VC) requires any per­son or orga­ni­za­tion direct­ing the oper­a­tion of cer­tain trucks and/or trail­ers to par­tic­i­pate in the BIT Pro­gram. The law requires the CHP to inspect Cal­i­for­nia truck ter­mi­nals every 25 months.Who is a “motor car­ri­er” for pur­pos­es of the BIT Pro­gram?  A motor car­ri­er sub­ject to the BIT Pro­gram is the reg­is­tered own­er of any of the fol­low­ing vehi­cles, whether or not for hire:

• Any motortruck with three or more axles hav­ing a gross vehi­cle weight rat­ing of more than 10,000 pounds.
• Truck trac­tors.
• Trail­ers or semi­trail­ers used in com­bi­na­tion with the vehi­cles list­ed above.
• Any truck, or com­bi­na­tion of a truck and any oth­er vehi­cle, trans­port­ing haz­ardous mate­ri­alsthat require plac­ards, a haz­ardous mate­ri­als trans­porta­tion license, or haz­ardous wastetrans­porter reg­is­tra­tion, includ­ing pick­ups used for this purpose.
• Any motortruck with a gross vehi­cle weight rat­ing of more than 10,000 pounds (exclud­ing apick­up truck as defined in Sec­tion 471 VC), while tow­ing any trail­er or semi­trail­er that results in a com­bi­na­tion length over 40 feet (exclud­ing trail­er coach­es, camp trail­ers, and util­i­ty trail­ers, as those terms are defined in the Vehi­cle Code).Excep­tions:

• If the reg­is­tered own­er leas­es the vehi­cle to anoth­er per­son for a term greater than four months, the lessee is the motor car­ri­er. The lessor and lessee must be iden­ti­fied on the vehi­cle reg­is­tra­tion (Sec­tion 4453.5 VC).

Depart­ment of Cal­i­for­nia High­way Patrol CHP 800H (REV 08–07) OPI 062

• Send the com­plet­ed appli­ca­tion along with a check or mon­ey order for the total amount of ter­mi­nal inspec­tion fees to:

Cal­i­for­nia High­way Patrol
Fis­cal Man­age­ment Sec­tion — BIT Pro­gram P.O. Box 942902
Sacra­men­to, CA 94298–2902

Periodic Inspections

Car­ri­ers who oper­ate vehi­cles reg­u­lat­ed under the BIT pro­gram are required to cause each reg­u­lat­ed vehi­cle to be peri­od­i­cal­ly inspect­ed with­in 90-day inter­vals, or soon­er if nec­es­sary to ensure safe oper­a­tion. Inspec­tions must be doc­u­ment­ed and inspec­tion reports must be retained for at least two years. At a min­i­mum, the fol­low­ing items need to be inspected:

• Brake adjust­ment.
• Brake sys­tem com­po­nents and leaks.
• Steer­ing and sus­pen­sion systems.
• Tires and wheels.
• Vehi­cle con­nect­ing devices (fifth wheels, king­pins, pin­tle hooks, draw­bars, chains, etc.).Peri­od­ic inspec­tion reports must include:

• Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of the vehi­cle includ­ing, make, mod­el, license num­ber, com­pa­ny vehi­clenum­ber or oth­er means of pos­i­tive identification.
• Date and nature of each inspec­tion and repair performed.
• The sig­na­ture of your autho­rized rep­re­sen­ta­tive attest­ing to the inspec­tion and to thecom­ple­tion of all required repairs.
  

  The Inspection

  Dur­ing a BIT inspec­tion, CHP Motor Car­ri­er Spe­cial­ist (MCS) per­son­nel will inspect a sam­ple of reg­u­lat­ed vehi­cles, main­te­nance records of the vehi­cles, and dri­ver records to deter­mine if the motor car­ri­er is in com­pli­ance with applic­a­ble motor car­ri­er safe­ty relat­ed statutes and reg­u­la­tions. If the motor car­ri­er trans­ports haz­ardous mate­ri­als or haz­ardous waste, rel­e­vant haz­ardous mate­ri­als records and safe­ty prac­tices will also be inspected.

  MCS per­son­nel do not issue cita­tions for vio­la­tions dis­cov­ered. Instead, a safe­ty com­pli­ance rat­ing is assigned in each cat­e­go­ry: reg­u­lat­ed vehi­cles; main­te­nance pro­gram; dri­ver records; and haz­ardous mate­ri­als (if applic­a­ble). The rat­ings are either “sat­is­fac­to­ry” or “unsat­is­fac­to­ry.” A “con­di­tion­al” rat­ing may be issued under lim­it­ed cir­cum­stances on reinspections.

  If each cat­e­go­ry is rat­ed sat­is­fac­to­ry, the com­pos­ite ter­mi­nal rat­ing is sat­is­fac­to­ry, and the next inspec­tion should take place with­in 25 months. If any cat­e­go­ry is rat­ed unsat­is­fac­to­ry, the motor car­ri­er is informed that there is an unsat­is­fac­to­ry con­di­tion, spe­cif­ic direc­tion is giv­en to cor­rect the unsat­is­fac­to­ry con­di­tion, and a rein­spec­tion will be sched­uled with­in 120 days to ensure the motor car­ri­er has cor­rect­ed the unsat­is­fac­to­ry condition.

  NOTICE

  This doc­u­ment is intend­ed to give the gen­er­al pub­lic an overview of BIT Pro­gram require­ments, and is not intend­ed to be used as a legal ref­er­ence. While every effort to is made to ensure the accu­ra­cy of the infor­ma­tion, the statutes explained here­in are sub­ject to change with­out notice.

Destroy Pre­vi­ous Edi­tions 3