COMMERCIAL TRUCK BIT INSPECTIONS
California Commercial Truck and Trailer Inspections – A Comprehensive Professionally Managed Preventative Maintenance Program
Triton Truck Repair specializes in comprehensive commercial truck and trailer inspections to ensure full compliance with the Basic Inspection of Terminals (BIT) regulatory requirements. As a valued Triton Truck Repair client, we proactively track and monitor your BIT Safety Inspections, ensuring they are completed on schedule every 90 days.
Our certified technicians are highly trained and stay current with the latest industry standards to provide reliable and thorough inspections. With Triton Truck Repair, your vehicles get the BIT Safety Inspections they need, exactly when they need them, keeping your fleet safe and compliant.
Understanding Terminal Inspections by the CHP: Ensuring Compliance with Motor Carrier Safety Regulations
Since 1965, the California Highway Patrol (CHP) has conducted terminal inspections to verify that motor carriers comply with Motor Carrier Safety regulations. These inspections focus on ensuring commercial motor vehicles are maintained through a structured preventive maintenance program, a legal requirement for all motor carriers. While compliance is mandatory, each motor carrier can design a customized maintenance schedule to meet regulatory standards. Regular inspections help improve road safety, reduce vehicle breakdowns, and ensure adherence to state and federal guidelines.
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.
A motor carrier under the BIT Program is the registered owner (with certain exceptions) of any of the following vehicles, regardless of whether they are used for hire:
- Any motor truck 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 materials that require placards, a hazardous materials transportation license, or hazardous waste transporter registration, including pickups used for this purpose.
- Any motor truck with a gross vehicle weight rating of more than 10,000 pounds (excluding a pickup 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).
