Minimizing Illegal Overweight Truck Frequencies through Strategically Planned Truck Inspection Operations

AbstractOver the past two decades, heavy truck traffic volumes and cargo weights have been steadily increasing due to economic growth and improved transportation system efficiency. These changes are producing an exponential increase in the damage caused to highway pavements and bridges. A disproportionate amount of highway damage is caused by extremely heavy trucks, many of which are illegally exceeding existing truck weight limits. To control the number of illegal overweight trucks, many states have installed fixed truck weighing stations on main highways and have deployed specially trained state police units that perform random roadside inspections to verify the safe operation of trucks and their compliance with the applicable legal weight limits. However, a preliminary study of police roadside inspections shows no correlation between the regions of high enforcement operations and those where overweight trucks are most frequent. Such random deployment of enforcement teams reduces the efficiency of the e...