An overloaded truck and trailer with defective brakes heading down Cariboo Hill in Burnaby earlier this month was a “recipe for disaster,” according to the RCMP officer who heads up commercial vehicle enforcement in the city.
Traffic section officers were at Cariboo Road and 10th Avenue at the Burnaby-New Westminster border on Sept. 8, according to Const. Kevin Connolly.
At about 1 p.m., they stopped a smaller two-axel dump truck pulling a heavy trailer down Cariboo Road, he said.
An inspection revealed defective brakes, a load that was nearly 4,000 kilograms overweight and a driver who wasn’t properly licenced to pull that kind of trailer, according to Connolly.
To add to the potential hazards, one of the trailer’s tires was worn to threads, he said.
“It had one tire that was so worn it basically had about eight rows of ply cords that were showing completely around the circumference of the tire,” Connolly said.
The truck and trailer belong to a Surrey construction company, and Connolly said officers had taken another unsafe unit belonging to the same company off the road two hours earlier.
After the second truck and trailer were towed, Connolly said the owner of the company showed up at the scene to find out what was happening to his vehicles.
“We had a rather lengthy conversation of what was going on,” Connolly said. “It was apparent that not only the driver but the boss was completely unaware of the requirements expected of him and his employees for the rules and regulations related to commercial vehicle enforcement, which was astonishing and concerning at the same time,” Connolly said.
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