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Semi-Safe

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During the next two years, TxDOT staff met repeatedly with Robinson and other Pasadena officials to plan the project. After examining various locations along 225, the state recommended a site between Bearle and South streets. A March 1997 environmental assessment performed by TxDOT found no impediments. The building design passed muster last February. After the cost escalated to more than $350,000 from the initial estimate of $250,000, Pasadena agreed to ante up $100,000 to help cover the difference, and TxDOT signed the funding agreement in April.

When questions were raised about the viability of having trucks go through a traffic light on their way to the station, TxDOT asked the Texas Transportation Institute to review the plan. No problem, a TTI engineer explained in a May memo. "There is sufficient reserve capacity to handle the additional traffic demand," the engineer wrote.

On May 11, Trietsch signed a construction and maintenance agreement with the city, and Pasadena got the go-ahead to publish a construction bid request in the local paper in early July. The project seemed to be in high gear. So when Robinson and others sat down on July 20 with TxDOT managers Quincy Allen and Delvin Dennis, no one on the Pasadena side of the table had any misgivings. "I thought this was the final meeting to clinch it," Robinson recalls. "Then, boom, they dropped the hammer."

As soon as they see the aging dump truck with temporary license plates, Robert Metcalf and Gary Delozier know they've got a live one. "PMS Excavation," Delozier muses aloud at the company ID stenciled on the cab.

It doesn't take long to confirm the initial impression. As Delozier slides on his back under the truck, he calls out the violations: three brakes out of adjustment, a broken spring, a separated shock. Metcalf circles the rig, adding to his list -- no brake lights, a bald tire and two missing lug nuts on one wheel. The brake lights and brakes warrant a red tag, which means the truck can't be driven until it's fixed (though Metcalf gives the truck a courtesy escort to a nearby repair facility).

When he puts on his shades and frown, Metcalf looks like the prototypical small-town Texas police officer -- burly, mean and not to be messed with. In contrast, Delozier, Metcalf's partner in Pasadena's DOT Unit, has an almost boyish look under his careless shock of red hair. Appearances aside, they share the same cordial yet no-nonsense attitude about truck safety that has earned them the nickname "Mr. Goodwrench with a gun."

After a combined 47 years on the streets -- Metcalf as an accident investigator, Delozier as a motorcycle cop -- not much fazes them. The pair bring an enthusiasm to their work that their colleagues find somewhat baffling. "Everybody thinks we're weird," Delozier says. " 'You get excited about catching somebody with an oil leak?' "

The truckers who run substandard equipment are generally respectful while detained, but once back on the highway and grumbling on the CB, their true feelings emerge. "They call us everything from assholes to pricks, you name it," says Metcalf. "There's not much love lost between us."

Though many truckers who complain about Pasadena's enforcement program are simply whining about being caught, they have some legitimate concerns. With several of the cities in the area authorized to write tickets for safety violations as well as the state police, truckers worry about getting multiple tickets for the same infraction or facing unequal enforcement of laws. That rarely, if ever, happens, but at $200 a pop, tickets can quickly eat away profit margins, especially for the hundreds of independent owner-drivers who work the port.

Those drivers are also caught in a regulatory squeeze: The cargo trailers they pull, for example, are often owned by the shipping companies, some of who take little care of their equipment. Yet by law it's the driver who gets nailed for trailer violations. And if drivers refuse to haul an unsafe chassis, they may find themselves without any work.

Pasadena DOT officers understand all this and cut the drivers more than a few breaks on violations, but that's not good enough for some operators -- especially those whose trucks are in disrepair and have received numerous citations. "How can you keep your brakes adjusted all the time?" says trucking company owner and repeat offender Luis Hernandez. "You've got to be under the truck every day."

Hernandez, who claims his trucks are in relatively good condition, says the Pasadena cops need to "slack off a little," especially on brake and oil leak violations. "Am I gonna be paying a mechanic to rebuild my motor because a bad seal is leaking oil?" he says. "I can't afford to be doing that."

Mike Nall, safety director for Dorsett Brothers Concrete Supply, supports Robinson's DOT crew and has worked closely with them. "If there's some trucking companies out there protesting what Pasadena's doing," Nall says, "I'd have to look at their maintenance and safety record."

A group of disgruntled truckers including Hernandez met with Robinson, Mayor Isbell and other Pasadena officials on March 31 to air their grievances. They complained of overzealous enforcement, of being singled out for inspections, of multiple tickets for minor-league violations. They got nowhere, mostly because they had trouble substantiating the charges. "I would dare any company to show me a citation that was issued without cause," Robinson says. "These guys were just complaining because their trucks are pieces of trash."

Oddly, even Hernandez seems to agree. Noting that Isbell owns a fleet of relatively new trucks that have also received tickets, Hernandez says it's no wonder his own have problems. "Compared to his, our trucks are just a piece of junk," he says.

The handful of truckers at the meeting all did business with Southern Crushed Concrete, a Pasadena company that contracts trucks to pick up and deliver materials. Southern Crushed executive Jim Miller was also present, and had organized the gathering.

At one point, the meeting lapsed into a truckers' complaint session with Miller over pay, suggesting that Southern Crushed contract wages were not enough to adequately maintain their rigs. "Southern Crushed Concrete is probably the lowest paying company here in Houston," Hernandez says.

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