Blue Collar Parts
Knowledge Base
Commercial equipment inspection under 49 CFR Part 396, and how the Blue Collar Parts platform records it. Open content, licensed CC BY 4.0, available as Markdown and JSON.
Regulations
What 49 CFR Part 396 requires of carriers, inspectors, and equipment.
What is a Commercial Vehicle Inspection?
A guide to understanding DOT inspections for commercial equipment, why they matter, and how they work.
Annual DOT Inspection Requirements (49 CFR 396.17)
What the federal annual inspection actually requires — the 12-month rule, what counts as documentation on the vehicle, who may perform it, and which vehicles are exempt.
Who Can Perform a DOT Annual Inspection? (49 CFR 396.19 and 396.25)
The federal qualification rules for annual inspectors and brake inspectors — including why ASE certification is not, by itself, the answer, and why brakes require a separate qualification.
DOT Annual Inspection Pass/Fail Standards (Appendix A to 49 CFR Part 396)
The 15 categories checked in a federal annual inspection, plus the measurement limits that decide pass or fail — brake pushrod stroke, lining thickness, tire tread depth, and steering wheel free play.
What a DOT Inspection Decal Must Show (49 CFR 396.17(c))
The four elements federal law requires on an annual inspection sticker, why the address on it may not be your shop's, and how the decal differs from an out-of-service sticker.
DOT Inspection Recordkeeping Requirements — FAQ
How long you have to keep annual inspection reports, what the report must contain, where it has to be stored, and what happens when the shop that did your inspection is gone.
Common DOT Inspection Requirements
Frequently asked questions about federal DOT inspection requirements for commercial vehicles under 49 CFR Part 396.
Safe Operation, Failed Inspections, and Out-of-Service Orders
Three different things that get confused: operating an unsafe vehicle under 49 CFR 396.7, failing an annual inspection, and being placed out of service at the roadside under 396.9. What each one means and what it obligates you to do.
Platform
What the Blue Collar Parts platform does, and where it stops.
What Blue Collar Parts Is
Blue Collar Parts builds serialized inspection decals and digital service records for commercial trucks, trailers, generators, and marine equipment. What the platform does, who it is for, and what it deliberately does not do.
How the Serialized Decal Works
Every Blue Collar Parts decal carries a serial with a defined lifecycle — minted, allocated, bound, active, expired, superseded, void. What each state means and what a scan shows in each one.
Service Events, Intervals, and Publication
Beyond the annual inspection: how Blue Collar Parts records interval-based preventive maintenance for trucks, trailers, generators, and marine equipment, and how a completed record gets published to the equipment owner.
Where Blue Collar Parts Fits Against 49 CFR Part 396
An obligation-by-obligation map: what Part 396 requires of a motor carrier, which of those obligations a serialized digital record can help discharge, and which ones it cannot touch.
Using This Knowledge Base with LLMs and Agents
Every page here is available as clean Markdown and JSON, indexed by llms.txt, licensed CC BY 4.0, and versioned in a public Git repository. How to ingest it and how to cite it.
For machines
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