County that loves to ticket truckers outsmarted out of $250K by new law

A Tennessee county that operates the nation’s second busiest scale house is looking for new sources of revenue after a newly enacted law is preventing them from making money by ticketing overweight trucks.

Under a law that went into effect on January 1, 2019, Knox County will no longer be allowed to take in revenue by ticketing overweight trucks at their scale houses. Truckers may still be ticketed, but under the new law, that ticket revenue will bypass Knox County and go directly to the state of Tennessee.

Last year, Knox County issued more than 1600 citations to overweight trucks and generated approximately a quarter of a million dollars worth of revenue for the county.

“When you look at the amount of truck traffic that goes through here from I-40, 75 and 81, it’s easy to understand why we’re so busy and why we’ve been able to collect a lot of revenue,” noted County Clerk Mike Hammond.

This change comes thanks to State Representative Bud Hulsey, who also owns Blountville-based trucking company Burlington Logistics. He proposed the law after one of his drivers was ticketed in Knox County. Husley successfully argued that it wasn’t fair that truckers had to pay the criminal fine to Knox County in addition to the civil fine to the state. He also argued that it wasn’t fair that only the six counties that operate scales in Tennessee benefit from trucker ticket revenue.

Hammond told WBIR that “The state is going to get their money, but we’re not going to get any. So we’ve basically been cut out of the equation.”

Knox County officials say that they aren’t sure how they’ll make payroll now that they aren’t receiving revenue from trucker tickets.

For more, take a look at the report below.