A Phoenix-area traffic stop on one of Arizona’s busiest interstates turned into something straight out of a highway safety horror story, with a trooper uncovering violation after violation on what was supposed to be a routine oversize haul.
On May 28, 2026, an Arizona Department of Public Safety Highway Patrol trooper with the Commercial Motor Vehicle Enforcement Unit pulled over an oversize load on Interstate 10 just east of the tunnel in Phoenix. The driver was headed from Mesa to Tonopah, and from the outside, it was already clear something was very wrong. The trailer had no lights and no flags — two of the most basic safety requirements for any oversize load operating on public roads in Arizona.
That was just the beginning. Once the trooper dug into a full inspection of the combination vehicle, the violations kept stacking up. No commercial driver’s license. No insurance. No oversize permit. No certified pilot car. And, perhaps most alarming of all, 10 of the 14 brakes on the vehicle were completely inoperative. In other words, if something had gone wrong on one of the Phoenix metro area’s most traveled stretches of freeway, there would have been very little stopping this load — literally…