Texas Industries Inc. is a major player in North Texas’ building boom, producing and hauling sand, gravel, crushed rock and concrete to area construction sites.

Its TXI Transportation Co. unit has a fleet of more than 150 leased trucks and more than 330 drivers, which traveled nearly 32 million miles in Texas and surrounding states last year, according to federal data.

Federal data show that TXI trucks sometimes get stopped for speeding, running stop lights, following too closely and getting involved in crashes – 31 that left people injured over the past two years and two that resulted in fatalities. (The data don’t identify who was at fault.)

Inspectors also ordered TXI drivers off the road 40 times over the past two years for serious violations of safety regulations. Most involved drivers’ logbooks, which are supposed to show how long a driver has been on the road. Such hours-of-service rules were strengthened in 2003 to cut fatal truck crashes caused by fatigue. The 40 out-of-service orders occurred during 1,098 inspections conducted in the 24 months prior to Aug. 31, 2006, according to federal data. By industry standards, TXI’s driver out-of-service rate of 3.6 percent compares favorably with the 2003 national average of 6.78 percent.

In the same period, TXI’s vehicles were put out of service 297 times in 1,031 inspections – an out-of-service rate of 28.8 percent, above the national average of 22.9 percent. The most common violations were defective or maladjusted brakes, bald tires, defective brake lights, improperly secured loads and cracked or broken wheel rims.

Despite the problems, TXI holds a “satisfactory” safety rating from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, the highest of three levels under the agency’s oversight program. A satisfactory rating indicates “no evidence of substantial non-compliance with safety requirements,” based on a review of the company’s records on drivers, vehicles and trips, according to the FMCSA.

Mark Stradley, an attorney for TXI, said it was “difficult to verify the data” cited by the federal agency, but that TXI Transportation Co. had always maintained a “satisfactory” rating.

Out-of-service inspections present only a partial picture of the condition of a company’s trucks and its drivers. Often, inspectors find problems but don’t order a truck or driver off the road. In some cases, the trooper or civilian inspector makes a judgment call. In others, state or federal law proscribes: A single tire with less than 2/32 inch of tread, for example, isn’t an out-of-service violation; a pair of tandem tires with less than 2/32 inch of tread is.