Electronic Logs are a Joke

I would refer you to the beginning part of your last post. Companies that are doing this are the epitome of dishonest... Moreover, any number of things can happen to this data... IF there is ever a serious audit.. (Hardware storage fail, hacker attack, accidental delete, disgruntled employee sabotage, office fire, network crash... etc etc etc) Of course, whatever these companies claim happened to the data, it will NEVER be the companies fault.

 

Yes they can. They also can make your log look like nothing illeagle ever happened in case a dot wants them faxed over during an inspection.

The excuse for e-logs is safety and will always be when drivers are driving for 18-24 hours straight and kill people.

My my two cents is they don't want a "dumb truck driver" making more money then college grads or anyone else that they feel superior so they mandate the driver to regulations that will effect his pay.

i mean hell, I'm on ELOGS now and will make more money then my fiances friend with a master degree is speech therapy for example.

im fine with electronic logs from the goverment because I'm new school but hell there are days when I sure would love them. Traffic jams/ accidents. When I'm not tired and can probably go another 3-6 hours before hitting the sleeper.


goverment regulations, ok. They need to make it right. Making it a federal law for me to get paid to sleep in a truck away from home. Make it a federal law to pay me more cents per mile after a certain amount of hours worked in the week. If you want to regulate and cut my income off my my career make it a two sided fairness not some lop sided bull ####.

 

just give it time, when I was at Werner use to be that way but now from the way I understand it they are threating to write drivers up who don't start their clocks immediately after their ten hour break or spend too much time on line 4 or take more than 1/2 hour mandatory break. Just cross your fingers that it doesn't start happening where you are.

 

See that's stupid though. Lets say my appointment to be unloaded is 0800. I run hard the day before and get to the exit the customer is at at lets say 1500 about 3 miles away at a ts. I can start my time at 0100, but im only about 3 miles so im supposed to waste 7 hours to go 3 miles. I don't think so. Think if I got written up there id tell them to shove it up their ###.

 

Yeah, my 10 hr ended about 3 hrs ago. I am just now getting ready to start out. But first, I dropped my trailer, and bobtailed off duty to get get a shower and a bite to eat at the truckstop about 3 miles away. I then came back and am just getting ready to leave. All on E-logs and all legal. Sure the e-log does follow the regs on letting me know when i am legal to drive, but it doesn't tell me when to start the day, get up, or go to sleep, or even stop. It doesn't have a fit if I want to bobtail off duty to go get a bite, go home, whatever. 't is just a tool to get a job done and keep things tidy for Barney at the DOT. And considering that HALF of all the out of service citations in the last blitz were for log book violations, mostly for silly driver error stuff, I have no problem having a box keep track of it for me. As Forest Gump said... "just one less thing to worry about".

 

Again, your situation is different than others in which it may not work out like this example. For instance, someone hauling HazMat would be in violation of other regs using your same example, whereas they cannot safely drop a loaded trailer(tanker), or go off duty to save hours in the same way. Blanket regs simply do not always work, in a perfect world they would... Gasp... they world isn't perfect.

 

They could do exactly what i did if they were at a safe haven area. Of course not every situation is identical, nor every operation similar. But lets just cut thru it all and get down to it. It really doesn't matter. E-logs have a better than 80% chance of being mandated. Now, one can either start to adapt to that possibility, or they can continue to act like it is 1990 and cry in their beer, and then when it all comes about, get all tangled in knots over it because they applied no energy trying to figure out how to make it all work. Since I have already worked thru those issues, when they are mandated, it will be just another day than ends with "y" for many of us. We won't even notice it. This in no way implies I am for any mandate, which I am not. But it is a recognition of the realities. And because everyone has been warned for quite a while, and had more than ample time to prepare and adjust their operation, it is going to take some effort to have any sympathy for them when it all hits the fan and they fall flat on their face. There will always be someone else that had foresight and will take their place and get the task done. It is called business, and it has been that way since the first agreement between two people was done.

 

There aren't very many legit safe areas for gas/fuel haulers for instance. Even in loading terminals and refineries they would seriously frown on it, or not allow it at all. Liability is just too great. Of course one NEVER wants to drop a loaded fuel trailer at all... The adaption to E-log will be interesting. My boss IS currently raising rates across the board anticipating the mandate. Other carriers are doing the same. Whom will pay for this? Everyone, the cost of fuel will rise with this mandate... period. Even wholesale delivery costs will rise.... implications are, goods delivered by truck on EVERYTHING will go up, or inflate. I have suspected that when these numbers come to light, there will be exemptions from e-logs for local multi-delivery daily carriers like fuel haulers. But we will see.

 

What will really make the difference is when folks in local areas area are made aware why the prices went up and not just that they did. If they know why, they can better yell at the powers that be in a state to get the state to waive some HOS regulations for certain operations like fuel or livestock. Most times, the public has no clue why something happened or why they are getting the shaft. The conditions are ripe for many states to start flexing their muscles at stuff the Feds are mandating. Truckers and companies are one thing, but if the public has some idea of the dynamics of what is going on, then that is more leverage than a bunch of whiney truckers (at least that is how government hacks see us). In your case, the public will just assume it was big oil or something like that as to why prices went up. And nothing will get addressed. Time for a lot of folks to start sharing this information on their various social networking sites like Facebook and twitter.

 

You wasn't supposed to tell nobody about what I told you, you gave it away with the between Memphis and Little Rock. At least you didn't tell about the coffee can I use to burn the evidence. Umm I mean that a guy I know may or may not use.