OOIDA has conducted a survey into what impact ELDs have had on truckers so far. The results are in and they’re not looking good.
According to OOIDA, the approximately 2,000 people filled out the survey. The majority were owner-operators, with 39% driving under their own authority and 40% leased to a carrier. The remaining respondents were company drivers and fleet owners.
Surprisingly, 35% of respondents stated that they have not yet installed an ELD in their truck, despite the mandate going in to effect in December of last year. Of those who did install systems, here’s how drivers said the ELD mandate was impacting them so far:
- 79% said that it was decreasing safety overall
- 75% reported that they felt more pressure to speed
- 72% experienced increased fatigue
- 44% said they felt more harassed than before the mandate
- 78% noted that they felt more pressure to drive even when they felt they should stop
- 71% said they felt more pressure to keep driving even in unsafe road conditions.
OOIDA also released information on how much drivers are paying for their systems, both in startup costs and monthly fees.
You can see the full survey results here.
Source: gobytrucknews, freightwaves, OOIDA
Continued,
So, my attention is diverted to those “lights” instead of watching traffic (360 degrees)
And if I have too many “red light” moments I get reprimanded.
So 1 way or the other, it costs me $
In general I perfer ELD’s makes life simple. But I also can see “both sides” of the story.
Thx,
DDS
If you’re running legal, the only things e logs change are saving you time with minute by minute logging so you don’t have to round up to 15 minutes, and reducing paperwork and time spent on paperwork.
*IF* You’re running legal.
This reads to me as “I’m stressed because I can’t cheat anymore”
The e logs are ok but what is not ok is the nanny bot telling me I must take break in x minutes . Bad enough when those people who are not drivers telling me how to do my job worse having a machine doing it as well.
No its not smh,the over all with the “cheating” is sitting at a dock 3+ hrs & logging idk 30min to only 1hr then rolling so we do not interrupt driving time
Accident rates have gone up? Prove it.
Josh, I know you mean well, but your comment shows your ignorance about the subject.
Please explain to all of us how he is ignorant?
The HOS haven’t changed. HOS is the problem, not how you record your HOS. If you don’t cheat, your life hasn’t changed.
If 79% of OOIDA members surveyed say their life had changed in any way, it’s because 79% of them were cheating HOS when they ran paper.
I’ve been on the road a decade, and on elogs for the past 3 years. OTR, international long haul. ELDs have no impact on me, because any company worth their salt would fire a driver who cheats anyway. A log book fine (whether roadside or by facilty audit where they check GPS against my logs) is grounds for immediate dismissal.
I’m hauling hazmat across the border every week, earn 1.2:1 (days worked:days off) and making over $80k a year ad a company driver. Why would I cheat my logs and risk that? Why would I work for less than I am worth just so I can avoid taking a 30 min break or stretch my days to 15-16 hours to benefit a shipper?
Well aren’t you the envy of truckers everywhere Barf?
The 80k a year u make is a joke to us Owner operators. We couldn’t live on that small of an amount.
80,000/gross is chump change. Based on the average number of hours worked on the road you make about $7.40 per hour. So you are barely over minimum wage.
So where does your accident “research” come from? CB 19, or the Trucker’s Only table coffee klatch at the “J”?
And Josh would like to thank his mega carrier for his new cab facing camera and for all the other ways they’ve idiot proofed his truck.
. . . and if people hadn’t been cheating in the past and just did the right thing we wouldn’t have any of it . . .
Understand, I don’t mean this as a blanketing statement to all, so don’t go there, but there always has been a problem. It’s no different than ABS. If people knew how to drive properly there would be no use for it.
You either go home every night or your lazy or you love having your freedom taken from you all the time.
I noticed being extremely tired because I felt I couldn’t stop,I was speeding all the time in posted zones to make sure I was done in time and I was a driver who kept the door shut anyway. There were other issues too
OTR is way different especially if you been out awhile and been at it a few years some days you feel like working 4 hrs some 24. Also you should be able to stop when you want. Why should you have to stop 15 min from home. Or under any circumstances it’s fri. Your an hour from picking up a load now you have to stop,now you have to sit till mon. Ridiculous. If your running 200 to 600mi. OTR doing pickups or deliveries your better of working 8.75hrs everyday. Now your in a hotel or Truckstop 15.25 hrs a day. Ridiculous
I totally agree that’s just ridiculous, they may not want to get rid of the electronic log device. But for God’s sake they definitely need to make some changes.
If you mean logging ALL time spent loading/un-loading, (not me) driving within the limits of speed/radius parameters of the eld so your duty status doesn’t change. ( Yep, that’s me) showing line 2 while you’re in the chrome shop, line 1 while tarping, sneaking a 30 min break setting in traffic. (me again). If you mean all the above cheating, then yea, eld’s sure put an end to this.
Exactly. Notice nobody is saying exactly HOW this is negatively affecting them.
I find in my case you are primarily right but like the last week when I was heading home I didn’t have enough hr to get all the way but could stop at a place 1hr away I had an extra 20 minutes to get there before my clock ran out the next further play so I could stop was approximately three hours from the house due to in foreseen rain and some people driving 40 mph I Barely made it and I felt the pressure of not making it for my clock ran out I also tend to stop and hour before my clock runs out instead of like I used to with paper and drive a full 11 hours
It’s not cheating, it’s delivering the load safely based on each driver’s biological time clock, if you no what that is. As long as the load is delivered on time and safe…the rest is NULL & VOID.
I agree . most of these companies have Qualcomm or gps’s they know what your doing. They need to chill on alot of this eld and hours of service.
Why should you sit a weekend because you had to stop an hour before a pickup. Or couldn’t go home because your clock ran out 15min. Short of home. Or you can’t stop like you used to now your stuck in rush hour traffic or rushing because of your clock or your Frick in tired like me when the sun goes down but I have to push on. This crap is all unsafe and stressful.
Some of this is political trying to create jobs (thought thee was a shortage ) I know these companies get supplemented for things and programs mine did. They don’t want a bunch of little companies. They don’t like working class people that make money ( I’ve seen that first hand too) . Keep everything controlled especially with the newbies.
They took away speed of trucks ( no you don’t need to go 80) they took away hrs. Of service and flexibility. Took away alot of my safety area’s took away my per diem
The last 4 yrs have absolutely sucked,been very very sressful, and I have lost a lot,alot of money. And actually alot of sleep actual sleep and productivity
You’re constantly racing against the ‘clock’ to get your stops done & every delay costs you precious minutes you could be driving ($$). Getting hung up at a shipper/receiver, waiting in line at the fuel pumps cause cementheads are lazy & park at the pumps to take their 30 min break inconsiderate of others who need 2 fuel & go so a 15-20 min fuel stop turns into 45 min waiting in line cause idiots refuse 2 move their trucks at the pumps ( a real peeve of mine), traffic delays, weather, etc. It all adds up in the course of a day & you’re racing to get your obligations done cause there is NO flexibility once you start your clock. Instead of waiting 2-3 hours till rush hour traffic is over with, my clock is running so i have no choice but to keep going & it royally sucks when you know you’re gonna be crawling, at best, for several hours of Chicago rush hour traffic burning up your clock when if you could just go off the clock for several hours & take a nap & wait it out & it wouldn’t affect your 11/14 but unfortunately it does. I run all over. 7 states in midwest & im bound to catch 1-2 city rush hours on a daily basis so i really have to hustle to avoid them at all costs which means.stepping on the gas all day & staying on schedule to try to minimize as many delays as possible cause the ELDs allow zero flexibility once you start your clock it’s ‘tick-tock’ all day long. I like them better than having to do paper logs manually but there needs to be some flexibility options with ELDs and thhere is zero.
we are having the wrong argument. Your issue is with the hours of service rules that need to be changed so we can go back to a sleeper split. The ELD is just stopping you from manipulating the HOS rules. We are spending all of our energy on the wrong issue. Without ELD your “flexibility” is still unlawful. Lets fight to change the HOS
Your probably right. Those of us that have already lost our freedoms and had Qualcomms or GPS tracking the ELD isn’t that big of deal,actually saves a tree
But your right on about HOS and flexibility. These designated and city slicker drivers get on here and really they shouldn’t like having their freedoms taken away either ,but, they go home every night or they have a route or are regimented. So outside of a breakdown or snow storm or accident it doesn’t affect them.
But, it’s a little different for true OTR truckers
Everybody ,all drivers should be concerned about their rights as a man-woman ,as a patriot, their freedoms tTHEIR right to work (not as a state,that just lowers wages)as a individual
We “lost our freedoms” in 1913 when Woodrow Wilson enslaved the nation.
By signing the federal reserve act Americans became collateral for the money supply(all borrowed.)
We are effectively the property of whatever entity owns the federal reserve and have been conscripted in the globalist movement. Eld’s are but a small part of the global enslavement plan.
Glenn, you nailed it.
Right on Mr truck driver I’ve been doing this along time now I still have the love for it but something gotta giv
if youve started your 14 hour clock, how would a 2-3 hour nap not effect your clock? going into the sleeper doesnt stop or extend your 14 hoir clock.
I obtained my CDL in 9/99 and most jobs Ive had have been on elogs, the new ELD doesnt change anything, the diatribe is lost on me. if im waiting to fuel I log off duty, any situation where I want to save my 70 I log off, any time im legitimately off duty Im logging off duty.
Once you begin the day, Off Duty counts. The clock does not stop. THAT’S THE PROBLEM.
Maybe with everyone actually following the law, we can effectuate change in the law.
As long as 79% of survey respondents admit they weren’t following HOS prior to ELDs, the government could argue that HOS is fine, it’s the drivers who don’t follow HOS who are the problem.
Personally, I think OOIDA is often misguided in the battles they choose.
Why fight ELDs? Why not fight the real problem – HOS?
Why fight CPAP regulations? Why not petition and fight for healthier drivers?
Let’s start a protest Barf!!!! We will log it on duty, not driving. I am D.C. bound!!!
A 2-3hr nap starts a whole new day for me. What if you were at your 70 (which I think they should get rid of,they pretty much know what everybody is doing cell phones,gps,eld etc.) OR 14 and your one hour from home or a pickup on fri.now you have to camp out till monday. Been at this since 2/85. All this crap is actually why I have sress and anxiety. BS
If there going to keep the elds they need to do away with the 70 hour rule and give us 14 hours a day. We are the only group being told how many hours we can work a day. Cops ,doctor’s, are not told they need 10 hours off a day. And i have seen since the rule has gone into law trucks that are drive like mad man and wrecked where they look like they just went to sleep. We as a group deal with the cops and the average joe driving there cars like crazy people cutting us off . Don’t put me on a clock and tell me you have to drive thru Atlanta at rush hour or in bad weather and eat 4 hours of my time to get around a 20 mile loop. It’s like the trucking company and the government thinks us drivers are not humans.
62 mile loop
To me e-logs is a computerized boss it tells you when you can drive when you have to stop and when you can go home, so if your 12hrs from home at the 11th hour it tells you to spend another nite in your truck, it’s choice not yours. I have a friend that is pretty good at manipulating his e-logs so is that cheating?
How your friend cheating
Eld?
Yeah, a DOT officer will see it as such.
It is as easy to edit an E-Log as it was a paper log. Go in, change a duty status to something else, and wah-lah, you got some time back. However, those edits show up in red. If a DOT officer asks for a log report from your truck, he is going to see all of these red edits. If it is clear that you’re just editing to gain time back, like doing multiple edits over a 7-day period, then he is very likely to write you a ticket for it, and maybe even put you out of service for 10 hours.
So yeah, while it is just as easy to cheat with E-Logs as it was with paper logs, it is now harder to get away with.
I can edit any status change on my ELD except driving time. My safety manager can edit my driving time (if, for example, I accidentally log loaded miles as off duty driving), but she can only edit it once.
If you’re manipulating your elog to show off duty when you’re in fact on duty, yes that’s cheating. HOS hasn’t changed.
Editing drive time? Sounds legit Barf!
If the people that created the ELD rules had to follow them, then they would have never passed. Do you want your kids and grandkids on the road with semis that weighs 80,000 pounds in front of or coming head on at them when the driver is awake and alert or when a government mandated ELD tells the driver when to drive ? Since the ELD went into affect the on and off ramps have become cluttered with trucks parking because the truck stops and rest areas are full.
I think your anger is misdirected.
The rules haven’t changed, you’re just being forced to follow them now. By reading through these comments, you have to agree that there appear to be a fair number of drivers who admit they weren’t following the law prior to ELDs.
Change the laws, not the way you record them.
It was just one fatality after another when people used paper logs huh Barf? I think every ELD exempt truck has been totaled in a wreck right? No one using paper logs was ever safe, thank God for ELDs and the safe mega carriers that fight for them.
Look guys,I know ELD’s are a problem for most of us but for me I kinda like them. Never thought I would but what can I say . I only work 4.5 hours per day now but I understand how they can put pressure on you to get the job done. I was an OTR driver for 33 years and got out of it for an hourly wage job and I made more $$$$ driving by the hour then I ever did OTR . The company I work for now has about 70+ drivers and a few of us are retired working P/T but those that work F/T aren’t getting the hours they were getting because of the ELD. Can’t tear out a page and start over anymore but I’ve said my piece so have a great day guys .
yup. this is what i’ve heard over and over from clients. i feel like saying “told you so”
People don’t get it, run legal!!! If you don’t get it you never will. Run the way they want, when shippers, receivers, and there customers don’t get things on time and your obeying the law then they will see. It’s common sense, it’s a big HOS problem, not ELD or EOBR.
so there’s no actual data behind it….just a “how do you feel about it, tell us your complaints” type of thing
I am a driver of 24 years , and I did it all otr. I understand your complaints with ELD’s. I refused them putting it in my truck. I was picking up a load, and I had to travel thru this trailer park.. I saw a beach ball roll out in front of me, and I braked, I was travelling approx. 15 mph. Sure enough a little boy followed the ball into my path, without looking. I stopped and watched as he retrieved his ball. He then looked up for the first time, and I waited until he went back to the curb and onto the grass. As I was getting loaded, I thought, If I had hit him and killed him, an attorney would have gone through my paper logs, and FOUND 15 minutes that was not logged properly. JAIL TIME FOR ME. I called right then and made an appointment to get it installed.
There is too many 4 wheel idiots and others that don’t respect us ( DOT included) I have no problem with them now, except when I used to open it up going out west. I deem it 1 less worry now( safety) . I do not look at the ELD hardly until I shut down, and view my logs. I only run 9 hrs per day ( including fuel) and I never run out of hours 7×9=63.. I don’t let dispatchers run my loads, and I just work within the system, and make steady income , no problem from safety, and my life is HAPPY. It takes a little knowledge of computers and It can work for you. STOP BEING STEERING WHEEL HOLDER.. PLEASE AND THINK!!
So your on some dedicated run where you got it figured out,or do you have to spend a night 1hr from home. Or do you like sitting in a motel or Truckstop for 15 hrs everyday. You actually kinda sound like a steering wheel holder to me,or paid tourist,or semi-retired. Which is it.
I actually don’t care about the ELD and most of the other drivers don’t either from what I can read or determine. It’s all the restrictions and no flexibility, and of course your freedom and right to work
The majority of the Hours of Service regulations have been around since the 1937, with some minor changes in 2004 and now ELDs. I was involved in converting a small carrier to ELDs in 2017. There were driver concerns and fears before we installed the ELDs in the heavy haul trucks. No one likes change. Within 60 days of installing the devices the concerns were gone and drivers said it was easier for them than paper logs. Just say’n.
Sir, it all depends on your customer base,what you actually think a OTR driver is,or if your dedicated, regional or what. I’ve seen it they may not complain, hopefully they like or need their job (alot of guys are trapped because they have families or need health insurance etc.so they can’t say anything I’ve been there) . We had gps ELD would be better as far asmatching log doing logs.but,last 4-5 yrs it just kills you,so depressed man. Much of it though is trying to squeeze everything in. Not speeding in posted zones .HOS.and flexibility of hours and life
As always happens when this topic comes up, someone comments about how we drivers don’t like the E-logs, because the e-logs will stop us from cheating on our HOS. This could not be further from the truth. We don’t like them, not because they stop us from bending the rules, but because they make it harder to bend the rules. There is a widely held assumption among the bureaucrats who make them, and the public who is ignorant about them, that when followed, the rules make trucking safer, because they make the trucker rested. This could not be further from the truth. When followed to the letter, these rules often make the driver drive when he is tired, or ill, while they tell him to sleep, when he is not tired at all. Humans are not all the same. I require 7 full hours of sleep to function. But sometimes I have days when all I need is four, or five. In addition to that I am a night hawk. I function best at night and that’s when I do the bulk of my driving. The rules as they are would make me drive different times of day and night. Nothing makes me more tired than having to drive different shifts. I knew a guy who was perfectly functional and full of energy while sleeping only three hours per day. But I also knew a guy who had a condition that made him sleep for 14 or more. We are not automatons as the government bureaucrats and the trucking corporations would like us to be. That is the main reason why we have a loose approach to the rules. The other reason is that the pay does not reflect the time needed to do the work. 15 years ago I was paid 300 dollars to go 300 miles, unload the reefer, get 3 hours sleep, go look for a load back, load and drive back the 300 miles. This usually took about 20 to 24 hours. Recently I saw an ad looking for a driver to do the exact same thing for….you guessed it- 300 dollars. 15 year difference less pay. Why less? Because in those 15 years everything you buy became much more expensive. Third reason why we play with the rules concerns practicality. Driver who is only one, or two hours away from his home terminal, say on a Friday night, but has only 30 minutes left on the log, is facing having to spend the night alone in the plastic box on wheels, away from his dissapointed wife and kids. What would you do? What would any normal human do? We are human and the rules are not made for humans, hence humans break them. Nothing wrong with that.
Totally agree!
I hope your attitude toward breaking the law is as as cavalier for all criminals.
If a man can’t provide for his family and comes home to a hungry and disappointed wife and kids, I hope you agree that laws preventing him from stealing food are inhumane.
More than likely you would advise this man to pull up his bootstraps and find another job.
I offer you the same advice. If you have to break the law to keep your family together, perhaps it’s time to seek employment in a different field.
Sage advice Barf! Ever been over the speed limit headed to work, failed to signal, rolled through a stop sign? Do you follow ever law to a T, Barf? I bet not.
Yea, safety and fighting fatigue.
I drive a flatbed, now I can’t get that nap in after binding and tarping to recover.
Now I’m forced to drive tired and risk my life as well as others.
Not to mention all the time at some shippers and receivers to get the product on and off the truck, especially the pieces that are delicate.
E logs are great for OTR work, especially teams, been there done that.
Flatbedding is a different story altogether.
“I like them better than having to do paper logs manually but there needs to be some flexibility options with ELDs and thhere is zero.”
Well said, Glenn.
ELDs aren’t the problem here, though. It is the inflexibility of the HOS laws. ELDs only log what the law says they have to log.
What we need is change in legislation. We’ve all been arm-chair-quarterbacked into driving all in only one way. People, in real life, are just too different from one-another. Sleep times vary, some people work best getting two 4-hour periods, while others work on 2 and 6, 1 and 7 and so on, while others still need a straight 8 everyday. Our habits in this regard are as varied as our tastes. We’re all different. We are the only industry in which its workforce has been this severely pigeonholed. No one will find this kind of invasive regulation in any other industry.
Shane and Bill are proof that e logs can be cheated. “Waiting ” is on duty.
The 14 hr clock and omission of the sleeper berth extension are half the problem. The other half is all this “smart” technology those who know zero about your business are requiring you to have.
I can’t wait to see if all those tough talking I’M GONNA QUIT DRIVERS really do it.
I did!!
22yrs, I quit last October!
For me, it’s not about running illegal. I own the truck so I don’t need nor want boo-koos of miles. It’s about the rate. But this is yet another case of the government stepping in and forcing its citizens to buy a product we don’t necessarily need, want or care to spend the money on. With all the electronic crap on trucks nowadays, you almost have to have an apu or a low-voltage shut down system on your truck. I’m all for a safe motoring public. But what good does a trucker do the motoring public, if he’s wide awake and alert, but sitting in a truckstop twiddling his thumbs because a bunch of beaurocrats who don’t know a truck from a cheese omelette says it’s safer for everyone that he be there?
HOS came about in 1930s. So nothing has changed in 80 years with respect to laws governing how many hours a driver can work and how many hours a driver must rest.
Personally, I think 2004 update to HOS is crap. I think the 30 min rest period is crap. I often lose far more than 30 mins when I am forced to stop for 30 mins north of NYC at sunrise, because I couldn’t make it through under cover of night and take a break on the NJTP. Such is life.
Most of us can govern ourselves accordingly, stop when we are tired, stay attentive for more than 11 hrs at a stretch. The problem is, for everyone who can self govern, there is someone out there who can’t.
My father in law was a driver in the 60s through the 80s. They were all munching pills to stay on the road for 40-50 hours straight. Arriving at home unable to remember the last 5 hours of the drive because they were mentally shut down due to lack of sleep.
I’ve never been in a wreck, but big government insists I drive the speed limit and wear a seat belt. Should I have to? Heck no, I’m not the problem. But I understand why hey have speed limits and seat belts.
40 or 50 hours straight? Where was 5 hr energy back then Barf? Some serious logistics geniuses back in them days. Did they have maps and a general concept of time and distance in those days?
shogun, you’d have had to been there. I started driving in ’72 and came off the road in ’13.
It was a whole different world back then.
But I will say, my biggest complaint was losing the ability to ‘stretch’ my log. Technically it was cheating, but no one was in danger. If it took me an extra 5 or 10 minutes to reach a truck stop, my logs looked good.
Now you can’t do that. One minute over and you’d think you shot the queen!
So drivers now look and see the next truck stop is 90 miles and they have 80 minutes left, so they don’t move. Can’t take a chance of violating those sacred elogs. Well, in a cross country trip, this effectively adds one day to the load. Driver is out one extra day for the same miles..takes a cut in pay.
In all the years I drove, I never had a log violation. Never a speeding ticket, never a chargeable accident.
I only had the e logs for 3 months. Not my cup of tea. Don’t need a nanny telling me what to do.
Pay the drivers by the hr, problem solved !!!
Self-reported data? Check. Small pool of voluntary respondents? Check. Results in-line with dogma. Check.
What a great study! Thanks OOIDA! (*rolls eyes*)
For all the morons that support ELD’s, keep drinking your daddy dot’s Koolaid. Your too stupid to know when your tired and when to go nighty night. Yes I want to cheat my logs because dot doesn’t know when I’m tired, I know when I’m tired! Keep adjusting to stupid regulations because you will soon be out of a job. When daddy dot brings out self driving trucks, You can agree with that too. Because for safety reasons you need to be in the unemployment line.
I was a trucker for 3 years, currently a city bus driver. While a trucker, I ran everything from local to OTR. I had exactly one company not on eobr. And guess what? That company always forced me I to situations where I would either have to adjust my logs to make them work, or find a truck size hotel in sw Washington just 15 minutes from home.
I never had that problem running elogs. I never felt more pressure with elogs, like I did with paper logs. And I never got an hos violation (at least, not when the company was allowing off duty driving per the law).
All the people complaining about elogs are complaining about the wrong thing. Elds aren’t the problem, the HOS regs are.
We don’t make money when driving, but with only a couple rare exceptions, if I told my company I was unsafe to drive, due to weather or illness, they didn’t force me. I’ve driven when not as rested as I should have been, but that was a choice I made. I frequently only sat at truck stops for my 10hrs, sometimes 12, then on the road again. If I couldn’t get rested in that time, that was usually on me.
So to all the truckers thinking elogs are raising stress, take a look at the real culprit: the HOS and the shippers and recievers.
The biggest thing for the HOS rules, is to protect the driver, and the motoring public, from companies that would, quite literally, run drivers to death.
Check out the movie F.I.S.T.; it’s a Sylvester Stallone movie that came out back in 1978. One of the points of the contention of the film, was that employers were demanding that their drivers drive, regardless of state of exhaustion, many of those drivers then falling asleep behind the wheel and killing themselves. The film is set in the 1920s.
Miles are money. For both the company and the driver. It is only money for the company though. For the driver, while it is also money, it is risk, needing to get sufficient rest and being responsible behind the wheel. The HOS were created to create an environment wherein drivers can see to these needs, and to force companies to give drivers opportunity for this environment. It was and is a great idea, and a necessary one. Where money is involved, it is too easy for those without risk, to put others into it in order to make as much money as can be made.
Our point of contention now, is that the DOT has made the HOS rules all but untenable for drivers to manage them against real-world demands. Some new thought, and a lot of new perspective need to go into them. They need to make sense. They need to be changed so that they work for the driver – so he can be safe, but also make his livelihood work for him. As they stand now, they do neither.
Where is the statistical data? People’s opinions don’t matter. There is no evidence of this being true.
Of course with OOIDA’s reader base the percentage is going to be high. How about someone doing a survey among drivers who have used ELDs for years without all these so-called problems.
Also, anyone blaming the ELD for their lack of judgement in driving when they feel they shouldn’t is being a fool. That ELD does not operate that truck, you do. This, to me, is one of the most ridiculous arguments being made. I’m being forced to drive. Right.
The HOS are exactly what they were with paper logs and all these people are proving is how many drivers were driving illegally.
The problem with ‘being forced to drive’ arises when you work for certain companies.
*Cough* Marten Transport
*Cough cough* Prime
Yeah, worked for both of these companies. Don’t anymore. ELDs can be seen by dispatchers. When some of them look at them, all they see is available hours. They don’t see the driver. Those hours are money that can be made.
I had a mantra with Marten: “Let the harassment begin.” If I tried to beg off because I wasn’t feeling well, I would get a minimum of five phone calls from various people, all of them trying to cajole, some of them even trying to demand that I start driving. Because I had hours.
Prime was worse. I had a dispatcher there who would call me up immediately and start talking to me like I was some kind of failure because the truck wasn’t moving.
Both companies were draconian toward their drivers where available HOS were concerned.
It wasn’t me, either. I am in the top 99th percentile of the company I work for now. I have always been that kind of driver. My point is, there are companies out there that use the ELD like a rope and whip. It is so commonplace, that articles have appeared on this site about the DOT discussing need for anti-harassment clauses for ELD use. The argument that ‘You are the Captain of the ship’ is just words where some of these companies are concerned.
ELDs are a bad bet all around. They enforce ill-conceived laws, and they make drivers vulnerable to unscrupulous companies and dispatchers. Under the current state of affairs, they are a no-win for everybody.
the problem is not the ELD, it is the 14 hour rule and the 30 minute break rule. eliminate these 2 and the pressure to drive hard and not be able to stop and take a break when we need to will disappear.
Too bad no one knows the HOS rules, B4 they were changed in the early 2000s. How many of you remember the 10 hrs driving, and 15 hour work day……and you only took an 8 hr break, which could be split into two 4 hr breaks? 35+ years on the road here, drove company and owned my own. Never went thru major cities during rush hour traffic. Didn’t have to because I used HOS to drivers advantage. When they changed the laws to current HOS, that took away the drivers advantage. I have used ELDs, not fond of them, but they can work with better HOS laws. Or just go back to the original laws B4 those major changes.
Of course it’s going to decrease safety if you survey a bunch of unsafe lawbreaking drivers!
Some very good comments, some unintelligent ones, and constant drama. Look, this is simple. The rules are the rules. You choose on a daily basis to work in this industry or not. Don’t like the rules, do us all a favor. Quit your whining and get out. Don’t like this country and it’s rules, leave. Otherwise, suck it up, follow the rules, and enjoy your wonderful life in a great industry in the greatest country in the world, yes, even with it’s current problems. Every law we have on the books is because we had to spell it out for someone in the past, ELD’s are no different, HOS are no different. Just a couple years ago I met a driver in a truck stop in eastern Tennessee. He hadn’t stopped since he pulled out of Cali, and he looked like it. If you’re not this guy, give it up. Every industry has rules, and those rules are constantly subject to change, and I don’t hear them whining. Look at it this way, driver pay continues to go up due to the “Driver Shortage”. Okay, so we all drive 100% legal, less freight moves, driver shortage becomes even bigger problem, driver pay has no choice but to go up even more to try and lure more people to driving, we all make more money, and isn’t that what we’re REALLY after, safe driving and a decent income? Okay, I’m ready, now every body cry and tell me why I’m such an un-educated, out of touch with the issue, ignorant fool . . . then get back in your truck and go drive, while you continue in a career that pays you more money than most people in the U.S.
Of course it decrese safety. I drive Montreal Boston it takes 12h and I need to drive 65miles/h to cross canadian border and get home. Never feel so unsafe but sleeping 10h in Vermont parking area no thanks.
Because the OOIDA is sooooo impartial…