Do you run illegal on your logs?

Then you should be down in the "pit" explaining to your company why a driver should not be given an appointment for a load he picked up at 6pm (after emptying out at 6am, after sleeping at the receiver all night) and asked to have it 500 miles down the road in 10 hours. This driver has been up for 12 hours already waiting for his load assignment...But your company, says (yes they do!) he has been on break all day, and is ready to roll.

I love safety departments. Especially those that can tell me my legal and moral obligations.

Companies also should adhere to legal and moral obligations. The moral obligation I speak of, is that one that insures ALL employees will make a good wage, while maintaining a legal log book. Instead of "operations" keeping a log of "out of sevice/hours" on drivers, later to be used to terminate said drivers, at the next "incident". Or they simply give them **** loads for the duration of their employment, trying to starve them into submission.

Bottom Line: When OTR companies are forced to pay hourly wages. You will see near 100% compliance with logging and speed limits. And, that will never happen! Because, they are not legally or morally bound to pay OTR drivers for their time.

If I punched a clock when I pulled into the terminal to get my truck, then again when I returned. And was paid for every hour I was out (in the past) My average wage would have been less than $7.00 per hour, with no overtime pay.

You want compliance...argue for hourly pay for your drivers.

 

In my life of trucking I have done it all,legally and illegally,I used to love being an outlaw. Today,drivers,believe me,it is not worth the chance you take. If a kid runs out into the road,somebodys pet dog,a grandma out for a ride and hits you,you may as well kiss your license goodbye,pack your clothes away,give your wife or girlfriend and your loved kids a hug and kiss,cause you are probably gonna spend some time in jail,maybe even 5 years.Your name gets rubbed in the mud for the rest of your life at home and where it happened at.By the time the civil suit is done,your family could lose their home cars etc,and your the one that caused it. If you are over on your 14,70 or 11,stop and think,it is not worth that chance,just a message from my experiences and many many miles and readings of drivers being jailed for manslaughter,even if a drunk hits you,you are at fault,because you should have been off the road yourself.I used to be crazy but now I'm sane. I have never ever hurt anybody yet,thank god.

 

I always make my logs look good and legal, but there are many times that what really happens in a day is totally differant than what my logs say. One thing I found that works well is keeping your log current all day and then at the end of the day redoing it to say what you want or need to match what you want to be able to do the next day. The way I do it is by always keeping all the same stops but shortening the times I spend at places, especially getting loaded and unloaded. I saw in here someone saying about fuel stops, that is one thing I do keep logged right on time no matter what I might do with the rest of the day

 

I'm not feeling much love

I'll agree but I think your statement is opinionated because your idea of a good wage may be different than a company's. Neither is wrong. You may place a higher value on your time than your company does. If this is the case then find yourself a company that will pay you your worth without violating the HOS regulations.

I'll give some free advice......always log and run legally and I'll assure you all that you'll never end up on that "log".

I have been in the trucking industry for well over 20 years and I've had the opprotunity to have worked in several positions to include driving and dispatching. I really think that you all are giving your operations people too much credit. Although I have been accused of unfairly giving out ****loads and starving drivers, I can honestly it was never done deliberately. In all honestly, I never had the time to intentionally screw a driver. Most days I had too many loads and too few drivers. This is a good problem for upper management but a terrible problem for dispatchers. Starving drivers is not in the best interest of the company or in the personal best interest of the dispatcher. Personally speaking, it would not be worth the headaches. If you have a problem with a dispatcher, then you should communicate the problems and try to work things out instead of letting it sit on your mind, getting mad and raising your BP.

Hourly pay does not ensure compliance. It just creates OTHER HOS issues for both drivers and companies. Throwing more money at drivers will not solve all the problems with HOS compliance. Been there. Done that too!

And a driver is not legally or morally bound to work for them either.

I want compliance because I want to ensure your safety and the safety of everyoen who uses our country's highways. You seem to think that drivers should be paid to be safe. Just how much money will it take to ensure drivers stay in compliance with the HOS regulations?

Safety is everyone's responsibility.

 

Add these to your list too:

DOT Roadside inspections,
Toll receipts
Random drug screens,
BOLs and company generated travel documents

All of these are easy pickings for a DOT official conducting an audit.

 

Simple. Put drivers on an annual salary that is complete with regular annual raises.

In addition, you can then keep the hours of service in place because now, once a driver has sit around in a crappy truckstop all day waiting for a load (that you claim you always have too many of, but not enough drivers), when that driver finally gets his/her 450 mile load dispatched to them late in the after noon, loade by 8:00 pm that night, the driver can tell the dispatcher that there is simply no way that the load will be deliverd at 8:00am the following morning because he has been up all day and once the load is loaded they are going back to the truck stop and going to sleep, rather than running the load overnight when they have been up all day already waiting on a load.

You can preach your "safety" all day long, but the most fatigued and unsafe I have ever been was when trying to make money on these BS loads after sitting all day, then having a dispatch tell me I "need" to make this overnight run because I have plenty hours to do it.

With a salary, the driver doesn't have to worry about being starved out of the company for standing up to the dispatcher and saying "no" to this insane demand of making the above overnight run. You can claim it doesn't happen, but we all know it does.