Why CSA 2010 and E-Logs are a good thing.

Reading the posts of newb truckers who only know elogs/EOBRs, yet preach to million milers on how to be safe, is on par with a 16 year old pregnate girl teaching a class to a room of grandmothers on the preparedness of childbirth.

 

i can agree with you there. I generally throw it out once a week or so, safety and compliance are not mutually inclusive. When I'm presenting during orientation I kinda put it this way. Safety and Compliance are like cousin's, sure they have some things in common but they're still their own person. I want you to run compliant, and with eLogs I can track that easier. However safety is your job, I need you to run safely, if that means violating the HOS to get safely parked that's what it means. Make a remark and explain your situation. If you routinely violate the HOS we'll coach you, if that doesn't work, we'll coach you again, when that doesnt work....well you can guess where that is heading.

 

Conway Truck+pulling Doubles=Conway Freight


http://www.flickr.com/photos/40494546@N03/

OH NO a possible accident,about to happen,THNX ELOGS!!!!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/40494546@N03/4193716050/in/photostream

Hope this helps you out

Yikes the SCAREY ELOGS ROOM where the ROBOT handlers hide
http://www.flickr.com/photos/40494546@N03/4192956029/in/photostream

 

The war room looks AWESOME!


Our dispatch office looks more like this.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/schmutzie/421621074/

 

Thats funny

 

I am not on the bandwagon. I never said EOBR's would make anyone safer and don't believe that safety has anything to do with it. But EOBR's are not that bad. I swore I would not have anything to do with them, but when the carrier I am leased to went to them, I felt I needed to at least give them a try before making any hasty decision. If it didn't work out, I could always pull my truck and go somewhere else. Well, they are not that bad and hasn't really caused a negative effect. If many would just learn to think how to use them to their advantage and learn all the little things you can legally do with an EOBR, then not so many would be crying the sky is falling.

They certainly will not make everyone safer, but they do have an added advantage of making it more difficult for a lawyer to say you were logging illegally. And I do love not having to mess with paper logs anymore. Real time saver and no risk of making a silly mistake that would generate a fine if caught. I just download them quarterly to my laptop from Qualcomm for record keeping purposes. And, from my experience, the DOT really doesn't want to waste most of their time with drivers using E logs. When I have seen a scale house doing log checks, so far I have always been waved on. Not saying that is normal for all.

Oh... and for those that worry that they track you and so not having them will help keep big brother from tracking you? Just ask any lawyer about all the information that is available to determine where you have been. Everyone better give up their cell phones, credit and debit cards, and burn every receipt they get as soon as they get it. It is amazing the things a good attorney can find out about someone in discovery, including getting access to all those video cameras the various governments have put up on the roads, or the video records from cameras that are at just about every business location now. If they pull a video (yes, they can subpoena a video from a private business), and you were not in that vicinity sometime around the time frame you said, man you are going to be in a world of hurt. And they will not just look at one day or another. They will look at several months of logs and pull videos from hundreds of locations and look for a mistake. And if there is so much as the littlest mistake on a paper log in the last 6 months, and an attorney finds it, you are going down. And you had better not ever use a toll road. Everyone gets their picture taken (mostly the vehicle plate, but many times the actual driver) whenever you pass thru a toll booth or E Pass lane. They don't need a flash to do it. And you know the little strip embedded in every paper money bill? Well, sensors have been placed along some major roadways that actually can track those bills from up to 30 feet away. Most of those are along border crossing areas.

Law enforcement is the least of my worries. It is the law firm of Burn 'Em and Run and the risk of a law suit over some goofy thing. At least an EOBR will help with a driver's defense. So at least with some things, yes I am on the bandwagon that EOBR's will help protect the driver. Maybe not regarding a safety issue, but in many of the ways I mentioned.

George Orwell is alive and well in the 21st century. We have no idea the things that are going on to watch our movements. I just mentioned the ones I do know about.

 

No i dont try to "troll-It-Up" sorry if i come accross that way not my intent,,If anything i seem to be the lightning rod for the rants against ELOGS( i take them in stride really) For the most part all that decry EOBRS in general well they arnt even on them and yet they have a "opinion not based on facts"

I for one know the hand im dealt(ELOGS) and as i want to work For CWTL well that part of working here,so it goes,,I dont think I could actually change one mind on here nor do i try(might sound like it ,i know) but whats the point really? I mean if your not on them ,well your not on them,it would seem if your not you should be glad ,but yet for some reason all that are not seem to be adamit to say a disenting opinion

I'm sure you have not herd me say once that i think ALL should be on it,as i that would an non-factual statement,if you do not deserve to be on them then you shouldnt(My company lowered their standards and thus have garnered a piz-poor rating so we are on them(I think I have mentioned that a few times,i dont hide the fact) but they do right by me so i stay and so i do the ELOGS,, Crazy HUH,,,yeah I know,,but 10 yrs here,,,SE regional,,2500 a week,home every weekend(thats 8 days a month off for you others keeping score)

 

I was at a SE regional company just like that myself for over ten years. Those two day real weekends must be nice. Mine were closer to a day and a half.

The reason those of us not on elogs are so adamantly opposed to full implementation, well, one of the main reasons anyways. Is because we were lied to by FMCSA and others. Originally elogs were "only going to be for bad carriers who had poor saftey scores". That was a lie. It was the camel's nose under the tent to forcing elogs on everyone. I knew that way back when they had a comment period on forcing bad carriers on them.

I understand the efficiencies of elogs. The software I use has the very same efficiencies. I love the fact that I can take two weeks off and it only takes a minute or two to catch those two weeks back current. It will not let you break any reg. Keeps up with your hours of service, resets, all that stuff at a glance, no more time wasted on first grade math etc. Paper logs are such a waste of effort..

Elogs tied into an ecm are not for everyone. We were lied to and fed falsehoods that compliance equals saftey. It does not. I don't want them. And I hate liars and being lied to.

 

In general I haven't worried about CSA 2010 becuase I run legal.

Untill some idiot we hired this summer screwed up so badly it put our whole company up for review! (yeah we fired him).

Now if my company gets shuttered because of other drivers, will it be hard for me to get work? Short of running perfect rigs into scalehouses to get our best guys DOT'd there really doesn't seem to be a mechanism in place to keep bad drivers from bringing down a decent company.

 

This is one of the major flaws I see in CSA. One bad apple can spoil a bunch. I think that if the company shows that they have removed them, it should gain back their reputation, ie; brownie points for compliance. However I don't think anything like that is in place. The only mechanism appears to be time.