need some advice on satellite tracking/Elogs (qualcom-peoplenet)

hey everyone,

i need some advice. as most of u know me know that my company is one of the few left where they believe in the old skool. big bunk 379 petes, ungoverned, big HP motors, no gps tracking and paper logs and best of all chrome. and it's been great we have right at 40 trucks on the road and all the guys get along great and a hell of a relationship with the owner. we all make decent money and the guys that know how to run a log book make better money (i myself am in the mid to high 60's. dispatch is old school call for ur load info and or broker's number cal when ur empty the quicker u unload the quicker u load most times they are pretty quick once in a while they may not have something lined yet. if they cant find something u are more than welcome to check the load boards and see if u can find something to get u moving. boss man hates trucks sitting and we hate sitting as we are paid 25% of the line haul of the load.

Well a few of us just got word the other day that the owners right hand man is pushing hard for quallcom/people-net in the trucks with possibility of elogs now normally the owner would shoot this down and laugh and say ya right but apparently the right hand man is pushing so hard talking about the thousands upon thousands he will save in the long run. So it has boiled down to one of those companies (qual/people) will be flying in tommorow with a couple "demo" units for them to try out on a couple trucks.

Needles to say we as drivers do NOT want any part of this. Right now my truck and a most of the other trucks are AVERAGING roughly $7k-$10k a week in gross revenue each. We run when we want we sleep when we want. we dont kill ourselves to do this we just like the flexibilty with out having the computer telling us when to run and not run or ratting us out when we decide to stop and have an early dinner or stop at a chrome shop along the way and continue after a little rewriting to continue our journey.

The reason why all this coming up is because of a few bad apples mainly new guys that dont know how we operate going way off route (we pick our own routes to take) like for example running the ohio and indiana turnpike instead of taking 30 to get to chicago big no no in my company.

all of the guys in the know including myself have told the owner if that computer gets anywhere near our trucks were done plain and simple and we believe that most of the drivers here will follow suite. for the reason that is why most of us are here we love the freedom and this system will destroy our family of a trucking company.

well the owner has called a meeting between me and 2 other drivers and the GPS people to discuss the pro's and cons of this new set up. my question to you guys is what are some of the cons of this system? aside from

1. reduce revenue significantly which means less driver pay

2. an on going time stamp that all logs elog or not have to match 100%

3. significantly higher driver turnover because i full heartly believe the will lose at least 60% of our drivers once this gets enacted if it does

4.?????????

this thread is not about about when and if elogs will ever be mandatory please dont take it there this is about the here and now and refusing to take something and enact something that we as a company are NOT ready for

thank you for ur time sorry it is so long but we need all the help we can get O/O please reply as well

 

its not forcing that we are worried about were not forced to do anything we dont want to do its the fact that during an audit DOT can match the quallcom records to ur logs that the part we dont like

we know and understand if u get in to a bad wreck or god forbid a fatal a lawyer or dot can find out anything they want all it takes is one time stamp through out the course of ur day and ur done prison time but why on gods creation would i want to hand them the nuse to hang me with on a silver platter

our guys do a hell of a job matching things like tolls fuel and any paperwork with a time stamp but with the tracking u always have the time stamp so there is no getting around it

as for the running legal statement we run perfectly legal just sometimes its not at a time that is convenient for us so we move it around

 

i always have an ace under my sleeve learned that from a very young age and have emergeny funds to fall back on just in case though i do not want to put "plan B" in to effect unless i absolutely have to it's changing careers private investigative work great money plenty of work but not what i LOVE to do