Picking my own freight baby! My journey to & of being on Schneider choice, the Adventure & Numbers!

No the small carriers are not ruining the industry. But the occasional 1 to 5 truck operation blatantly ignoring hos causing headline grabbing fatal accidents is why the elog mandate was able to garner enough public support to get through.

 

The one to five truck operation is also (in my opinion) the biggest offender in cheap freight. Gotta make payroll. I however am not a huge fan of government mandates. The next one which is undoubtedly coming might not suit me.
I always thought the Eld mandate would put a squeeze on capacity but im not sure. It's happening so slow and with enough warning I feel it's being absorbed.

 

A spike in fuel is what we need. Not for the surcharge. But more for the guys who pulled their trucks from behind the shop, who are running drive tires on the steer, when fuel got cheap. High fuel prices will put that to a end. Just lock your tanks up. I know from experience.

 

Yep I'm not a big believer in heavy regulation either, but I'm not up in arms over this cause it's effect on me will be very very minor, and i understand why certain groups feel it is needed. Guess I'm taking the stance of pick your battles.

I also agree with you on the small carriers being the biggest problem with cheap freight. All ya for to do is lil in the owner operator section of ttr and see that. It seems every day there is a new "just got my mc number where is the good freight at?" Thread. The low entry barrier to starting a trucking business is both a good thing, and a negative. Put a hundred small carriers in a room and maybe 2 of them are educated and sophisticated enough to have gotten a direct customer, the other 98 are fighting for the scraps on public broker boards thinking 1.50 a mile is great money. Heck most don't have the good sense to even run a credit check on the broker they get the load from.

 

Teams will be getting a lot of 700-800 mile overnight loads to short for them to long for solos

 

All that will happen is the ATA will whine even louder about a driver shortage and then a million more cheap foreigners that can't drive get thrown behind the wheel.

 

Its why I have never been a huge supporter of OOIDA. They seem to have a hard time picking battles. How you record HOS is not in question. When everyone has to play by the same rules then maybe a realistic discussion can be had.
It seems to me fighting for HOS rule changes makes more sense than fighting for how they are recorded.

 

believing that elogs are for your own safety and the safety of the public would be like cattle on a cattle truck believing theyr on that trailer for their own safety.

 

Exactly. I have always said elogs steyr a problem. The problem is the inflexibility of our current hos.

Ooida lost me about ten years ago when they went on that big mandatory pass on of fuel surcharge kick against brokers. That was such a joke. The only thing that would do is brokers and shippers would change their contact to have less fsc and more linehaul. If a load pays a 1k bucks who cares if the invoice says 800 linehaul and 200 fsc. It's still only 1k.