The fight againts ELDs,A large number of drivers forming.

just an FYI, hos is there to protect us from the carrier.

 

The whole county actually. 6 to 9 in the morning and 3 to 6 in the afternoon. Every city in tenn. Has the same curfew.

 

EZ Money, Probably because I deal with a lot of customers who don't have me waiting for loading or unloading for extreme time frames. Generally, though not all the time, I will get to a customer the night before, take a 10, then my clock doesn't start till I am loaded/unloaded. Many of the customers I work with allow overnight parking at their facility. Also, I have a fair amount of drop and hook depending on what pattern of customers I am working with a particular week. If I do get delayed at a customer, I get detention compensation for that time.

My net has increased each of the last 9 years. 6 of those on Elogs. Elogs had nothing to do with it, one way or the other. It centers more around how I have worked to structure who I am working with and how and what I am doing to maximize my time efficiency. Elogs didn't change much of anything compared to when I was doing this on paper. I worked a lot of years to get things so that HOS has a minimal effect, ether on paper or Elogs. And a big portion of that was in making it so I work with a better crop of customers. Once in a while things get a little screwy, but I communicate any issues to customers who have been extremely flexible and realize what is going on. My net profit for this year as of last Friday is $43,233. And that is after paying payroll taxes (monthly) as well as all other operating expenses.

The HOS rules are pretty restrictive and unrealistic in many ways. No doubt. And many are going to face some real problems when the ELD mandate goes into full effect. But it isn't like this was a surprise. It had been talked about for well over a decade. The mandate gave 2 full years before going into full effect. Folks have had time to adjust. I was watching an old, old, sci-fi movie the other day and couldn't help see the striking similarity between the crisis they were facing and how some prepared and others buried their head in the sand and how this Elog thing has progressed. The movie was "When Worlds Collide" from 1951. Got it off of YouTube.

 

Making more money on elogs? The only person making money on elogs, is the outfit selling them. Of course paper logs are full of baloney. They have been since the '50's. For the life of me, I could never understand, how something you write out by hand, was legit well into the 90's, and still today. I don't think my paper log EVER matched my real driving time. I mean, c'mon, "you write out just how you drove",,, sure I will. Somebody said it earlier, people don't know anything about trucking, sadly, especially the ones making the rules. I had enough of that scene, and it's never going to get better. Wasn't a big crime years ago, you drove until you were tired, and took a break. It's what attracted me to trucking in the 1st place, I could do what I wanted. Nobody got killed, delivered all my freight, and on time, I might add. Why is it so hard to understand, the country is broke, and getting more broke, and the trucks, are, and always have been, a place to get immediate funds. If these folks only knew, they are creating the very inflation they are trying to get rid of, by screwing the 2nd person, the most important person, I feel, to handle the goods, and it goes downhill from there.

 

Well when I started, I learned how to pad the logs, so I could drive 12, 14 hours, but I learned that when I get older, I can't drive for that solid 14 hours a day. Many others can't even make 8 hours without falling asleep.

BUT that's not the purpose of these hour of service, or wasn't safety of the driver by controlling them.

These Hour of Service regulations were created to prevent the abuse of the drivers during the depression and they were kept not because they were not about the driver but the company and the continuing abuse of the company.

 

The argument for the elog will say
It doesn't force anyone to drive, and-
You are supposed to self regulate if you are still tired because for whatever reason you were "off duty" either legitimately or not, and therefore wait til you are rested to drive. Drivers aren't going to do that. I'm not. What do I tell my customer? I won't be around long if I don't drive when it says I am legal to do so.

I guess the powers that be think there will collectively be less crashes/fatalities than without them. I do not like the rigidity of the recording of the duty status. There are several examples where you are just plain screwed. Am I to beg for mercy if inspected? Am I supposed to trip plan in an imperfect world? I'd much rather keep my paper log and if they want to take my picture at every scale in the country same as they do on the west coast and compare my log to that. I'd even be for making it mandatory for all truck stops to print the time on the fuel receipts as well. Just don't watch me to the exacting minute.

 

I used to carry at least 2 paper log books. One, to scratch in some baloney, in case a cop wanted to see it, a rare occurrence, and the other one, I'd fold in half, and slam in the door, to keep it from rattling.