I think ELDs are Unconstitutional

HOS is the rule we follow. And no you are not allowed to drive tired. No company can force you to drive tired. And the paper logs in the past were lawful legal documents THAT YOU signed and certified accurate and admissible in court.

This is not against or about you personally. The ELDs in my view has been a final solution against a percentage of the industry that has abused HOS for many decades. You will have your 14 hours to do something today. If it cannot be done in today's time frame? Fine. Hit the sleeper and get that delivery tomorrow. It will and should have the effect of slowing the trucking in America down overall.

I used to joke that people buying stuff from overseas will wait two months for it to sail here to America. But god forbid once it's at the port it is demanded to be delivered yesterday as if it was a gigantic Amazon package. /sarcastic.

My other solution against HOS limitations is to go team. A husband wife team is the best.

The third thing as I have stated many times is the shippers and recievers have no incentative at all to listen to any driver stating that he or she is now off the clock, out of hours. Keep in mind there is absolutely no limitations to time spent "Unloading" you can spend 3000 hours straight unloading a trailer and there is nothing in the Law that says you cannot. So there you stay unloading. Your hours of service does not matter. There IS one tidbit, you cannot drive after being on duty so many hours and there you sit. You get kicked out, get towed, etc etc etc.

If you still want out, take off. I will thank you for your time out there on the road and hope that you find peace in whatever you do in life. I recall many truckers jumped ship back in the 1991 to 1994 time period after the CDL was implemented along with the drug testing to boot. Before that there wasnt anything.

There isnt a dispatcher anywhere in the country who wont tell you not to pick up a load and drive that 100 miles with it if it is all you got. The problem is on them to find a different truck to get it from you when you do stop. If you consider what 100 miles pays versus the potentially all day or god forbid multiday loading of that trailer you are working for free. So you are wise to tell dispatcher no Im out of hours 34 reset for me right now. Sorry. And then document it in case you get fired for doing HOS legally.

 

wrong. it is the evolution of trucking to the mega carrier team operations,under the guise of "safety". it was the likes of jerry moyes that hearalded this crap in front of congress.

 

Just stay home from the 18th to 25th? Not laiden. Why do I keep hearing drivers day let's just run a convoy at 45mph. That just pisses people off. Stay at home and watch what happens. I'd bet my last donut on this. Than the government will get the hint of how we feel. If we are those who don't want it or need it.

 

This is not really a good or viable option. Consider Walmart and now Kroger that demands suppliers make the requested appointment time. Not sooner, not later. Basically, lots of major players are moving to a "JIT model" for their goods. And this demand is actually more embedded among shippers and receivers than many realize. Miss an appointment, become a work-in, and they may unload you in 2 hours or maybe 24 hours later. Is the carrier or driver going to get compensated for that? Not likely. Many cold storage warehouses actually require fine payment on the spot for missed appointments before being loaded or unloaded.

I say that to say this, the HOS rules, if strictly adhered to, will force everyone involved to do their job right. To not screw around. To not mis-manage their time. And yes, to drive in unsafe weather conditions and when tired. You will learn to color inside the lines or you will be fined and penalized out of the business.

 

It's so easy to blame the big guys, but have you ever considered that it might not be all their doing? I don't work for Jerry Moyes or any of the other big guys, but I have a problem with people running however they want to with no real supervision. Sure, alot of people cheat to help themselves drive more safely, but other people cheat to drive more than the rules allow. Drivers have a financial incentive to cheat, so if they can do it without getting caught, why wouldn't they? Elogs keep drivers accountable, which I fully support because my family shares the highways with all of us and I want them to be safe.

It's also not in our best interest to cheat. How many stories have you read of drivers who were involved in a fatal accident where they ended up going to prison because authorities found out they were falsifying their logs or over their time? These days, with cellphone logs, cameras, credit card transactions and so on, it's easier than ever before to determine if a driver is cheating their paper logs.

Yeah, drivers still have accidents with elogs and go over their time, but now there's more accountability. If a driver goes over his time all the time or makes up his own rules, he won't be able to get away with it for years on end or until he hurts someone. The HOS of service regs are not perfect, but that's why we need to be focusing our attention on changing those regs.

 

Hit 'em where it hurts, drivers: the pocketbook. When they feel the heat, they shall see the light

 

I haven't been to a Walmart in about a year (we do is chilled or frozen loads) but I did a 2 drop (Texas) Walmart load last week, and there actually seems to have been an improvement in speed at all the various stages. It may have just been a one-off, or they may have demanded receiving clerks and department managers to stop with the chronic problems of ridiculous long delays to get bills signed, when they made this recent policy change of fining suppliers for late/early arrival of shipments

 

This.

The elog cheerleaders always go to the "It's all you 'Outlaw' drivers that cheat on the logs that caused this" when that just isn't true. Sure some outlaws caused some issues, but not near as many as some would have you believe. Nope, many, if not most of the issues out here are caused by the current HOS regs and the influx of under-trained/poorly trained "drivers" that the megas are churning out at a record pace. It's about money and control, not safety, and those that believe it's about safety need to check the horns on their unicorns because I'll bet you find it's just a stick glued to the head of a horse.

Unconstitutional? I doubt it. Stupid with the current HOS regs? You betcha. Me, I'll suck it up and deal with it just like I always have. I'll adjust the way I do things to make it work. It will mean less home-time for me and maybe some lost revenue, but I'll overcome it as I have in the past. Those that support it keep using the "leveling the playing field" argument. Okay, I'll bite, but, if we're going to level the playing field, let's do it across the board and those that get them bow out of the deep fuel discounts that the rest of us don't get and drop the government subsidies that the rest of us don't get. While we're at it, let's level it even more by failing student drivers that just can't grasp any of it and don't belong anywhere near a truck, and there are a lot of those out here. Also, from what I understand, the megas don't teach paper logs, so how can one of their "drivers" operate if the elog fails, since they are supposed to keep a paper log until the device is fixed? Let's not forget the self-insured companies that can sweep certain issues under the rug where a non self-insured company would have its feet held to the fire? If some of these companies were insured by anyone but themselves, they would be out of business for the "drivers" they put out on the road.