Prime shifting to Paperless Logs

Remember... that appointment time is local... not "truckin' standard" - Central time!

 

LOL! Really? Apparently TLC/Kraft has a problem with their clocks. Appointment time was 1300. As our instructions say, I arrived and checked in at G/S at 1245. Got to the window and waited 20 minutes for the girl to show up there... line of drivers waiting to check in. They got me in a door but didn't start unloading me until 1435... doors open the whole time, of course! They took 90+ minutes to get the job done. On the paperless log, I have now killed over two extra hours waiting for them to get their act together. I am not looking forward to elogs... sorry. How could I have "planned better" for that? I did everything right... THEY killed the extra two hours. Of course, I had to wait till this morning to reload in LA anyway... but still. I'm just sayin'...

 

You can't plan for shipper/reciever stupidity. Hopefully you'll get some detention pay out of it... eventually. Last week I got $200 in detention pay on a load I picked up in March.

 

This is exactly my point, Sazook. I keep hearing "it just takes better planning". But there are some things that NO amount of your planning or that of your FM will account for. Loading today was another example... 4.5 hours to do what should have taken less than an hour. I just wanted out of LA!

 

Hello everyone, Hey U2, If you would be kind of enough to answer some questions on , Paperless logs. In your opinion, What is the advantage for the driver? We all know , To be succesfull in this trucking field, That communiction is the number 1, Key between you and your fleet manager. But with all the consruction on the highways, Going on wright now, It would seem to me that , It would be really hard to make appointment times, How much extra time , Do you allow your self for this? All so do you , Feel in your opinion that Paperless logs, Are better then the Logbooks? All so what exactly happens to the truck, When you run out of driving hours? Thanks Familyman.

 

Sorry! Just bein' a smart-###!

I always try to arrive an hour early. Most of the time it gets me in and out sooner. Sometimes I wait. Sometimes it makes up for stupid mac19 instructions/getting lost and assorted other BS problems. Arriving that hour early is critical with WallyWorld loads... sometimes you can get backed-up at the gate.

Not unusual. Grocery warehouses are the worst. Nash-Finch in Lumberton NC took 5 hours to unload 7 pallets one time. Frozen loads with a 28-series and above trailer with door interlock switches require some words with the receivers...

Its how you log your time. If I just walk in and hand my papers over to the receivers, I just flag the event with no time; waiting in line ala WallyWorld usually gets 15 minutes on line 4. Realtime if I have a SLDC load on line 4... otherwise its line 1 or 2 time. And generally speaking, that's usually how it goes down plus or minus. With elogging, you can change the granularity on your log entries from 15-minute chunks to exact minutes, saving some working time.

Yeah, I know what you're sayin' man! I've had the same thoughts myself. Keep an eye on what you're putting in the paper log with a thought about how you'd do it with an elog. Remember, it always moves you to the drive line after a minimum amount of motion, so think about how you'd want to do it that way. I can see how I'd change the way I do things in order to conform with the new system...

 

Well I'll take a stab at it...

First, you aren't rounding to the nearest 15 minutes. That really helps with line 3, because if you round-down with a paper log and it shows an average speed in excess of the posted limits, a DOT bear can give you a ticket for logging an illegal speed. It conserves your 11 and 14-hour clocks better than you can with a paper log. No other advantages IMO.

I try to get the driving done up front, and if I have extra time, kill it in the neighborhood of my destination. Doesn't always happen though... last load, I arrived early for an overnight run. Had to take an 8-hour sleeper berth break at the shipper in order to make it work out. Night dispatch was pinging me about "You've got 357 miles yet, are you going to be on time???" Yeah... tell the computer to not sweat it! But I knew that just looking at my log book vs what time it is currently vs how much driving I had (using 50 mph) and whether there was going to be enough time to fit a 10-hour break into the schedule - there wasn't. So normally, I push hard from the git-go, and worry about how things fall out later... try to make my line 3 and 4 time work out in the 8 to 9 hour range if I can - doesn't always happen that way.

You can tell whether things are going to be tight from the git-go. If they are, you have to be aware of your progress vs present arrival time at the destination much more acutely than if you've got slack. There's nothing different about that than there is now, except with an electronic log a driver can't tear the page out and make it look nice - not that any of us would ever consider doing something like that!

Keep track of the miles to go, divide by 50 mph, and update your arrival time regularily. Then make sure you average better than 50. On two-lane roads with lots of towns, change that to say 35 mph. If construction happens, an accident happens, let your FM know about it in a timely fashion. Not when you've got 15 minutes before your drop-dead time and 300-miles to go!

I've always thought that paper logs are a truckers best friend. With elogs, you have to do better planning, and experience is really going to help! When you run out of hours, you shut down, or plan on explaining to your FM, Reefer Dispatch Management and Safety why you didn't. Make a habit of it, and I'm sure they'll decide you really want to drive for Swift or Werner.

That being said, we're really hot on service here. So if you're going to be up against the wall or can't possibly make a load work HOS-wise, you need to let your FM know early-on. There's nothing different about that whether you're using a paper log or an electronic log. Timely communication is important no matter how you are reporting it.

 

On our instructions, they specifically say not to arrive more than 15 minutes early. I, like you, tend to arrive plenty early unless instructed otherwise, as in this case.

In order to attempt to get detention pay, I needed to make sure my logs matched the arrival and departure calls. BTW - do logs at Prime check logs against the QC like arrival, loaded, and unloaded calls?

I have been doing trying to look at the possibility of elogs as I do the paper logs as you suggest. It is why I logged the Ontario/LA thing as it happened instead of how we traditionally log things... you know what I mean. My whole point here is that if the shippers and receivers don't get on board (and I am not holding my breath waiting for that to happen) it doesn't matter HOW well the FM and I plan in many cases.

 

I'll take a whack at this. I ran for Werner, under their paperless log system, and overall I liked it. Paperless made it VERY hard for dispatch to "push" a driver, or try to force him/her to drive beyond the mandated Hours of Service. Not that they didn't try, bear in mind. And paperless really helped in improving my time management skills, but as has been said previously, you cannot plan for everything. One of the nice things was not having to remember to log fuel stops, since the computer did it automatically (some connection between the central server and fuel card use). On the other hand, driving thru traffic could be a nightmare! NYC rush would find me on line 4 rather than line 3 because of how slow the truck was moving, IF it was moving. And fighting with the log department could be a horrible, horrible dream at times. I got a couple of logbook violations for starting my day too early, even if it was just a couple of minutes, so be very sure about your times. Overall, a positive experience. But I'm a straight company driver, not an O/O or Lease operator.

 

Anywhere in LA is a bad place to try to "time" things to be just 15 early. Its still best to have a big pad of slack, and then try to find some place very close to the shipper/receiver to kill your extra time. We don't have very many places that restrict us to just 15-before appointment time... sounds like a problem the shipper/receiver has with biz life!

That's a standard BS computer message you get at any shipper/receiver that Prime thinks they can get away with billing detention. Works if you're a lease-op. As a company driver I have yet to see one cent of detention money. In this economy, Prime is unlikely to do that for us simply because they don't want to piss off a client who may supply return business. Go ahead and get the times, but don't expect to see the bread man!

They log macro3 and macro4 times, and I expect anything that includes your odometer reading as well. I've been told they don't keep a GPS tag from macro1. That being said, they do log GPS locations a number of times a day, so it's best to not be too far off of reality logbook wise.

If you want to document that you were somewhere, just make sure that at the point you do this that your log will agree with the GPS, and send a macro15 or macro27 request - that forces the server to ask for your GPS location.

Finally, its always a good idea to visit the log department when you're in Springfield to find out how you're doing. Fixed a problem I had with split breaks that way awhile back. As long as you're keeping your log violations to under 60 points in six months, you're ok. Be reasonable on how close to reality you keep your fairytale book, and you'll do ok.

So the thing to do in the elogging case is plenty of communication with ye olde FM. And getting in that habit now is an excellent idea. For example, today's little adventure for me had me running from the south side of Indy to Sebree KY - fuel route is I65, I64, US41. Except there's some very long construction zones on I64 in south IN that squeeze the big road down to two lanes. Post a PTA of 1400 before leaving my last 90, and get a load within 5 minutes of going mty. Appointment is set at 1500 - I do get an hour crossing from eastern to central, but the load page shows 185 fantasy miles - closer to 250 in reality. So I do the best I can in terms of a DOT break, and get going - you know what's what there. At best it's tight, and that's without traffic. So by the time I'm under 100 miles out, its already 1400 and I know I'm not making it thanks to the traffic in the construction zones... ping the FM with this fact an hour early, and sales gets me two hours of slack. And I make it about 45 past the original appointment.

Elogging is just going to require a lot more of that to make things work. If a load is really going to be late, you need to pass that along early enough for them to work out a repower - that means giving them a day if you know that's where things are going. And yeah, it'll be a whole new world in terms of truck companies and their relationship with receivers and shippers. I think some advantages may appear for drivers after it is in place industry-wide... forcing changes in how shippers/receivers do business, and it removes the case that trucking companies have for keeping us off of fair-wage law enforcement.