Motive Driver e-logs. The new wild west?

If it is not hooked up to the truck, it is illegal and the cop can put you out of service with a violation of falsified logs. It depends on the cops mood, but I know a few who would consider a complete reset oos order.

They can also trigger an unannounced audit by the state to see what’s going on.

And edits all are tracked, shows up for the cops when they get a copy sent to them.

 

montana dot will check if its syncing .. got a level 3 at the lima scale one time and the officer was giving me a hard time because my elog didnt "ping" for 2 days.. yeah no #### dude i was sitting at home !! get a life.

 

As everyone is saying, you are running an Electronic Log, NOT an Electronic Logging Device as required.

Basically DOT sees it the exact same as a paper log and thus only allowed in specific circumstances. You have to have the ECM dongle to be legal.
As for OOS, you can be put out of service for however long the officer wants, up to and including requiring you to be OOS until a compliant ELD is installed.

 

I can edit everything even drive time. I run less than 10 days a month, so no need for cheating.

 

Mine is the same way. I can edit the "drive" line too. If you log in to your Motive (Keep Truckin') account and on the home page click on administration and then drivers there is a check box that can be selected to allow edits to the drive line. I don't keep mine turned on anymore though.

 

Intrigued, I went to the Administrator's panel to see if I can edit drive line. No.





after selecting the 1st driving event, I can't change it to anything else other then the name of the town,

 

With Motive (aka Keep Trucking), a DOT official will download the inspection file from your device. I think that the way it works is that they first upload it to FMCSA site and then are able to see it from their own device while logged to FMCSA portal. The output file have all the details, including engine hours, odometer readings, intermittent locations while you driving. You can't expect to drive in a manual mode and hope for it to pass. Perhaps, a casual highway patrol cop might not care too much, they will be satisfied with barely glancing over your tablet screen but I would not count on it. Perhaps, it is all right to use the manual mode (app only) instead of actual paper logs, in case of a ELD problem such as EMC connection failure...but I am not sure.

As you can see in the above example, the actual driving events are colored in green. If they had been entered manually, the line would be blue and it could be edited as you please.

BTW. The above example has two "infractions" - the on duty status in two on duty events are lacking descriptions. Let's just say I removed them for the purpose of the example, because it is nobody's business to know what they events were all about...but you need remember to include some notes about the on duty event such as "fuel" or "post trip inspection" or whatever it was they you were doing on duty.

 

Running in manual mode (as paper logbook) to be compliant you need a 99 or earlier truck or engine and be able to print it out on demand.

To use as backup for ecm/dongle failure no printability is required but you must be 7 days or less on it and document that in your pretrip.

 

Not exactly the subject of this thread but I discovered what I suspect to be substantial programming errors or inconsistencies in Motive (aka Keep Truckin) when it comes to split breaking.

When coming on duty after more than 10 hours, the multiple rest breaks of over 2 hours taken within a 14-hour shift are stopping the 14-hour clock by the duration of the longest break. For example, 3 hours and 4 hours - 4 hours would be considered to stop the shift clock (I assume this is a correct calculation). However, if coming back on duty after 7 hours - as a part of split break periods calculations - a break of 3 hours and then 4 would be added together and as a result, the shift clock would be stopped by as many as 7 hours!?

I actually have seen this scenario during my real operations:
I woke up at 7 am after 7 hours in the sleeper - which followed 3 hours off duty the previous day and regained my driving time, then during the course of a day, I took one break off duty for 3 hours and then yet another one for 4 hours in the sleeper while being at the staging area before a dock assignment. As a result, Motive ELD "extended" the shift duration by 7 hours - from 9 pm to 4 am.

If instead of 7 hours I had spent 10 hours, the clock would have extended the 14-hour clock by only 4 hours - also by 4 am... but I would have started the shift 3 hours later, from 10 am, instead of 7 am.
Concluding the example, Motive ELD suggested that it was all correct (per HOS) for me not to back in the sleeper and rest for at least 7 hours, for as long as 20 hours!

I suspect this not to be correct. I called the KT support team and one person was confused too, another was confident that it was correct - but the confidence was based on his trust in their programming being flawless - which is a rather difficult proposition to accept, don't you think? Has anyone else noticed that too?