Black Boxes

in your trucks ecm it will record speed --avg--highest and date and time--the braking amount and if it is a hard brake or not--rpm max--the fluid temps--fuel mileage--idling and such as well--pretty much everything with engine parameters
no legal requirement to do anythng with them
alot of it will depend on the company--some can read your parameters while you drive thru the qualcomm---some places may start a new trip record after reading it

 

I believe it is recording speed, rpm's, idle hours, and things of that nature. It is not a GPS unit. It is used more for maintenance. I know that our company does not erase anything like that because our units are leased. We do however have electronic logs which are a GPS device and can record all kinds of things such as speed, location, stop and start times, as well as hard braking and idle times. Hope this helps.

 

Important to have accurate terms here I think.

Electronic logs are not a GPS device. EOBR's aren't technically even a GPS device, in the sense that they can provide positioning data. In the simplest form all they really know is if the truck is moving or not.

"Black box" is also an extremely vague term. Every modern vehicle has some sort of electronic recorder, ranging from the very simple to the very advanced. If your truck is equipped with a QC, which is properly integrated into the rest of the vehicle's control system, your company can probably pick a time and find out everything about the vehicle's operation at that time - how fast you were going, if you were on the brakes, how hard, maybe even outside temperature, gauge readings, etc.

I'm not sure about legal requirements for maintaining this information, especially regarding HoS and EOBR regulations. If this data is being either streamed back to your company, in the case of a QC-enabled vehicle, or downloaded from time-to-time, it could live on in perpetuity on the company's servers.

 

PeopleNet Electronic Logs do have the tracking option for their customers so I would assume the others do too. So far they work better at this than the earlier non-log units. The old one in my truck used to send some wierd info. Once had my dispatcher call up my location. It showed me doing 75mph in Montana.... while we were looking at my truck parked right outside his window in Louisiana.

On the other hand, had to get the "new unit" replaced 2 weeks ago. Some kind of electronic "brain fart" had it sending random messages, changing screens by itself and refusing to recognize "sleeper berth". Way too much faith in electronic junk these days.

 

Ok I meant our electronic log application also has gps positioning, our manifest info, and can give us directions.

 

I don't know about anyone else. My company (who I'll leave nameless) uses a new kind of recorder, or so I'm told. Basically it records locations with times, rpm max outs, and bottom outs, stalls, idle times, hard braking, jake break times, over speed, and even clutch pedal usage. They keep the records for all 37 trucks for five years, or so theey say is required by the D.O.T. That is all I have......

 

The ECM on the engine can record everything that is controlled by the driver and the engine. RPM, Speed, fuel usage both at speed and idle, idle time both with and with out brakes, brake usage up to and including HARD breakage, clutch use, blinker, headlights on/off even your A/C settings and wipers.

It's the computer that controls the engine so anything that goes through it is recorded just like your home computer! (go to control panel>performance and maintence>event viewer) And you can see everything you did on that computer since the OS was installed unless you cleared it out!

The ECM does the same thing.
It even can tell the police and company the things you did before an accident like say you were accused of speeding but the log shows just before the brakes were applied or the engine made a sudden stoppage that you were only doing 35 or that you hit the brakes and clutch and shifted gears 3 seconds before the air bags (if equipped) were activated.Yada,Yada,Yada.

It's the recorder and control computer of the engine and the company can download whatever they want to and usually only what they want which is usually fuel miledge, idle and hard brake usage which some idiots use as a "following to close" write up in your personnel folder when it could have been some moron pulling out in front of you or a kid running onto the road. This is why safety people should only have a CDL to hold that job or a forward looking camera if they want to use that pathetic excuse to do a write up!
Hope this helped!

 

The company I work for so to speak has a window on the qcom which says parameters. It list RPM, cool down time, warm up time idol time ets. The amount of time per trip and week spent idling, the amount of time over rpm, over speed, not long enough cool down time or warm up time ets. Basically everything listed above. The dispatch gets it and they say give a bi weekly report. On this report they send out in a fleet wide message, it says the fleets average idol time, there average over RPM (1500) fleet average MPH ets. Its like a fleet competition, only the winning fleet gets no bonus or nothing for there hard work, so its basically hogwash or meaningless to the drivers. I think the dm's might get some kind of bonus out of it, because I know when I am in a fleet with bad numbers they spam the ba-jesus out of the qualcom about those things, and praise us when the numbers are good.

The ecu on my truck is out, been out for a long time. The ecu controls just about everything. From qcom to engine break the juice going to my cb and sterio everything. Sometimes I stomp on the gas I get maby 50mph out of it, other times I can get close to 70mph even though my truck is goverened at 62mph. With the Cascadias there is a built in Governer overide but you can only use if for 30 minuts every 12hrs. Stomp on the gas all the way down three times slowly then use your throttle to take it to 66mph, then use your cruise to get it to 68mph. When its on the blink I can run for a very long time over the 30 minuts, sometimes it starts working again and I have a new 30 minuts of governer overide. Thats kinda cool, but everything else about it being broken stinks.

 

Qualcomm does have GPS positioning capabilities. Companies do use that feature too.