Would you leave Landstar if they require you to get eobr?

With all due respect, never in the history of the free markets have things improved for the customer (in this case the O/O and small carrier) when competition is eliminated. And I am hoping that LS learned from 2009, just because they can bring on more agents doesn't mean it is the best thing. This is one reason that I have been placing so much effort on getting freight that is shielded from the broker market.

 

What ATA and the EOBR bandwagon fail to point out is that the system still requires driver input to accurately record everything except line 3. And we all know that you cannot tell a lie to a machine.

It's the rule of unintended consequences. Higher broker bonds, along with CSA and maybe EOBR, will reduce competition in the various sectors by the force of government. Most don't think ahead a few moves in that chess game.

"Bad" brokers and carriers will not just fold up their tents and go away. Many will find ways to move under the tent of a good operator. I put "bad" in quotes because the false pretense with these regulatory moves is that any broker that cannot secure a high bond, or any carrier with a greater than zero CSA score, either has criminal intent or is a hazard to the public. Many of these government "benefits" throw lots of babies out with the bath water. If you as a motor carrier think less competition gives you greater leverage, you're in for a surprise.

 

You and me both sir... you and me both. I think it will get better though. We'll be able to get some of the smaller mom and pops to sign up with us as sub-agents and I can assure you, we don't take joe blow ###### just because he has freight. We're looking for quality and not quantity. This essentially means our agency will have more customers to be able to provide more loads to more drivers. Customers will have to realize that rates are going to go up because of the government regulations coming down the channels. The only other thing I forsee happening is their being an even larger push to ship Intermodal.

 

I have been screaming about this since all this has been coming out. At a certain level you can use some of this to your advantage and we have been building our business to weather all this. Including the types of accounts we go after, companies we acquirer, people we partner with and drivers we lease.

12/13/12 - BBB wrote: "This new broker bond is going to be written about in business books on how the government helped put large numbers of small businesses out of business. It will rank with new Coke as a learning example."

In 10-years remember I said this.

So they learned from 2009?

 

We shall consider it a prophecy from the "Truck God." LOL! I don't know if they necessarily "learned" from 2009, but they seem to be slowly trying to clean the mess up. When I said, we, I was referring to our agency specifically. You and I have discussed my intended plan for growth.

 

My safety manager suggested this and I explained to him that I would replace them before they would replace me and I will not drive their truck with EOBR period.

 

I honestly don't believe ANYONE should be forced or mandated onto eobr's

 

I started in March with a company that had EOBR's. The ONLY benefit I found in it is it saved my butt on a speed camera in Sioux City IA. The EOBR proved I was doing 56 in a 55. The camera said 66 in a 55.

Every other aspect, fuel stops, loading/unloading, load numbers/BOL tracking, all had to be entered into the computer.

The one thing that pissed me off to high heaven was the day I stopped in a rest area after running for 4 hours across ILL. Went to the bathroom, came out, made a sandwich and as I was getting ready to leave, the #### box beeped an incoming message...

boss was upset I was stopped so early in the day and commented, "A little early to be stopping when you still have 4 1/2 hours to drive for the day."

I called him on the phone and politely, as well as I could, informed him that if he sent me a message like that again he would be one less driver.

I got one more message like that from the dispatcher about 7 weeks later. I called the owner again to remind him of the previous conversation and made sure that he related that information to the dispatcher too.

It never happened again in the next 4 months I was there.

I don't mind the log book portion of this. But the BS of tracking the truck and driver and how they can send you messages and push you for working more is NOT a good thing.

THAT is the portion the the EOBR that I can not and will NOT tolerate.

 

MN, this is less an EOBR issue and more a tracking issue. I know that those fighting it have grab hold of the harassment side of it but if we are honest about it companies have been using Qualcoms to harass drivers for years. A good driver manager should know your hours EOBR or not.

But then again, a good driver manager would never send the messages you are describing.

Here at F2F we have been struggling with the need for tracking and my distaste of what that represents. Then one of my drivers that has several Qualcom horror stories and "will never drive for a company that will track me" told me he will have no issues with it because he trusts us.

And I guess that is what it really comes down to - trust. When it goes from a safety (yes, there is a safety issue in terms of a carrier knowing where a truck is) and customer service tool and turns into a carrier using a computer to tell a driver when they should be driving. Then it goes to a carrier asking a driver to be unsafe because the computer tells them they have enough hours to keep driving.

We can likely beat this for ever but in terms of what the OP is talking about. LS is one of the companies you can trust. They are implementing EOBRs several business reasons and it is safe to say that one of those reasons for this is not to make driver run harder.

 

It is the mis-management of the tracking portion of EOBR's that are a major issue. Would F2F do such tracking? I seriously doubt it. From a drivers perspective, I loved the fact that they could pull up a computer screen and know where the trucks were situated. It saved me having to send in a check call or anything like that.

But the reality is, people will abuse that feature.

If it allowed for tracking only, IE, only sent data TO the company, I think that would alleviate a lot of the harassment issues.

My truck has all the hardware in it already for PeopleNet from McLeod. The only thing missing is the electronics. Beauty of a fleet truck purchase I guess.

Until that happens and someone says I MUST run an EOBR, I would likely not stick around.