Transition to EOBR

switching to a different company. who wants logs done as the day actually happens. more or less. and with this company. there's more waiting then driving.

my miles has dropped from an average of 3500 down to 2500. my pay went from 1200 down to roughly 700 per week. my 70 gets eaten up every week. leaving my shy of going home. and i'm bending the rules every way imaginable. while still keeping my scale times and fuel times on track.

as much as i hated the last company. i'm seriously thinking of going back. more work. more driving. less hours used. and certainly not as much sitting around. BIGGER PAYCHECK.

 

I switched from paper to elogs in 2011. And I never want to go back to paper. My pay has increased, not decreased. I get my rest. Im healthier because of that. I don't break out into cold sweats heading into a scale. You can run over 4,000 miles on an e-log in a week. I've done it several times you actually gain time you didn't have before. Everything on paper needed to be in 15 minute increments. Now, I save a lot of time and it adds up. I was completely against the idea of elogs May 8, 2011, the day before I switched. Now I wish we had them the whole time.

 

I always considered myself pretty slick running loose leaf. When my company switched to e-logs, I was most resistant. Literally, I was the last holdout in my division to turn myself in to have the truck set up. After a couple years on e-logs, it hasn't effected my productivity (co. driver). I don't miss the temptation and stress always experienced with redrawing the comic book. Planners always know what you have left and can do, can't ask you to do anything illegal.
Down side, what is intended to keep everyone on the road safer often does the contrary. Adding pressure sometimes to make unsafe decisions to beat the 11 or 14 hr clock. A lot more of parking right outside of customers when shutdown. Thus, always being equipped with liner bags in my coffee can. I'd never urinated in a bottle while driving until on e-logs, constraints causing a conservation of every needed minute sometimes.
Officers, from every account so far, do not want to deal with inspecting eobr's. "Are you on e-logs?" "Yes" "Nevermind". I'm sure this will change with time as they get more hip. In summary, I would say the stress that is relieved from knowing that you're legal for any possible inspection. Is nearly offset by the new set of challenges mentioned above. Surprisingly, the productivity was not effected. Just how you do it.

 

They aren't nearly as horrible as some people make them out to be.

I hear people talking about getting phone calls and messages asking why they aren't rolling as soon as their break is up, and while I can't speak for every company, I have never gotten a call like that. For the most part it seems nobody is really paying attention to what you are doing, provided you aren't in violation.

Another big complaint I hear is the running out of hours 15 minutes from home thing. And while it can happen, if and when it does, I will be going home. If I get a letter saying I violated hos, big whoop. I'll sign it, take the slap on the wrist and go about my life. In the few times I've gone over my hos by a few minutes, I just make a note to the effect of "looking for safe parking" and nothing has been said. I did the same thing on paper once, with the same result.

It does kind of force you to be a little more concerned about planning, but with my company at least, we typically have ample time to get to the customers. Usually I don't have to work more than 8 and a half hours a day unless I choose to. There are a few loads that are tight, but generally when it happens it's because I'm extra lazy and don't want to leave the house until the day before I deliver.

In short, a lot of the horrors are hearsay, or just completely made up. I'm sure there are some operations that would be crippled by them, and I respect that. The average guy though really shouldn't have too much trouble.

 

Safety is always watching your logs. Try going over your 70 and see what happens.

{A man is only as good as his word.}

 

Oh ok... so I mentioned mentioned that no one is watching the logs unless you go over the 11 or 14, but I failed to mention the 70. OMG! How could I have not known that someone would see if I went over the 70? But you failed to mention the 60 for those on the 7/60 plan. Are you always this anal? Seems everyone else got the general idea that safety isn't watching unless there is a violation. And I think they got the general idea that there is not someone in a cubicle that is monitoring each and every move you make in a truck, 24/7. It seems, that some folks actually do believe that a carrier will hire a person, for each and every driver in the company, to watch the e-log of their assigned driver and see what they are doing. Their paranoia level knows no bounds. I didn't go into each and every occurance that would trigger someone watching, I was just stating the obvious, that no one really is. No different that someone watching paper unless there is a violation. No one is.

 

It is a matter of weighing the odds and how much time an LEO wants to invest in looking at something. The odds of an LEO finding a violation with an e-log drops considerably compared to paper, so why waste time looking at it? To be fair, I have had a couple of LEO's have me show the unit and pull up the graphs of a couple of days. I think primarily to see if I knew what I was doing with the e-log. One in Kansas, asked me to show various screens that would show last 8 days, graph, current status, etc. From the response of "oh, ok. You know what you're doing" I gathered that is all he really wanted to know. Just making sure I was actually using the thing and not just that there was a small sticker on the side of the truck saying I was. Sure didn't seem to care what was on the e-log.

 

If your running teams, some companies take DNA automatically from the keypad to ensure you're not running on the other drivers time while he's in the sleeper snoring. Then they back that info up with in-cab cameras.

 

In a few more years of guys being so willing to "adapt" to EOBRs I sure could see them "adapting" to this nonsense too.
No way would an EOBR work in a daily run like I do most of the time. Why should I have to rush and not take small breaks to grab a bite to eat or sit down and have a cup of coffee? If I had to run an E-log I would be running 75mph in a 55mph just to make sure I had enough time and shippers and recievers would have to get me right in and right out along with the other 20 trucks at the same time. Come on maybe for you guys that run OTR you might be able to get by and "adapt" to this crap but the rest of us who go home nightly sure don't need EOBRs.

 

i have always wondered, regarding REST

after 6hrs of sleep, i am no longer able to sleep
i get up, shower, eat, a bit of paperwork, mess with the truck, and now i am ready to go......after 8 hrs

after two more hours of just sitting there, i begin to feel tired before i have even started my day