The Impact Of Electronic On Board Recorders (EOBR)

You're working for the wrong carrier. I was paid $.40 a mile for all dispatched deadhead and bobtail miles.

 

As stated by some intrastate moves are exempt from FMCSR. However there are very few truly intrastate moves and O/O's staying with paper would likely have to have their own authority. Carriers moving to EOBR's are not going to want to bother with dealing with paper for a few O/O's.

 

RickG, I was going to point out the obvious as you've already done. Much better than I could have btw.

 

This is how my boss/company owner, sees this EOBR/ELOG/Snitch-box thing;
It saves him $$$$$. Currently we use loose-leaf, those are scanned/digitized, into a program that checks it against the GPS logs generated from Peoplenet. It takes time to scan each sheet, which he must pay someone to do. This is not a large company, but still he runs about 25 company trucks, plus a few O/O that are leased on, and agreed to have the P-net installed in their trucks (some do not). The end-dumps run 5 days out, home weekends. However we still must do the Off-duty for the weekend, so that's 6 sheets per driver X 25 = 150 per week.

Then there's the cost of the loose-leaf logs. Since they scan them, they demand a specific layout. At least he's not requiring us to purchase our own.

Finally there's the storage for all those logs, for up to 6 months, then if he doesn't want to maintain them any longer, someone purge the older ones. All this costs him money.

With elogs, he sees that he will no longer have to buy loose-leaf log sheets. He will no longer have to pay someone to digitize them so they can be compared to the GPS logs. He will no longer have to ensure he has sufficient storage space for the submitted logs. I would imagine that purging after 6 months would require no more than a few mouse clicks.

A few months back he seen the business advantage to electronic database systems. We were required to run trip-sheets. Logging all the routes we took, mileage, fuel ect. His wife would have to go through all the trip-sheets, manually enter the info into a spreadsheet, and from there he could then start doing his IFTA report. Very time consuming. He then purchased an add-on to the P-Net, which automated this whole procedure. We no longer have to run trip-sheets, the P-Net GPS keeps track of routes, the trucks mileage, our fuel. This is all automatically put into a spreadsheet. It now takes him just 3 mouse clicks on a PC to complete his IFTA. Oh and he doesn't have the paper expense of all those trip-sheets.

Do you think it's a tough decision for him? This is a guy that started out driving a truck. He doesn't like the regs, but has had the DOT tap his wallet a couple of times due to his driver's screw ups. I personally know that last year he was dead-set against ELOGs, because with loose-leaf you can fudge if need be. He didn't encourage, or condone, but does see that maybe once in a while it can be. He doesn't want his driver's stuck 10 miles from home, on a Friday, just because they ran out of hours. He also knows that the ELOGs can be adjusted on his end, so with all that, yes he see's this as helping his bottom line. If it does, than that means that our jobs are a bit more secure. Make sense???

 

Once the log is digitized or scanned into the computer, it meets the 6 month retention and the paper can be destroyed. That is the only difference I see here.

Now, as far as the cost per truck versus the paper trail, it could be interesting. Probably not much of a savings.

 

Probably right, however this is how the one with the $$$ sees it. That's how it was served to him, and that's how he's swallowing it. If he can save a little here and there, he's going to do it. Wouldn't you?

 

Hard to say. Once you commit to the EOBR, you become bound to it and then they control the cost. If they are increasing the costs, it becomes a costly point.

In the other stance, employee cost becomes an issue with accuracy on log checking.

It is one of the reasons many companies out source their logs for checking and scanning.

 

Been out of the country. Let me get back to you after my call with the Roberts gang re: their use of EOBRs. I still think you're making up these wild tales, but if they are doing the automated shutdowns like you claim, I'll have no problem sacking up and admitting it here. Be patient.

 

And that would make it nothing more than a management cost savings tool. Nothing to do with safety.