ELD Proposal has been published

At least rates will go up i guess i,ll buy an xbox for all my downtime

 

Anne Ferraro said from day one when she was given her job and a mandate to get truck related highway fatalities down below 5,000 within (I don't remember how many) X years the way she was gonna do it was to make FMCSA a hardarse, crackdown, merciless enforcement agency and HOS and E-Logs were top on her list. Basically that she was gonna be a hardarse beeyatch and carriers could just get over it.

This was started by Werner and USDOT before there even was an FMCSA back in the late '90's. As a matter of fact it was one of the things touted by bureaucrats for justification for creating the separate FMCSA in 2000. I was working for Werner when they first came out and they were the only carrier in the country authorized to use them. It was a two year what we would call nowadays Beta Test. We all had to carry a special letter issued by USDOT to give to officers that weren't up to speed and wanted to bust you for no logbook. A bunch of us back then made the following prediction:

"Mark my words; This POS is just the beginning. There will come a day in our careers when these paperless logs will be tied to the trucks engines' computers and will talk to every scale and officer's cars will have computers and it'll talk to them too just like the prepass does and everybody will be required to use them." "Nah, nah. This is just the company trying to save money on buying logbooks and keeping up with paper logs. You know what that costs a company this size? You guys are paranoid."

Well, just because you are paranoid it doesn't mean nobody's really out to get you. It simply means you're aware of it. So who was right? Hmmm. But to Roadmedic's point; Yeah, this $#!+ has been in the making for over 15 years. I'd love to blame this administration for it but the truth is it was gonna happen no matter who was at the wheel.

 

I do believe you nailed it, Keith, except it won't be mandated to be produced by union labor; it will most likely be mandated to be produced in Mexico so that we honor the NAFTA agreement.

This frosts my cake.

 

I know what she said. I was using the Lahood because he first said it.

 

and throughout it all, drivers are just bending over, and telling other drivers to bend over, and condemning other drivers for not bending over, some even are fighting to be the first to bend over because they all believe eventually we will all have to bend over

bunch of bent men

we let them get away with this CSA nonsense, what would happen if we all just DID NOT DO IT, period

can they shut down 4 million trucks?

maybe they got bolder after reagan fired the air traffic contollers, figured if we can do it to them, we can do it to those unskilled steeringwheel holders

 

Oh you are absolutely correct and I was backing you up on it. King Ray declared it - Queen Anne executed it, it started long before this Administration and transcends Party Affiliation. Politicians do now what they've always done; jump on the bandwagon of the day and yell "Hooray. Look what I did. For YOU my beloved constituency! Oh, and BTW my campaign War Chest is getting a little hollow sounding . . ."


To ALL; What we NEED more than a strike, shut down, "Million Truck March", "DC 495 Slow Down" or or anything else (which a strike/ shut down would never play out but that's a fish for another fry ((see Taft Hartley Act)) and not related to this reply) is truck drivers elected to Congress. As long as we keep sending Lawyers to DC to represent us, we'll keep getting what we are getting. C'mon guys. There's GOT to be some veteran or retired drivers out there that are willing to fight the fight in DC as an equal with the other lawmakers and make them attorney's suck diesel smoke using a Congressman(woman)'s power of the pen for a change.

I would, but I can't. WAY too many skeletons in my closet that would kill my chances of actually getting elected. However, there are plenty of Boy Scout and Girl Scout truck drivers out here that COULD get elected. Why not? GO FOR IT!

 

It will be a shock collar and it won't be around your neck.

 

I can appreciate your optimism, but I can't share in it. So we get a truck driver elected (not likely, but speaking theoretically here), then what? Like any other politician, they'll be subject to the whim of their campaign coffers, and, believe it or not, those in the trucking industry aren't all trying to stave off things like mandatory EOBRs, ELDs, etc. - in fact, one of the main backers of the push for EOBRs is a lobby made up of a conglomerate of trucking companies.
Yes, the megas want these rules to be enacted. Bring everyone down to their level, and they can clear the field. If you're running one truck and you're tied up with the EOBR, a regulated maximum operating speed, etc., then guess what? You're at a serious disadvantage against a company which has the capacity and resources to simply repower a load to another truck if the driver picking it up can't make it on time.
You think that if we get a truck driver elected, OOIDA will suddenly have a voice? NEGATIVE. The same lobby pushing for EOBRs has a lot more to spend than $5 million, and is much more readily willing to buy a politician than OOIDA apparently is. Sorry, but you're not going to get into this match as a serious underdog with the intent of keeping it clean, go up against much more powerful opponents willing to play dirty, and expect to come out ahead. And I'm sure OOIDA is aware of it, as well, hence they're sinking $5 million into what will be an ultimately futile campaign to give trucking a "facelift" rather than in lobbying or bribery... excuse me... campaign contributions. After all, if their membership doesn't see them doing something with the money which gets put into it, then membership is pretty likely to end up in decline. Lobbies, OOIDA, various trade associations, et. al are, after all, mindful of self preservation.
What we would need - and I don't see it happening - is to first be able to debase the trucking lobbies which are pushing for these restrictions. How exactly to do it, I don't know. If we could find a way to get people to quit driving for the companies which are part of those lobbies, quit leasing onto them, and quit running their brokered loads, that would be a good start. Unfortunately, I don't know how to accomplish this. I wish I did.
Another thing we'd need is a stable economy and growing job market, and that's our real shortcoming here. A lot of new drivers come from a younger demographic. That in itself isn't a problem, but a lot of them are coming here because they have no other place to go. If there was a wave of drivers who would collectively say, "this #### is for the birds, I'm finding greener pastures elsewhere" and who actually could find another place to go, while still being young enough to endure a career change, that would do a lot to help loosen the stranglehold on the industry. But, alas, that isn't the case. You take the typical truck driving school class today.. you could probably tell them that they'll either drive a truck and take whatever is offered to them or else be homeless on the streets giving handjobs for crack, and there's likely to be a good portion of that class who'll believe it. Because a good portion of people who are in their 20s now have spent the better part of their lives being constantly reminded to keep their expectations low. After all, for the first time, we're seeing generations collectively being expected to make less than their parents - something previous generations didn't have to contend with, and there's a lot more I could say on this, but this isn't the time or place.
So, when you've got them by the balls, their hearts and minds will shortly follow, and that's how it is for them. You can say, "no, that isn't the case", but the flood of people who are getting into trucking because they see it as a last resort, or because they lost their job and WIA will pay for the schooling tells me otherwise.
Am I making it sound like the dream is dead? Well, that's probably not so far from the truth.
Simply getting a truck driver into office would amount to merely pissing in the wind, much like OOIDA's "facelift" campaign. Even if we did find one who would fight for us, one of them vs. the rest of congress doesn't make for favorable odds.
Topping it off, I can't really say that I'm crazy about the idea of putting a politically motivated trucker into any position of power/authority/where they speak collectively for the rest of us. Listen to political discussions on your CB. If you don't have or use a CB, then go look in the politics section of this forum.
If you really want any of those ########## being the voice and face of the industry as a whole, you belong in a padded room with a straightjacket on.
Just a few of my thoughts on the matter, anyhow.

 

Ya got a very good point there Witchy.

 

It is propaganda from organizations such as this http://trucksafety.org/current-news/ that have both enough in lawyers & fund raising that changes things for the worse.
These sort of groups want trucks off the road.