ELD ???? ' s

As I was told by a dot officer don't think that we couldn't track your where abouts right now if we wanted to. He was referring to the millions of cameras everywhere and license plate readers I had a dot officer prove that to me showed me exactly where was that whole week and he was pretty darn accurate. Plus throw in time stamp bills of lading your fuel slips, credit card invoices, toll receipts just how much paper log lying can you do they all got to match and every truck uses fuel and there isn't that many places writing hand receipts anymore they want easier records for themselves too. It boils down to is it makes the officers job easier to do with elogs some of them don't know or want to waste time going back 7 days doing recaps and such they want that info easy and fast give ticket move on to next ticket make them more productive that way they can hammer it to us on more truck violations keeping that gov revenue flow going as fast as possible with least amount of man hours. I can see where they will have you automatically download elog info to gov agency every week or month. And if you think it will raise rates they said the same thing about carb in comifornia and rates didn't increase going in or out there. And if it was truly about safety they would have passed a driver qualifications standards and training that they still haven't done in 20 years now. Wouldn't that help more in preventing accidents then some computer telling you when you are tired and when you aren't? And when they don't get results they want what next electronic truck convoys and when that don't work what next everything but the obvious driver training and we know the guberment doesn't do the smart thing first they do 20 stupid things around it before getting it close to right. As a last note we all know this about MONEY some business making the guberment pass a law making some else buy there product remember when car insurance wasn't mandatory and how cheap it was till the guberment came in and said hey you must have this. And if insurance is required why do I have to have uninsured motorist insurance? Still boils down to law enforcement not doing there job.

 

You don't have to have uninsured motorist. You elect to pay for it because so many others drive with no insurance or even registration.

I don't buy the its all about money speech because the biggest advocate for eobrs is the ata. And they never pushed them until csa came out and their scores started shooting through the roof. While a handful of mega companies were already on them to keep their drivers honest, or want till after csa that we started seeing almost every fleet of 50 trucks or more went to them.

 

The Ata is an association mainly for the big companies and the big companies need these thing to control their steering wheel holders. So they want to level the playing field but they want to do it on their terms.
Same as with speed limiters. They have to have them because their drivers are never going to drive their trucks for efficiency(don't say I blame them) and they see themselves at a disadvantage to all you outlaws running 72 mph. So being the main membership of the ata is made up of the large fleets, the membership pushes irs association to push these mandates.
All we have to fight them is OOIDA and while far from perfect they are about all we have. Seems like a loosing battle.

 

Ha. Ha. Ha. Countless?

Let's just say that I drive a Schneider company truck. The truck will go 600 miles. But magically I'm 700 miles from where I started. Countless hours lol.

 

Why would I give them a fuel receipt or anything with a time on it? last time I was asked a few years ago I just looked at the guy and said "where does it say I have to have them?" , He laughed and went on with his inspection. I don't go across the scales half the time now either. I guess if they come after me I'll think of something clever. I guess when you get to the point you don't really care it doesn't matter anyway.

 

Like I said before I can see why they doing elogs. Its to easy to cheat on paper. And it is. We all have alittle bit to gain an hr or if something didn't go right you know. I agree with everyone else if you can't adapt then guess you don't need to be in the business... I running with this company and they are so bad and don't know what they are going to do with the elogs.. the dispatcher even mentioned to the driver that when he gets done with his first load he is going to have to hop into a different semi and run another load with that one so his elogs will look legal.

so them type of companys I am kinda glad elogs are happening to. Us O/Os kinda sucks but guess we will all get used to it.

 

In theory yes, mandating that all trucks actually follow the HOS rules should tighten up trucking capacity and increase demand (and rates) for it. In the real world it is anybody's guess how it will play out. Too many moving parts.

I agree with you on your other point that it can and should help drivers who want to work legal from being pushed or coerced by shady small-time operators who've thus far been using paper log abuse as a competitive advantage against the big guys who've already modified their business model to account for it.

 

Depends what truck stop you stop at. The big chains are usually crammed with mega fleet trucks because that's where the drivers are told to fuel, get there free showers/points/etc. O/O's and independent O/O's tend to favor quieter independent places. Old school places usually have parking readily available and appreciate your business.

 

I ran into this a couple weeks ago! Nothing is more frustrating than being stuck behind people doing this, while being on e-log yourself! While I was sitting in this for roughly 3hrs, I was thinking about all the people getting extra scrutiny at scales for running paper, while a bunch of these trucks were manipulating their e-log, and bragging about on the radio.

 

My personal opinion is that they are being a little draconian and heavy handed requiring 1-truck operators to go to the hassle and expense of switching to ELDs. There should be some more loopholes for USDOT/MC #'s that only have 1 truck associated with them regardless of what year the truck is. In fact that makes more sense to me than arbitrarily deciding who should be mandated based on the year of the truck. (Lots of trucks older than 2000 are still in fleet service and have electronic motors...why should those exempt?)

Not that I agree this is right but if the FMCSA from their perspective wanted to discourage small fleets from popping up they would make a loophole for 1 truck guys to stay on paper but as soon as you go and add that 2nd or 3rd truck to your authority you are now a "fleet" and are required to comply. The assumption being that those 2nd and 3rd trucks will be driven by hired employee drivers which turns into a whole different ball game. That would probably scare a lot of guys off with dreams of getting out of the truck and driving the desk all day. From the FMCSA's perspective they hate those guys because they're hard to police.