DOT inspection today...paperless logs...hahahaha. :D

I had a level 3 inspection today. Basically, I had just gotten on US-58 westbound off of I-85. I was a couple of miles from that inspection pull-off area on the eastbound side, and a smokey bear pulls out from the eastbound side, in front of me, with his disco lights on, gets in the right lane (where i am), sticks his finger out his window pointing to the left, and gets in the left turn lane, so i go OH SHEET! (figurd he saw me speeding down a hill...which i totally did not intend to do). Then I see him pull into the pulloff area, where another truck already is.

Of course I drive for Werner, but I was pulling a dollar general trailer, so he may not have noticed. He asked for my license, medical card, registration, paused for a second, and then said....and your logbook. I handed him the first three, then said "uh...I have paperless logs.....do you want me to send the message to get them for you?". He got all dissapointed sounding and said "Nahhh.....If y'all paperless logs, they're watchin' y'all!". He gave me a level 3, and i was out of there in 10 minutes. No portables were in site, so clearly he was lookin to make some easy log ticket money. So paperless logs saved me about 15 minutes and a possible logbook ticket I figure.

When he walked back to his car, i sent a macro 8 "driver to line 4". I took off without sending a macro. Oops.

I checked my logs later and it never logged that i stopped. I sent a macro 50, log correction, for the time based on the inspection report and my previous macro 8 (im the kind of guy that wont falsify a log to match an incorrect time on a level 3 report...). Correction was denied "movement occured".

There's a macro to send for a dot inspection, but i didnt send it because i dont know the number, and werner has a macro for literally EVERYTHING...it wouldve taken longer than the inspection took to look for it....

This puts me in violation, and if i have another inspection in the next week, and the officer actually looks at my logs, I could get a ticket. I'll also get a written logbook warning in two weeks.

Seriously, WTF? I'm going to fax in a paper log for today.

It seems like its always a win/lose situation with this thing...


Anyhow, I laughed so hard later at the reaction the officer had when i told him i had paperless. He was soo dissapointed.

 

I don't really care about logging it. If anything comes up, theres qualcomm records showing that i attempted to log it.
My days with werner are very limited anyway.

 

Honestly i think that atleast part of that was BS with the porno addict. First of all, if you get into a wreck and have a laptop running GPS or something, it dont take much on some laptops to start the DVD in the drive playing....

and 28 hours behind? he mightve done some screw up that caused that, like screw up a split break. FYI i refuse to ever split break.


Anyway....paperless logs at werner are cool in the sense that most dot know about it, theyve had it for over 10 years.....dot doesnt even touch us usually. I roll over a scale like 3 times a month. I usually get prepassed every time. Heh, I live about 18 miles east of the new buffalo, MI scale. Now, I *know* how to bypass it, there's a major two lane highway that runs right next to the entire length of i-94 in michigan....but i never do because im always legal and that scale is never opened. Wellll one day i was on my way home. It was open. I got a red light. I thought to myself, OH NO!!!!!! .....if they wouldve even pulled me in for a thorough isnpection it would have run me out of hours and i wouldnt get home. (Doesnt matter though, 20 miles...i can get a ride).

 

you can cheat your logs still. Like if i wanted to run a paper log for a day i have a damaged qualcomm cable and if i wiggle it just right it completely disables the system.....then i get to run paper logs....but the cops mostly will still waive me through because they know werner is paperless logs.

I'm going to get a sticker made that says "This vehicle is EOBR equipped" to put on my drivers door. Should make it more obvious to the likes of that trooper on US-58. But i figure he probably didnt look at the name on my tractor and was looking at the name on my trailer instead.