Electronic tracking has been required on semi-trucks for 5 years. Fatalities haven't decreased.

I'll say an unpopular opinion here: I wouldn't drive a truck without ELD's.

I sincerely mean it when I say THANK YOU to the government for putting ELD's in our trucks. I don't know how you guys had the patience for filling out paper log books by pen back in the day. Screw that. Also, there is zero dispute now about what time you arrived to the shipper/receiver. Our ELD's tell the whole story. I don't have to call dispatch to get my loads, I can just look it up on the tablet. Don't have to call dispatch everytime I need to get in touch with them, I can just shoot them a message over the tablet. Companies can't force drivers to drive illegally, the ELD is the end all be all so there is no exploitation of drivers in that specific regard. Brokers can easily keep track of the loads via the tablet GPS tracking device.

I could go on and on. I love ELD's, I would never drive a truck if I had to fill out a paper log each and every day for every single thing that I did and the HOS are very reasonable/fair.

 

I'm hourly. ELD's don't affect me negatively in the least, and have streamlined the job.

But I can see why some people don't like them.

 

Wrong. I love ELD's. ELD's are great for my health and others. I can only imagine how badly companies like Western Express and CR England would abuse their employees if they were running on paper logs. And before you say "Well they CHOSE to work there", I don't care. The rules are rules and no matter who you work for, you have a right to not be exploited by not following the HOS rules and furthermore, Western Express and CR England Drivers and EVERY single truck driver all provide an extremely valuable service to society and they deserve to not be exploited, no matter who they work for.

If a driver was following the HOS rules properly anyways, then why would they care if they have to use an ELD instead of a paper log? What difference does it make, other then ELOGS being way faster and more accurate?

 

There are way to many lazy people in this industry that would milk the clock like they were an over worked dairy farmer. People think the truckstops are crowded now, if they mandated hourly for OTR across the board, 4 day trips would turn into 6 day trips, and all those dairy farmers would be clogging up the roads putzing along and stop twice as often clogging up the truckstops. I love per mile, especially when I run coast to coast and turn 700+ mile days.

 

I've seen that argument, and for the first couple months there would be some of that. But a lot of milkers would be fired, and...eventually the novelty would wear off, and a lot of guys would just want to get the day DONE. lol

 

I never saw a single person milk the clock at Estes doing P&D and we were all paid hourly. What I did see were guys (mostly the older aged/longer tenured drivers) who would dip out early without asking dispatch if they needed anything else before they went home (which was what we were supposed to do, ask permission before leaving for the day).

Also, do the salary OTR Truckload company drivers milk the clock? Shipex out of Utah I think it is, they are on a weekly salary pay. So, that's not hourly, but it's not CPM either. It's salary. A lot of those guys seem pretty happy and don't milk the clock. There's other OTR Truckload companies that pay salary instead of CPM and their guys seem happy and aren't just sitting around milking the clock.

Management can easily see if you're milking the clock. It won't be hard to see who is unproductive.

As far as hourly pay for OTR, well Truckload could just do it like Less Than Truckload does it. WIth LTL the linehaul guys are on a CPM payscale just like OTR Truckload carriers, but they often get paid for on duty items, although it varies from company to company which on duty items you'll get paid for. But at least LTL is moving in the right direction in that regard. And pretty much every single LTL company will immediately go to hourly pay as soon as a roadside breakdown is called in. Why should immediate hourly pay for roadside breakdowns not be a common thing for OTR Truckload carriers? Why can't Truckload OTR guys get paid for on duty items like fueling or dropping and hooking? Even if it was $5 per drop and hook, that comes out to $10 per hour since it takes 30 minutes to check in, drop, hook, inspect new trailer and then check out.

I don't buy the argument of hourly pay = drivers being more lazy in any meaningful amounts of numbers because I never saw that with local truck driving work. And as I said OTR Truckload doesn't even have to go into a straight hourly payscale, they just need to copy Less Than Truckload's linehaul payscale 100% and start paying a set amount for on duty items while paying CPM for miles driven.

 

Those drivers would get fired real quick. It's the current system that allows for that kind of behavior.

Besides, it's not an either or situation. I don't care how a company structures my pay, I just care how it totals out in the end. If I get paid enough in mileage to cover all my time, I'm fine with it. The problem is when a driver works 70+ hours in a week and doesn't even gross a thousand.

I'd love to see accident statistics broke down by pay. I have a hunch that a large percentage of trucking fatalities involve drivers who weren't even making minimum wage for all the hours they spent on the truck in the weeks leading up to the wrecks.

 

Fatality rate may go up if these idiots keep doing the ELD crawl on the way out of the truck stop to save 30 seconds of drive time.

 

Sooner ai takes over the better.

Truckers sure can't drive for as much time as they waste holding a wheel.

Total waste of life just go get your drone license and work from home in your underwear.

 

The transportation industry falls under a certain type of category when it comes to wages. This includes rail and aviation.
Farm workers have nothing to do with it.
There really are no “wage laws” in transportation. It really is a free market (the way it should be). The problem is to many people will accept low wages.
If I offer to pay a pilot $10 a hour to fly my 787, guess why I’m paying him!
The same goes with trucking. For some reason there are no shortage of drivers who will drive for low wages.
And unfortunately it’s going to get worse. Especially if the language and age rules are dropped. There is a flood of potential low wage drivers pouring into the country and a lot of companies are salivating over the prospect.