"FORCED to break-the-law!---"Elogs and the Catch 22???"

For local guys. 10 hour breaks are probably easy to come by. But for the rest, any breaks less than 8 hours or 2 hours generally are useless and don't count for anything.

If moving from one parking spot to another parking spot interrupts a break, that can be catastrophic for the shipper the carrier the driver and the receiver.

 

I hope nothing bad happens but I had to get myself out of that situation. It was very well paying but what they demanded I could not provide and he didn't want to give me even 5 minutes when I asked if he cared to know why I consistently kept telling him I was unavailable.

I can see why the pressures may overcome some people's decision making if they have large overhead like I have now. The difference is I have plenty of good customers that hire me on the steady and I still do well and have figured out almost all problems that the elog will bring to the surface. Will I be a safer driver? Absolutely not. I will drive when it says I am legal regardless of if I got decent sleep.

 

Hopefully, all this BS will finally lead us back to a simpler system like a limit of 14 hours combined driving/od inside any 24 hour sliding window, with no drive time to exceed 8 hours. Or something along those lines.

But I'm not so naive as that I'm going to expect serious change to happen

 

If shippers and receivers had yards where you could drop your trailer and bobtail to an area and when your 10 hours is up you can leave that would make it a whole lot easier. Have the shunter move it to and from a door. Placing a fair amount of faith in the shunter with my new expensive reefer but it's not like I don't do the same at meat plants.

 

If I don't have 4 hours on my 14 I don't go in to live load unless I know the customer.

If I'm in a dock and getting jerked around and my clock is dwindling, I check in and make sure they know that if it takes more than X amount of time I need to overnight on their property.

Or I can drop it in the dock and come back tomorrow. If I do that I get paid to drove to safe/legal and get stop off pay.

If the customer pulls attitude I get my company involved. That works with the weight of of major behind me, small carriers may have more issues.

What will change is pay rated - both rates charged by carriers and driver pay. As it costs more, we'll charge more. In theory at least.

 

I have an opinion on this matter.

I went to bed with no coffee at a receiver, and started the day without any because it was a F/U neighborhood, and nearest store was like 3 miles. But sleeping at the receiver allowed me to GIT-R-DONE.

On this last trip on the way home, I wasn't going to make it in one shift. So drove 8 hours ( 7 hours 40 minutes ) no stops, parked at the T/A, logged off, saved myself a half hour by not having to take a 30.

I don't like it at all, cause there's been several times I had to shut down during the day and could not sleep to save my life, when on paper I would have rolled happily along.

That being said, you can git -r-done with the F e-log, but it does take planning. New drivers I think will have it a lot tougher.

" Ok Google, navigate to......................" ; I know many of the strategic stopping points, and I can get it in the hole after 600 miles and pitch dark, so I may have a leg up. But you have to plan. And my best advice is plan backwards. Start at the receiver and work back to where you are right now.

 

F elog is for sale now? Are you using it? I'd like one that doesn't show your violations with a big red line. The officer can still read it and determine if I am out of line. I am not going to pay more than I do now for logging and also have it point out to enforcement exactly where and when I dun went outside the lines a little if it isn't a requirement for the log to do so.

 

Thatl

That will not fly in the tanker world.
Just loading a multi compartment tank at certain places require moving the truck between loading racks and scaling for each compartment loaded. I've put many miles on the truck just doing this.
Ran into a Scheinder tank driver who told me he could not move his truck 2' without triggering the drive line.

 

Its a scarey situation getting lost in the heartland of the east coast.

 

Just another example of why I think there should be some common sense built into the hos rules. Recording it electronically is bringing all these "problems" into the open.

I guess this is just another example of the government manufacturing a problem then giving us the solution while increasing costs to carrier and ultimately public while selling the whole thing under the guise of safety and using the extreme example of the coast to coast in one shot guys as the reason we all need these devices.

There is a sick part of me that wishes for all calamity to ensue.