Hopefully, Big Brother has pink eye! Companies without qualcomm or e-logs

Wrong on moving around a t/s and it not registering. It happened to my hubby, and he was not doing over 15 mph. He crossed a grid line . . . in a truck stop parking lot. It really does depend on how the company has them set up.

 

our company has a line for personal use of vehicle

 

Happened to a friend who was in a truckstop and the truck moved in front of him, so he pulled to the front spot.

Registered the move and forced additional time to complete the 10 hour break.

 

Depending on the system used and the how the company sets them up.
I am far from a fan of e-logs, they are not the safety save all.
When you are forced to work with a clock ticking down, people tend to take more chances. Drive faster in less than ideal conditions.
With that my company I think has done a good job with setting up the e-logs.
The system will not start logging say driving time until you exceed 2 miles (no speed limiting). Once you reach 2 miles, it will back up the time to when you actually started.
So yes you can move to another parking spot, or around customers, or terminals with no problem.
If we are under a load, there is no free time to go to walmart or whatever.
But if empty or at a terminal and dropped loaded trailer, we have 1 hour that can be logged as off duty driver, or personal conveyance time. This is provided that you would be to drive under normal rules.
My company really puts the decisions when to drive in the drivers hands.
It is never questioned if shutting down or slowing down due to weather, but we are also paid strictly on miles driven, so the choice to stop or slow down and let hours tick off and not make money is where it is a safety issue.
As far as hours available or not available. If the driver says he is tired or doesnt have the hours, as long as your upfront about if, no harm, no foul. But we are also in the trucking biz, so yes, if it happens regular, well that driver won't last long.

 

My company uses old fashioned looseleaf logs and no qualcomm. Our logs/safety director is a former DOT officer. He said no DOT officer believes that most paper logs are 100% accurate. Too accurate is a red flag as much as making it look ridiculous. Make it plausible. Don't log that you drove from El Paso, TX to Orange, TX in 8 hrs, or that you spent your entire 10 hrs in the sleeper, things like that. Do things like put 15 min on duty and the rest on off duty when you load and have to wait. That's plausible.

 

The old QC system ran on the grid line system. I was dedicated out of a D/C and some days I drove for over an hour and it would not trip the system. Other days it was right on. The new system(MCP200) that I run on lets you drive for 1.5 miles before it switches you to line 3 automatically. I also think thereis something that if you go over 15mph it does the same, I can't find the paperwork to verify that. It benefits you when trying to get back on highway from a PITA truck stop. One other thing people are misinformed about is most companies let you edit your E-Logs before approval. The only line that can not be edited is driving.

 

we don't have any of that technology. we are as basic as the 70's

we get told where to pick up and where it drops off through cell phone text messaging. that's all the technology we use. everything else is up to us.

i think the problem lies within the bigger companies. where dot sees them through the scales 24/7. specially those companies with rookies. they are the ones that keep dot in business with all the fines racked up. LOL.

 

That's like us. My only communication is through my Blackberry and truck stop fax machine.

 

Has a user name like that. Shame Shame!

 

i have ringcental on my laptop. as long as i have internet service, i have fax service. works really good. $8 per month for 700 incoming/outgoing faxes.

internet is included with my phone. i use my phone for internet modem to the laptop. faxes only take about 2 seconds to send or receive.

i have a $40 printer scanner from best buy. quality is just as good as kinkos.