Need dot consultant? Dot advice

I have a log question....I work for a trucking company and we have OBC's that are very unreliable. Because of this we have to manually enter logs on the fleet manager system from the drivers filling out manual logs sometimes. My question is this.....do we have to exactly match the manual driver log to the log we put in the fleet manager or can we summarize the hours, even though we consider the manual log the "official" log? Keep in mind that our official reporting system is the OBC/fleet manager system. Any help would be great!!!!! Thanks!

 

are you talking like a paper log? and an electronic log?

 

Both. We use electronic logs from the On Board Computer, the reliability on these computers are horrible, so we have the drivers fill out paper logs when we have a problem. I then get their paper logs and enter them in to the elog system manually. My question is....when I enter them manually, do I have to put all the start/stops/fuel/breaks etc when they happen, or can I summarize the hours. Example: just say he drove 10.5 hours in one string....with one stop, making sure the total hours match. Is this legal is my question?

 

It appears TFactor is not a driver but a safety person editing info from paper logs into e-logs .
I would not trust paper logs without document verification such as fuel receipts , toll tickets , scale tickets , company cell GPS , etc.
What is the problem with your EOBR's ? Are they sending constant location reports and recording driving time ?
You are responsible for entering accurate logs. You will be held accountable if you enter false information given to you by a driver .

 

Yes, I am a safety person entering the information. We are in the process of switching to a new onboard system, the old is outdated and not supported. This is why we are having so many problems with it. Because of the problems, we are getting numerous paper logs that need to be entered into our esystem. I recently got a new supervisor who said that because the paper log is the official log, we can just summarize the time in our esystem....and I wanted to make sure what he is saying is legal. I do not want to do the wrong thing. I do not trust this persons DOT savvyness.

 

We use Xata (now XRS ) e-logs . They are very reliable and have no upfront equipment or installation costs . The cost is about $30 per month per unit .
You are in a tough position . If the paper logs are the official logs they shouldn't have to be entered into anything .
We would really need to know just what the problem with the esystem is to be able to give appropraite advice .
There may also be a problem if the trucks have stickers on the door saying the driver is using e-logs then he is found to be using paper logs .
I suggest seeing if the esystem provider has a customer service help number .

 

Thanks for the help!

 

that does suck man. I would like to have them entered exactly matching what happened on the paper log. Well that's not true, often times when this happens to us we still have positioning, we'll recreate based off of that and enter the fuel stops based off of our com data reports. You are probably fine to just keep the paper logs, I would recreate them to get the drivers used to running the eLogs. If you give them a reason to say the eLogs are broken they're going to run with it. We have several drivers that will have "system failures" but as soon as they get to the terminal they fix themselves, it's funny how it's always the same drivers that have these issues. I'd suggest learning as much as possible about the units, how the they hook up, how to troubleshoot, what it looks like when a unit is disconnected, what it looks like when a fuse is pulled, what it looks like when the antenna is disconnected/covered. This way you'll be able to identify when drivers are being less than honest with you. Another thing to check with intermittent outages are miles without hours, often times drivers will disconnect from a truck stop, deliver a load, drive back to the truck stop and reconnect the unit. Lot's of things to be on the lookout for. Just figure out how you would cheat the system if you were a driver and start from there.

 

LOL

You mean, figure out how to cheat it like A NO GOOD CHEATING driver does. We aren't all bad Meltom!

I for one love my eLog. Sometimes I wonder how much I would forget to go to this or that line; why worry when you have a computer doing it for ya?!? Plus everything is calculated to the minute, whenever it takes me 9 min to fuel its 9 min not 15 But yeah, I know of drivers who think of ways to outsmart that thing. There's enough to worry about out here to be adding an excess of thinking stress.

 

I think it's natural to push the boundaries and see how much you can get away with. I know if I were driving I'd do it. I was lucky and had a unit sitting on my desk so I could try different things and see how the computer recorded them. Also when units were in the yard without drivers I would go out to them and try different things. I also did road tests so I tried out some other tricks that I figured would work. Then I enlisted 2 or 3 drivers to try to do things and let me know what worked. There are definitely some loopholes that drivers can take advantage of, however a competent office staff will be able to see through them.