Oh what fun! Elogs

I would have left as soon as I came off the hallucinational drugs I was taking & realized that I was in a Swift orientation.

 

The place I'm at could learn a thing or two from Swift. And trust me when I say that we you get 7 of 30 wrong on this HOS test you suck. We put dispatch thru it and the worst score was 4 wrong. Not cool.

 

I drove for them for a year and really enjoyed the company. I quit to take use of my GIBILL and get a degree. I really miss the road and swift has a terminal right here where I live. Being out for many weeks at a time doesn't bother me as I have family and friends through out this great nation.

 

so SWIFT is going to E-logs. I am looking at SWIFT or prime at the end of the year

 

Elogs are no big deal... just requires you to be more efficient with your time, plan ahead, and be very aware of the DOT clock page vs where you need to be. BTW... its better to take the available parking place 30 minutes before your time runs out, than to push it and hope you can find a place up the road with 2 minutes left.

Things will be good once the load planners get the hang of dispatching with elog data available...

 

that will be the trick. getting the planners used to seeing what you have available, and understanding

 

Seemed to be the case at my carrier... we started with one dispatch board, got the obvious stuff worked out, and then moved company wide over the next couple of years. Got to admit there were growing pains, and it does take some getting used to - especially if you've had extensive experience on paper logs.

Now that its been in place for awhile, I seem to do much less sitting around waiting for the next load, more running, and zero (hope I don't jynx myself here!) sitting on loads for days.

 

Since the CSA rules (whatever and whenever they finally settle on them) make it so critical to avoid points, the E-logs remove one major source of headaches for drivers and companies both.

The on duty default (going to line 4) instead of off makes certain any error is less critical. Nobody will "nick" you for eating while on duty, even if you have an authorization to be off duty while doing so. But you can get "nicked" for doing certain simple things (fueling, say) while off duty. As mentioned, one can manually edit it if necessary, but E-logs largely eliminate the clerical error. Like mis-reading a 7 for a 2 or mistakes in addition and so on. Why have needless log book classes and/or tix and fines for innocent preventable mistakes? And it mostly eliminates intentionally falsifying logs.

As for the company choice to use them, it is a no brainer. They get points and fines for every driver screw up that DOT catches, for example. As alluded to above with HOS test scores, ask 10 drivers about logs/HOS and you get 10 different answers, most of them wrong!

Someone else above mentioned the no-pre-trip-log-the-minimum situation. Say what you will about Swift, Werner, Knight, etc. One thing that cannot be legitimately claimed is they run unsafe equipment (no unsafe driver jibes! ) on anything they know about. Yet, in just a short time, I have found a missing cotter pin from the pittman arm castle nut on the tractor steering linkage: now that'd be fun for the castle nut to back off and the drag link to pop loose! Not. Yeah, it'd take some bad luck but, still, a pre trip found the missing pin. And I found a big nail in the tread of a drive wheel. Simply had wheel/tire changed easy-peasy. It's a fair guess that sooner or later it coulda worked loose, or in further, and tire could have gone down. The fact they changed it meant it was worth doing. Either a flat somewhere on road or even a blow out. If the e-logs cause just one driver somewhere to actually do more that "kick the tires and light the fires" and thus saves an accident, it is worth it. Makes me feel better anyway but I come from an aviation background so am biased.

The new rules and laws are what they are. I don't have to like them, but I do have to abide by them, be they company rules (if I wish to drive for that company) or laws (if I wish to drive period). Anything to make it easier to comply with those rules and avoid losing the privilege to drive is fine with me.

There are a few, really few, special cases of old time truckers who could really work the old system safely and do it well. And I admit, the laws and rules hurt them. But for every trucker like a Redd or Blackwood there were/are many not safe or smart enough and they created situations where these rules and items like E-logs are necessary.

A few howls of indignation about the HOS, E-logs, etc. are legitimate and come from some of the true grey beard owner operators out there. But the majority of howls you hear are simply people howling the same way my neighbor's dog does: not because he has a reason, but because he hears another dog doing it.

Just my opinion. Someday I hope to be an owner op and perhaps then I will feel differently or maybe even, as time goes by, as a company man. But from my limited view in the cheap seats, I've got no problems at all with 'em.

 

The O/O upgrade is starting in August I believe... not sure of the costs.

 

With the elogs, the planners can see exactly what you have available. Not a matter of getting used to it. It will make it easier actually, since there are some drivers that turn down loads they dont want by saying HOS. So planners will be able to concentrate on planning trucks, not trying to get one certain load covered because nobody wants to go to New Jersey.