Old school versus Elogs

We switch to Elogs a few months back .. The biggest problem is trying to dispatch get understand that every delay on their part is time added to trip and load will be late by that much time.. We have very tight runs and can't make up for their delays and now no longer try ..also as stated before doing a pretrip before starting a pretrip on machine sucks .. Maybe once everyone is on the box things will change as it stands now if your company can't do it the next one on paper will .. My miles never dropped it just takes me 5 to 6 days to do the 3200 miles I did in 4.5 before and now I occasionally drive tired instead of napping in the afternoon like in the past . I find that the ones that love them the most never really worked hard enough anyways before .. To me it's just a job not a lifestyle I prefer to take 3 days off at home not 2 like now every week

 

That's just it. The box will bite you every time. But, hey, I'm not a hard worker anyways. I've planned my trip. Maybe tomorrow my plan might work.

 

My company, instead of looking backwards, says, ok, these are the rules, lets adapt our business to take advantage of them and make more money. We did away with team operations, pay for layover, pay for waiting time, pay for ANY downtime and dispatch efficiently where everyone runs hard and gets home at the end of their work week. Some little 10 truck company? Nope, 7500 drivers in the fleet.

The answer is not in having more hours available to run. There's only 168 in 7 days. But there is no limit to what my pay can be.

 

When i first started I ran paper logs. Then i went and did something else a few years. When i came back I ran elogs.
The advantage is most scales didnt check just asked if i was on elogs. The disadvantage is no freedom. Once your time starts your stuck. No finageling or anything. Example if your stuck behind an accident for some hours, your drive time is still running. I know one time i even had to stop about 3 miles from the warehouse or i would run over my hours. A storm was coming in so i stopped at the truck stop instead of looking for the warehouse. ALot depends on the company. I know one run i did before I would not get dings cause where i parked across from the warehouse. I had to drive around it to unload. I would usually arrive late at night and have to dock in the morning. Then could take off after rest IF you can run Paper I havent met anyone who ran paper logs that likes the elogs. Oh dont let the company trick you i know some that have reset the drivers hours. Also if the computer has trouble it can hinder you. One driver told me his truck went into drive when he pulled forward at the fuel island. SO he was shown driving after fueling. Stay paper

 

Well.... With elogs if you dumped your coffee on that plastic brain box you just wipe it off no big deal, dump your coffee on paper, well...you know the rest, LOL

 

With a computerized log book . There is a way to get us off this 6am to 6pm log jam it's caused . Now, It would be so much easier to go back to breaking up sleeper berth like we used to, in 2 hr segments if the driver wishes. This has so many more benifits for drivers not being penalized for waiting on weather and rush hour traffic and that's just a start.
But when you talk to a driver that is new to trucking .. they just give a blank stare and begin a speech of elog luv like a Manchurian candidate.
We are constantly told about personal responsibility yet nobody know my "person" better than me.
A 10 hour trip to the sleeper means absolutely NOTHING to the safety of me or the public. If I'm not ready to sleep or have to force myself to sleep, it's worse. After that 10 hours of watching TV or shopping on ebay, I'm getting the nods after a couple hours back behind the wheel. I absolutely HATE driving during bankers hours.
Why don't people get it? The roads were alive with trucks all night long, less cars ,radar and scales. The only trucks in rush hour were locals . California tried something like this year's ago. they closed banning scales at night. What do you think happened once everyone figured that out? Yep, anyone with a stem made sure they did their business at night. It worked until activist noticed one of the most famous revenue scales was dark. I'm sure the dot officials not getting enough hours had somthing to do with it as well.

 

They'll never see it as simply as we see it. It makes way too much sense.

 

I see it all stemming from not enough money in the budget. But it isn't good for getting re-elected if a politician mentions tax increase. Instead, we "create jobs!" to "increase safety!" when really the object is to increase revenue. It's all about appearances. I'd rather pay a higher tax than the game of whoever we want to inspect and write bs tickets to.

 

Won't have any choice on this at all come Jan 1, 2018 unless you're driving something older than 2000. There's a couple other exemptions but that is the main one. It's going to cause my little company a few fits until they figure out they can't over-dispatch anymore and expect the drivers to paper over it. I'm all for using time wisely and getting after it but sometimes they really blow it and forget that trucking is an industry of delays when they pre plan some of these trips.