The Dreaded Electronic Logs

It really boils down to if a driver likes to bat the $hi! at the truckstop and make multi truck stop visits each day....e-logs will bite you. Unless you have short 250-350 mile per day runs then you ain't going to have time to make "casual" stops that are not needed. This doesn't mean that you will have to drive like an idiot on crack or speed to get where you're going on time with E-logs..it just means that you have time to do your job but not with a lot of unproductive stopping time. It means managing your time effectively. It means kicking back before the 14 hour clock starts each day and planning the day and whats going to be needed. I may sound like an advocate for e-logs...trust me I'm not. But I sang the same " e-logs are a horror story" song too kicking and screaming the whole way...untill I used them. The company I was with at that time REQUIRED us to run legal ( yes, really legal) anyway so the E thing wasn't a big deal. If you're with a company that doesn't care how you run as long as the paperwork looks good when you turn it in ( which is the way I'm accustomed to doing) and you don't want to run 100% legal....you've got no business with and would hate an E-log more than anything you've ever encountered. I say this respectively in the most constructive manner I can..not in a goody two shoe peckerheaded way...I'm not that kind of man.

 

yeh i've done it too....if it's one of those days i know i gotta do some drivin.....i'll stop at at a fast food place & get like 2 breakfast sandwhich's & a breakfast burrito & 3 sodas......

one more thing about E logs....when i check in with the shipper to pickup or deliver a load, sometimes it can be a 30/40 mintue wait.....& im thinkin to myself i shoulda put myself off duty, instead of stayin on line 4.......

 

It has good and bad points for all. For me...it keeps management in check. No more B.S. BUT ! See my other post about how my guys were going into q.c.and editing driver hours to make some !!!

I'm thinking here...that maybe we need to lose the old mentality that we need more miles ? Instead, we need to be paid more for the miles we can /do run ?

 

One week I put in over 3800 mils in less then 70 hrs. How many hrs do ya have to do to make a living. I kew a guy who went from California to New England in 3 days without getting any sleep. Tell me if thatguy was a safety hazard or not. Plus he ended up dying of a heart attack while sleeping, because he never stopped long enough to take care of himself.

Plus I don't think that a elog sysytem would cost anymore then a lap top along with the expense of a internet connection.

 

You want to leave your truck overnight not being there thats up to you, i will not i have alot of money invested in my setup.Have my wife come get me and bring me back thats fine but more money out of pocket and time away from her job i dont think so.

 

We have a winner!

 

Nothing in trucking is a perfect world for truckers. E-Logs will not fix the wait time and incompetence of shippers and receivers (the number one destroyer of time management in the industry), but it does however take the burden of responsibility for there incompetence off the drivers shoulders! I think that is a fair trade off for its iron fisted methods. Maybe if more companies ran them, shippers and receivers would be forced to fix themselves to make that greedy buck. That's just healthy capitalism at work.

Don't get me wrong, there are some things that suck, such as out of hours due to a shipper and can't drive that last 45mins to home. If however I had an entire trip without being chewed out due to somebody ELSE's time management stupidity, I think its worth it. I will tell myself that the next time it happens I guess. LOL

 

All good points. The company I'm with went to e logs about three weeks ago, and I have never felt more rushed and stressed. I have lost on average this week alone of 75 miles a day. I go faster in certain situations to make up time. The safety director here says "it will make you more productive and safer"....horse pucky! In 11 years I have NEVER been late for a load, unless I was broken down enroute. I have always taken pride in getting the job done and getting freight to the customer making them happy and making the company look good. This week I have been late on two appts.. I guess thats the more produvtive part the safety director was talking about. At the customer this morning the reciever wanted to know why I was late? " e logs sir, it's the future of the industry, might as well get used to it"

Now the company I drive for does alot f LTL freight, so maybe in a truck load situation it might not be so bad, but either pay is going to have to come up to compensate for the loss of miles ( I won't hold my breath ) or I just will lose approx. $4000 dollars annually.

 

Well as long as they have guys coming into the industry willing to drive for .22 cpm that will never happen.

 

ain't never gonna happen
The bottom feeders have their hooks in low buck freight
well past ever turning it around towards "driver profit"

The forecast from the "cheap seats" looks pretty grim for those that cant call their on shots.

The worst is yet to hit this industry,E-Logs isn't even the beginning . . . . .