Tracking who uses EOBRs

I'm gonna roll my own EOBR, and put it in a discarded Peoplenet or Qualcomm case. Ha HA! In all seriousness this would be absolutely trivial for someone with even a casual hobbyist level of computer hardware and software hackery to accomplish, and could mimic the operation enough to be indistinguishable from the real thing. Of course it may be a moot point if running near any metro area or border area as your every interaction with tolls and/or borders is timestamped.

 

Well, let me share this with you all while you are bringing up government, talking smack about your "freedom", and such. I have written my congressmen several times concerning logbooks, expressing my concern with the issue of tracking citizens movements with no reasonable suspicion. And there has been several attempts at petitions on the matter. I've encouraged fellow truckers to get involved and time and time again I hear resounding no's. I won't write my congressman, I won't sign a petition. So now I am on here trying to tell you how to work within the system that was placed upon you because you failed to exercise your rights within the system freely available to you. You failed to use your representatives and were content to break the laws rather than change them. Go ahead and cry about your constitutional rights, go ahead and complain about EOBR's. Why don't you take five minutes, about the same time it would take you to post a comment here and look up your congressmen's email address and send him a message ? A day late and a dollar short maybe. Your argument is gonna be kind of messed up at this point, complaining you can no longer get away with fudging a log book. But figure out something intelligent to say, or just send a message that you no longer feel tracking the movement of law abiding citizens is right.

Alternatively, just blame Obama and complain on the internet.

 

I am not one that wears aluminum on my head or worry about conspiracy theories all the time but I do feel there is more behind mandating EOBR's than most people wish to discuss. I mean we all know that the Government states that these EOBR's are for safety reasons and to take away the ability to alter like a paper log but the fact is that there are other reasons for these EOBR's that I have seen many post about; tracking the movement of truckers! There is more truth to tracking than it is for safety; just look at the FBI's Highway Serial Killings initiative. The EOBR's are more for tracking than any other issue at hand because the Government can than track where each and every truck was at any given moment for any unsolved crime at any given moment in time. Without EOBR's the Government is at a loss and cannot connect the dots; so essentially they have to have this system in place to make their initiative complete. You can read it here: http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2009/april/highwayserial_040609

 

This came from another TTR member who IS VERY INVOLVED with EOBRs. This proves they are ######## that shouldnt be mandated to have. As of today I think that eLogs are not the answer. Until companies realize that you must hire people with a solid moral compass that are willing to make the correct/tough choices they are flawed. Companies should not be changing drive because the drivers intent was not to violate. That is just a log falsification.

The industry is broken and will not be able to be fixed until companies and drivers are willing to accept that log falsification is wrong. I can understand a violation, however I cannot and will not accept falsification. This industry needs better people as drivers and in the offices. As of today I think that eLogs are not the answer. Until companies realize that you must hire people with a solid moral compass that are willing to make the correct/tough choices they are flawed. Companies should not be changing drive time because the drivers intent was not to violate. That is just a log falsification.

 

Re: Elogs

Originally Posted by volvodriver01
Sorry to hear you had a rough start to your day even though I am glad it was you instead of me. LOL. This is one of my biggest complaints with E-logs. The company can and will change it at any time THEY see fit to do so. You are 100% right, a violation is a violation no matter what the excuse is. No company should be "covering" any violation up. I can change my paper logs just like any company can change an E-log. Whats the difference? Cheating is cheating whether one runs paper or E-logs. So you're the safety guy at your company or just the logbook manager and yet your boss over you forced you to violate or "falsify" an illegal log. Now you see where alot of truckers ######## comes from with these companies. Again sorry you had to feel the brunt of idiocy to start your morning.



I was the eLog manager, then I went to work at home so I'm no longer the manager. The tards in the office got together and removed a drivers violation, well most of it because they aren't smart enough to erase the entire violation, because he his "intent" was to get to a safe haven. I got reprimanded by the safety manager for putting the 18 minutes of violation back on his logs. I like the idea of eLogs, and while I don't agree with the HOS it's what we got. Without good people this system is designed to fail. If I didn't just book and pay for my vacation this summer I would have quit today. So instead they have until July 6th to get their #### together or I'll quit then. ​

 

The fact that an EOBR can be altered negates the argument that EOBR's are safer than paper logs and also strengthens the idea this entire system is more about tracking than any other issue at hand. If they wish to mandate the EOBR's than all control for change in the system has to be taken away which means mistakes have to be left on the system and the government is not mandating that, so hence, they are mandating a system that is flawed. So if the ability to change the logs are still there as they were with paper logs, than what are we left with? The ability to track the driver is all that remains becuase technically it is no different than the paper system except the ability to be creative is out of the drivers hand (unless you are an O/O).

 

I tried that and by my second issue I wrote about it was obvious my representative had staff using form letters to answer letters from constituents . "Thank you for writing me concerning ( fill in the blank ) . I pay attention to the concerns of my constituents and if there is any pending legislation on (fill in the blank ) I will give your concerns consideration .
The only way to get a representative's concern is to include a sizable contribution with the letter .

 

I know I can do all of that, as far as splitting my ten etc... Matter of fact, I had to do that so I made it home by noon the next day and made doctors appointment. But the fact of the matter is, I shouldn't have to. The customer should not be allowed to drag his feet intentionally at no repercussions. There should be consequences to the customer or the shipper for not fulfilling their end of the load properly. If I don't make my delivery time when I'm suppose to, it sure as heck could result in consequences for me. Why should they be any different.

Also, the company drivers who and even a couple of the O/Os who've switched to EOBRs where we are leased on at can not do split breaks. The qualcomm system Dahlsten has does not allow split breaks. They are allowed something like 50 miles of off duty driving a week.

I'm just not cool with having a computer tell me when I can and can't drive. Like yesterday, I ran over to Wichita Kenworth to get a couple of airbags. And hopefully they'd have had time to install them. On EOBRs that the company is using, I'd have had to log that. IMO, that is not right. It's not a company truck and I'm home this weekend. I shouldn't have to log running to Wichita or even down town here in Hutch to wash truck etc...when I'm not hooked up to a trailer doing company business. But with electronic logs I would have to.

I had a guy tell me that the only time you will run out of hours or be up against the 14 hour clock is when you do bad pre trip planning. That's such a load of crap. The people that are not out on the road, dealing with these places we all have to deal with, have no freakin clue what's going on. They read a book or some report made by another pencil pusher and think they have a clue. They have no clue. If they could tell their butthole from a hole in the ground, I'd be surprised.

 

Very true. I've been told by numerous drivers that if they mess up or forget to do something, all they have to do is call the office and they will change things up for them. I guess I was kinda shocked to hear all of that because when they are editing your paper logs, they don't call you and say, "hey, you forgot to check the box on pretrip or you forgot to sign the log" etc...You just get an infraction and letter in the mail. But that's one of the selling points for electronic logs...guaranteed perfect log bonus every month. Just because you are tired and forget to push some buttons shouldn't be allowed deferential treatment over someone who is in the same position but is on paper.

 

My Xata tracking unit is paired to my Blackberry . Last Tuesday night the tracker wasn't pairing right . I tried to log out after doing a posttrip and it told me there was an error and I needed to reboot the phone . I did but lost 21 minutes off duty time . I had gone off duty at %:0% p.m. but it didn't show it when it got back working at 5:26 p.m. .
I saw the consecutive time of go from 9:59 to 10 :00 at 3:26 a.m. , hit on duty , did a pretrip and it showed no driving time available . I noted a log error and e-mailed the office describing the error even though I knew it would be at least 4 hours before anyone read the e-mail . Then I went on to my delivery .
My errors were corrected around 10 a.m. . I just had to log out of the tracker , log back in and it showed me no longer in violation .