What is ELD pupose?

Some of us are exempt woo woo!

 

It won't fix the Hours Of Service rules that are in need of some TLC and common sense. Elogs are not the issue, HOS is...

But then this has been said hundreds of times leading up to this day coming. So if your really not trolling and want to know an answer, use the search bar and get a cup of coffee.... your gonna be a while during your reading.

 

I woke up early this morning with a headache. I took some Advil pills and will type this to relax and perhaps feel sleepy again after I finish and go back to bed.
I'll give what I think is the main purpose.
The ELD purpose is to allow Mega Carriers to create better business conditions for themselves. I started my trucking life with Werner in February 2002 which lasted only until June the same year ( I did not get my CDL with them, I did not have any commitments). I went to work , with my 4 months of experience at the time, for a company that run on paper logs and instead of clearing 450 a week, I could clear 1100. I more than doubled that. I did not care I was on 1099, I did not have 401ks, health coverage, dental... whatever benefits, they did not matter when they paid you so little. It was possible because of paper logs. I was young and capable to run 1000 miles a day, up to 85 mph (If I dared), without loosing my breath and it was easy to paper log it too. As a matter of fact, 800 miles a day going West I considered a minimum distance, anything less I saw as sheer laziness. I was one of a million or more. To work for a Mega carrier more than a year, I always considered as an act of ineptitude and lack of ability to progress and search for something better in life. I scorn at Mega carriers as places where only the weak and the timid stay for much longer. I was not the only one thinking like that, which their driver turnover proves it. If there were no paper logs in place back then, it would not be so much incentive to leave Werner....I could not run 800-1000 miles a day.
Another purpose is to decrease the capacity for smaller o/os. For example, if a paper log owner/op was able to do 5 moves a week, now they will be able to do only 3 or 4. Megas hope that they might grab more freight and with their logistical infrastructure and millions of trailers, ability to swap, relay, dropandhook, they can hope to fill in. I hope they are all wrong about the outcome and that their ELDs agenda will backfire.

 

Why do people think the mega carriers don't driver running lots of miles ? That how they make money. I worked for a mega carrier, who do you think told me how to run the truck? They did, they show every driver how to trip plan ! They tell you how to figure out how far you can go without fueling because you don't want to run out of fuel ! If you reverse trip planning you can figure all kinds of stuff.

I was working for mega carrier when the D.O.T told them they had to start matching logs to fuel receipts. They had to be within the same day. The mega carrier did not like that. Today fueling has to within 15 minutes.

The reason for ELDs is because the government knows what the mega carriers we're doing. They just had no way to prove it. When Comdata started to put the dates on fuel receipts. That how the mega carrier got in trouble. Because now their was proof of the day a driver fueled. So we had to log it and have the correct day.

Then they started to time stamp the fuel receipts. Guess what happened. That's when the times had to match log book.


It's all the government. The mega carriers could care less about smaller trucking company or some 100 truck operation

 

This is a means by which large corporations influence government regulation (via paid lobbying) to raise the barrier to entry (costs) in an industry to eliminate competition.
It is not unique to trucking. Nor is the sirens call that it is for improving safety.
https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/bitstream/1807/68573/1/Barter_Hillary_C_201411_MA_thesis.pdf
The above link is a thesis about the same sort of pressure that is being brought to bear on Ontario’s farmers, small meat producers, Abattoirs. To force them out of the business and deal only with large meat processing plants.
It’s called “Crony Capitalism”, definitely not free market.

 

The purpose of the eLog mandate is to get the tired paper drivers off road [running with non-existent co drivers, multiple books, basic fudging, etc] and replacing them with tired drivers who can't sleep on busy on ramps, and who are now forced to race against three clocks that don't allow cheating.

 

It was at the mega carrier that told me how the local drivers did not log fueling because they would fuel at the company terminal and it did not go thru Comdata. They have their own fuel tanks and fuel all truck when they come to the yard.

The company truck could go 800 miles without fueling. So if you fuel 800 miles from the terminal you could make it make it to the terminal. They like that because they was their cheapest fuel so they always wanted us to go into terminal low on fuel. So they can fill up and get the best money saving. Then they would fuel the truck for you at terminal out of there own fuel tanks. You could drop and hook trailers. So now you have a different trailer and another driver signed the bills for. You might be able to drive 800 miles back to the same place you last fueled. That would mean you have 1,600 miles that nobody could tell what happened.

That would not be wrong and we have ELDs today for HOS compliance, back before all the computers and stuff it was hard to tell what driver were really doing. Drivers would go to sleep driving and people could not understand why it was happening. His log book was legal so what going on ? Maybe that paper log book was missing some information. Back in the day.

 

My opinion? It is a public safety perception issue, nothing more. The mega fleets adopted electronic logs because managing paper was a nightmare for them. They have ways of making the operation work, drop and hook, etc.

Look at how we are paid; by the mile. What does this mean? The faster we drive, and the more hours we are on the road driving, means a bigger paycheck. The American public considers us a danger on the roads as it is. There are already rules on how many hours a passenger train engineer can work, same for airline pilots. Neither industry allows them to log their own hours on the honor system. Then look at how we have been allowed to log our own hours. Virtually ALL of us on paper fudge our hours from time to time, that is a fact. Do we feel that makes us unsafe? Of course not. But the American people who know this is happening don't like it. There has been pressure for many years to rectify this. This process has taken over 10 years to come into effect.

The guys that think that buying old iron is going to save them are highly delusional. Roadside inspection for you will become a nightmare.

 

But let's also keep in mind this is also the start of the 2-3 week period a lot of drivers of all stripes park and take time off at home. Many truck stops near larger population centers are full of dropped trailers and long-term parked trucks. But I am noticing truck stops in remote areas across I-40 in the west seem to be more packed starting earlier in the afternoons, and remain that way until well past sunrise.