EOBR

Well the day has finally come, as we all knew it would. The FMCSA has announced plans to release a final rule for requiring the electronic logbooks (EOBR) around June of 2012, and requiring industry wide use by 2015. I used an EOBR while I was employed with Navajo and it didn't really effect my miles or pay much, but it did cause a lot of headaches in conjunction with the 14 hour rule. What that means is once the truck starts if you have not reached your 11 hours driving by the 14th hour you must shut down for a 10 hour break.

This causes problems when you're going to a customer that does not have overnight parking. So if you must park at the nearest truck stop and wait, by the time you're appointment time comes around you're already past your 14 hour limit it's virtually impossible to legally deliver your load on time then. One time I was delivering in Oklahoma City and I ran out of hours on the north side of town by the the Flying J truck stop, I drove an extra 20 minutes to deliver my load, and they still wrote me up. So I'm supposed to shut down and miss my appointment 20 minutes away?

Another problem I had was triggering a violation when I was at a customer in the middle of my break and I would pull up to open the doors and back into the dock. There was supposed to be a 2 mile buffer before the driving time activated, but it wasn't always working the way it was supposed to. The only way to bypass that was to use the off duty driving option so you could back into the dock without breaking up your 10 hour break or getting a driving violation. This presented another problem because some drivers were abusing the off duty driving privilege by using it to drive an extra 200 miles a day illegally. This prompted the company to abolish the off duty driving all together, then they really had problems because nobody could deliver there loads on time, even if they were at the customer they couldn't even back into the dock.

Customers are not very happy when you're there but you can't deliver the load because you cant back into the dock "legally". So this prompted the company to reinstate the off duty driving option at 30 minutes a day limit. The whole 14 hour rule is just a major tangle in the system, it's a just plain stupid idea. With everyone running EOBR then it will be assured the truck will be shut down for the proper rest time, and only the truck. There is no way to force a driver to get rest of course. Regardless of whether the truck is stopped or not, it doesn't address the issue of driver fatigue if the drivers not utilizing the time properly to get their rest. So in my opinion if they would just abolish the 14 hour rule the EOBR would work much more efficiently.

EOBR will not increase safety at all in conjunction with the 14 hour rule, drivers are then forced to drive faster because every minute counts, and if you get tired you cant pull over and take a short nap because you'll lose driving time when you're running against the clock. The truth is everyone needs a nap once in awhile, regardless of if they've taken their proper rest period the night before or not. The truth of the matter is it increases fatigued drivers rather than preventing them. The rules as they are now simply can't be followed to the letter of the law with an EOBR, it just doesn't work.

The good thing is, once everybody is forced to run 100% legal than shippers and receivers will be forced to change their ways because if they go holding drivers up for 4 or 5 hours then they'll find out quickly their freight is not going to get delivered on time. We shall see what the new proposal will hold this time from the FMCSA, I just wish someone would wise up and realize the 14 hour rule plays no role in making anything safer and only hinders our ability to do our jobs.