The government & FMCSA are so busy regulating the DRIVER, that they are going to put us out of business at this rate!

Being a Owner-Operator I know trucking is NO 9 to 5 job! We have to be flexible in so many ways the average person could not believe. This is no dreamy job, no great adventure. We work long hours, do hard outdoor labor ( I run a Step Deck trailer) in every kind of weather, we have loads of paperwork to keep up to date. We also need to eat, sleep, shower, house keep, maintain our equipment, & relax, for we have a high stress job.

So you ask what can the FMCSA do for the Trucker? Well here are a few areas that the FMCSA, the government & states need to do some changing!

#1. We need safe places to park for our down time & rest periods!
People sure want their products BUT 85% of them DO NOT want the trucks in their communities. We are human being! When its 85* outside in the sun its 110* to 125* inside our trucks, there are times we need to idle! I am all for the end of unnecessary idling! Not only is it a waste of fuel & money, its just not smart! The solution is a APU unit, well have you ever parked next to one with your windows open?? They are vented to the passenger side of trucks, so the exhaust comes right into the truck next to them. Its really not easy to sleep with APU exhaust pouring into your truck. It brings fatigue to a whole new level.

#2. We need quit being a major source of revenue!
The laws & rules we have to abide by are left to interpretation. That means there is very little consistency in how & when they are applied. They need defined nation wide so everyone enforces the SAME Rules.

#3. There needs to be rules for detention time on the books!
No matter what kind of freight you move there is alot of sitting time both at the shipper & receiver that is basically unpaid time. Now you tell me your time is free?? If your at work you expect to be paid right? We rarely get paid for our detention time. It also can greatly eat into our available time for working.
Thus making it so we have to break the rules to get the freight where it needs to be, and pushing a 14 hr day is tough!

#4. Transparency of the shipping contract!
1. from point of shipment to the
2.carrier/driver to the
3.receiver/customer paying the freight bill
This would do a great deal to balance out the pieces of the pie. I know it would cut the costs of moving freight, and in due cut the cost of goods to the consumer! While the FMCSA is so busy regulating the driver of the truck they do nothing to support the drivers on a whole. Here’s a example: Say a shipper ( Caterpillar for example) has a order of 50 bobcats, he calls a Broker, the says ok I can move these 10 loads for $3.50 a mile including the fuel surcharge. Now these loads start in NC, they are all going to the state of TX., but various destination city’s in the state of TX. Now that Broker puts those loads out there on a load board ( ITS, GetLoaded, LoadMax, ect.) He posts these loads for say $1.75/ml. now out of the 10 trucks he hires or books these loads for @ $1.75/ml he is making as much as the trucks moving the freight ($3.50-$1.75= $3.50). Now I don’t know about you but I have yet to see a brokers office that meets or exceeds the overhead cost of operating a Tractor Trailer! We not only pay a outrageous cost on fuel ( on a average a Tractor Trailer gets @ 5.5 to 6. miles per gallon of diesel @ a cost of $4.20/gallon that is $.75 to $.82 per mile just in fuel costs) , highway tax, road use tax, repairs, leasing of/payment of our equipment, normal repairs, both Cargo & Truck/Trailer insurance ect. On a whole a driver that owns all his equipment, needs a average of $2.00 to $2.10/ mile to pay all costs, and have a paycheck for securing these loads, driving them to the destination in a timely manner , All the while living on the road, eating truckstop or fast food, being away from home and family!

Again, I have no personal experience using an EOBR since I am not a truck driver. Anecdotally, I can say that the majority of HOS violations are not due to driving more than ten or eleven hours per day. Rather, the HOS violations I have been able to observe have related to time a truck spends sitting while waiting to load or unload. This is not something EOBRs can effect any change in, since, again, they cannot tell what a driver is doing when the truck is not moving.
Another bigh cause of logbook falsification is to allow a driver a break that would not be doable under the regulations while still allowing the driver to meet any deadlines.

EOBRs would be effective against this type of falsification. However, I’m pretty sure I would rather they weren’t. If a driver is feeling ill, wants to avoid the stress of rush-hour traffic, or simply has an off day and needs a rest break, the EOBR will be there telling them that they’d better keep moving if they want to meet their appointment time.

I’ll take the driver who chooses to take the break and fudge the book anyday over a driver with the same deadline pushing through while remaining perfectly compliant.

Again, I cannot stress enough that the FMCSA cannot have it both ways. The reasoning behind revisiting the HOS yet again is that they cannot be conclusively proven to increase highway safety. Therefore, increasing compliance with those HOS CANNOT be for the purpose of improving safety.

Even if they could conclusively prove a correlation, fatigue-related truck accidents make up only a small percentage of truck-involved accidents. Nothing about a sweeping mandate of EOBR technology makes any sense.

You ask people to provide hard data to back up their opinions on EOBRs. That’s brilliant because when this is all said and done, the FMCSA will be able to say that no one could provide such data. Of course they can’t! They’re truck drivers not statisticians.

They know that EOBRs will affect their livelihoods negatively, but cannot show you in your “hard data” terms why that is. All they can do is tell you, and keep telling you, that they don’t want the darned things in their trucks. Part of that is because the results may not be measurable in dollars and cents, or even in safety statistics. Rather, the effect of EOBRs and other “safety” regulations can be measured mainly by the quality of life of the driver who has already seen their standard of living and their quality of life decline significantly over the last few decades.

EOBRs are intended only to increase compliance with HOS. Yet, in the proposed rulemaking and cost/benefit study for the HOS the FMCSA itself admits the Hours of Service cannot be considered the cause for the recent decline in truck-involved fatalities and injuries. The FMCSA also admits that it cannot reliably measure the impact of HOS regulations or compliance on highway safety.

The conversation should go no further. If we don’t know that the HOS save lives, then we CANNOT know whether or not increasing compliance with them will. As soon as we reach this realization, the idea of tracking the movements of every truck driver in the country should be taken off the table.

Me personally…I drive for my allotted time…11 hours…rest the correct amount of hours…then `run the next day for 11…

I need to or want to run for anymore crazy hours..