Monday, February 14, 2011

The GPS Bait and Switch: Trucking Gets Tricked

The FMCSA has recently decided to start using GPS reports, such as those provided by Qualcomm, to start validating the accuracy of driver logs. Despite issuing a statement in the late 1990's saying that the FMCSA would never use a trucking company's electronic tracking data against them, that is exactly what the FMCSA is doing in recent audits.  Money must be tight in Washington. Since the introduction of the 14 hour clock and 34 hour restart in the hours of service rules for truck drivers, fleets have been looking for a way to run legally while still turning a profit. Not many fleets have found a way to comply with the HOS laws and still stay in business. For those of you not familiar with the hours of service laws for truck drivers, let me give you an example of how silly they are. Once a truck driver performs ANY work, driving or not, his 14 hour clock starts ticking, and he can not work any more until he has had a 10 consecutive hour break. So check out this scenario that happens every day... A driver is parked at a customer's location, waiting for the customer to open up and unload the goods the driver has brought to them. It's typically around 4 or 5 am when this happens. The customer knocks on the trucker's door and wakes him up, and asks him to back into door #4. Tick tick tick, the clock has begun. It takes 15 minutes to back into the door, open the trailer doors, chock the wheels, and then the driver goes back to sleep. Four hours later, another knock on the door, and the driver is told the customer is done unloading his trailer. The driver calls his company and is told to drive 30 minutes down the road to another company who will load his trailer with another load that delivers tomorrow at 8 AM, 500 miles away. The driver goes to the next location, pulls in and waits to be loaded. An hour later, he is told to back into door #3. Four hours later, another knock, and he's off to the races. Now the driver has done 2 fifteen minute periods of moving his trailer around the customers' facilities, and one half hour of driving, and has slept in his truck for two 4 hour spans while waiting for his trailer to be unloaded and then reloaded again. The truck driver then drives toward his destination, but stops at the truck stop for two hours to refuel, eat, and shower. He now has 3 hours left is his 14 hour clock, and has 500 miles to go. The driver would have to drive 167 miles per hour to make it to the destination within the 14 hour clock. So the driver has had 8 hours of sleep, and is forced to sit for 10 more hours before he can legally drive his truck again, and he is supposed to be 500 miles from where he current;y is. He also gets paid by the mile, and not for sitting in the truck. What would you do?

Most people think they'll just drive until they get tired, which will let them get to their destination on time. And that is what most truckers do...ignore the law, and lie on their logs. Enter GPS. With GPS systems like Qualcomm on board the drivers trucks, the FMCSA audits the trucking companies for the previous six months, and uses the GPS dates and times to verify that when a driver said he was in XXX, he was actually in XXX. So driver's can't lie anymore, and the goods you and I depend on will be there when the government says, not when you and I want them.

Some people say that these rules are necessary to keep the roads safe. This author agrees that some rules are required to keep the roads safe, but that ALL vehicles have the potential to cause injury, not just the ones being driven by PROFESSIONALS.

The truth is, it's not about safety at all! It's about MONEY! A Nebraska based trucking company was recently audited by the FMCSA. Upon completion of the audit, the auditor did not find any fineable violations. The later auditor returned to redo the audit stating that her boss told her that there had to be something they could be fined for. After re-auditing the company and finding several violations that the company could be fined for, the auditor left.

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