Overdrive Magazine | Trucking Business News & Owner Operator Info
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/778830
February 2017 | Overdrive | 35 have on the bottom line. He'd like to see more flexibility in the hours regulations around the 14-hour daily on-duty maximum, "if you could stop the 14-hour other than taking an 8-and-2 split." As with many owner- operators, he looks back with favor on the days of 10 on, eight off. In reefer, getting loaded and unloaded is still a major problem, he says, as is "trying to get people to agree to deten- tion terms." Not that a little additional revenue itself is so valuable, but rather detention pay "should be used as a tool to avoid being detained. It doesn't do me any good to be sitting there." Though e-logs enable Muhammad and other similarly equipped owner- operators to prove to shippers, receivers and brokers how long they've been at a facility, he's not getting "a lot of mercy" out of them. "By going to these e-logs, we can prove that we were there," but with so many operators still not using e-logs, inefficient shippers and receivers aren't feeling across-the-board pressure to improve. Truckers keep "giving away so much free labor," he says. "Most guys still operate on the mentality of 'I've got to get the load there, at whatever costs.' That mentality has been exploited on the other end. Brokers and shippers know that drivers have been able to cover up a lot of their mishaps." Now, even as more large carriers and some small operations shift to e-logs, "truckers are still coming out on the short end of the stick," says Muhammad, citing a recent situation where he was delayed 11 hours at a cold storage facility, throwing off his subse- quent commitments. Undue detention can "kill all oppor- tunities to make a reload. … That's when you run into the whole quagmire" — damned if you do and damned if you don't: Book a load when you can't get to it in time because you're "still not unloaded, and you're looking like an idiot," Muhammad says. "It hurts you as a businessperson." Don't book a load, and you can ensure you're sitting empty through yet another long off-duty period, with little productivity to show for the day. E-log sticker merits easy time at weigh station K&L Towing owner-operator Buster Lewis got his start in trucking in 1999. He was a tow operator, hauling cars locally and other freight farther with a straight truck rollback flatbed, today in a similarly equipped 2006 Freightliner Business Class. On one of those early longer runs, a Georgia state trooper gave Lewis what amounted to an education in hours of service regulations. With his truck tagged at under 26,000 pounds, he didn't need a CDL but, as he recalls, "didn't realize I had to keep logs." That changed when a trooper at an Atlanta weigh station explained that when Lewis was out of the short-haul air- mile radius, he needed a log book just like every other commercial freight hauler. Do you use any form of an electronic log? No 82% Yes, a smartphone app or laptop program, not connected to engine 7% Yes, a fully engine- connected logging platform 11% Among the leased one-truck owner-operators and multiple-truck small fleets responding to Overdrive's 2016 operational survey, about a third reported engine-connected e-log use. Only 3 and 4 percent, respectively, of non- leased one-truck independents and small fleets reported using engine-connected e-logs. Overdrive 2016 operational survey Owner-operator Rico Muhammad makes an important point about engine-connected e-log use for owner-operators hoping to maximize on-duty/drive time. "Get on top of making sure that everything is logged properly" the first time, he says. Depending on your device and software, making edits on the fly may be cumber- some. All edits are recorded in the devices' records, making it important that you use the "notes" sections to explain why the edit was made, as Muhammad points out. "Once you're in that driving mode," things get more complicated. To change any drive time, "you can't do it in the user interface in the truck. You have to log in to the ad- ministration portion" via your web-based portal to stored records. As per the ELD final rule, the driver then has to "approve the modification that was made," Muhammad says, noting that as an independent, he's doing each on either end himself. He might let a minor error – say, remaining on-duty not driving longer than he really was at this or that stop, or logging off-duty when he was in the sleeper – stand in order to preserve a clean log. He assumes lots of annotations and changes could invite closer scrutiny by inspectors, and so far – knock on wood, Muhammad says – that hasn't happened. "I've gotten inspected with it a couple of times. Usually when they see that it's wired [to the engine], they don't do a real comprehensive analysis of it" – unlike his experience running paper logs, thus saving some time at the scale house. "They pretty much just say, 'Let me see the summary page,' " showing his status relative to the 14-hour on-duty maximum, the 11 hours of maximum daily drive time and his cumulative hours limit of 70 hours in eight days. When he had the BigRoad logging app on his phone, not connected to the engine's electronic control module, inspectors "scru- tinized those logs a little heavier," he says. E-LOG EDITS AND THE ENFORCEMENT ENVIRONMENT