Overdrive Magazine | Trucking Business News & Owner Operator Info
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/845079
PULSE July 2017 | Overdrive | 5 the rule change early in the last decade that installed the 14-hour clock and limited split sleeper-berth periods, regulators "caused drivers to drive tired," Benton said. "You could no longer take a 4-hour nap … with- out it affecting the amount of time you had to make pickups/deliveries." Voices against the man- date loomed large. Via OverdriveOnline.com: David Harrison: Nobody deliver any toilet paper for about three weeks, then let's see if it still stands. Steve Brandon: If the government is going to mandate ELDs and [faulty] hours of service, then the government should also mandate that shippers and receivers load and unload their own freight in a timely manner or pay mandatory detention time of $50 an hour per driver after the first hour of waiting, all of that money going to the driver. Sam McClain: I pull con- tainer out of Kansas City. I own my truck. Before, running paper logs, I was making $2,500 to $3,000 a week, easy. Then the company went to ELDs — my paychecks went down to $1,000 to $1,500. I pay $500 a week on the truck payment and pay for my own fuel. It's hard to make truck payments and fuel and truck repairs and support my family of six on that. And not only did it affect my money, I was more tired on e-logs than I ever was on paper logs. One thing that's struck me about all the complaining over electronic logging devices is that it's partially misdirected. As an unnamed online commenter says on the opposite page about the Supreme Court's refusal to hear the ELD lawsuit, "Let's work on getting the 14- hour clock to stop — the real problem." ELDs are just tools, fancy amalgams of clock and GPS. The root problem, indeed, is the hours of service rule. Or put more broadly, it's regulators' presumption that any set of work and rest rules, whether simple or complex, can do much to eliminate fatigue without requiring absurd amounts of downtime. Anytime I've ridden with a trucker, it's been obvious that the hours regs were written for trucking in a galaxy far, far away. They seem to assume a world with no weather problems, no highway accidents, no road construction. They seem to assume all shippers and receiv- ers operate at high levels of efficiency, eager to speed you along your way. They seem to assume drivers are robots with the same sleep needs and habits, regardless of age, health and schedule. Even the most conscientious drivers have found ways to round the rough edges of the hours system to make it tolerable on a good day, without jeopardizing safety. Then along comes a technology that says hey, buddy, no more of that. You must embrace the literal HOS regs, even if it means driving while fatigued and resting when you're alert. So are there better approaches? Various ideas have been floated: • The most achievable, albeit modest, change would be a tweak of the current rule: broadening the split-sleeper provision. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is preparing to test fatigue levels when drivers are able to choose sleeper berth hours other than the 8-2 split, such as 5-5, 6-4 and 7-3. • Build on that move toward greater flexibility and authority to determine your schedule, and you get the graduated CDL idea. The current rule could re- main, but as drivers accumulate experience and maintain a cer- tain level of safety, they would be granted more freedom to set their own hours. • Recent advances in technol- ogy suggest a radical possibility: real-time fatigue assessment. Using driver-facing cameras or biomonitoring, the need to rest or the clearance to drive long hours could be determined on a current, individual basis instead of lame assumptions from a broad template. While the split-sleeper change would be fairly simple, there are many complications with the other approaches, too many to detail here. But now that it appears the ELD mandate is about to ampli- fy the shortcomings of the HOS rule, it's time indeed to address the real problem, not its surrogate. 'The real problem' mheine@randallreilly.com By Max Heine Editorial director It appears that the ELD mandate is about to amplify the shortcom- ings of the hours of service rule.