Overdrive Magazine | Trucking Business News & Owner Operator Info
Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/709236
Voices channel 19 6 | Overdrive | August 2016 Visit Senior Editor Todd Dills' CHANNEL 19 BLOG at OverdriveOnline.com/channel19 Write him at tdills@randallreilly.com. After the final piece of his multi-part nar- rative of the first couple of months follow- ing his fleet's transition to e-logs, a couple of questions came in to Wes Memphis, a pen name for a driver at an unnamed fleet. In this epilogue to his guest dispatches to the Channel 19 blog, Memphis answers a couple of them. The first questioner asked about the Android tablet that Memphis' fleet issued for interfacing with the electronic logging program: " What if your tablet stopped responding? " — Kenneth B WM: By law, we are required to carry an extra paper log book in case that happens. It would be a real pain reconstructing the previous eight days so you could present a legal book and the freight could be delivered, but you wouldn't be dead in the water. Ponway65, an owner- operator mandated by his company to begin e-logs in two weeks, contemplates that this must be what it felt like to the " cowboys when the fences went up " and asks: " What was the hardest thing to deal with " in the transition? WM: That's a great analogy be- cause e-logs are just that – a digital boundary that restricts freedom of movement. I have discovered, to my surprise, however, that there is more flexibility to e-logs than I originally would have thought. The eight-two split will become your new best friend, especially if you run regional routes. Your device will keep track of how long you can go before taking your two-hour break once you get rolling, so there's some dum- my-proofing built in to that. For the life of me, I never fully understood how to pull off an eight-two split without being in violation until I got on e-logs, and now I just log in and ride until my clock tells me I have to stop and take a break. Also, at my carrier, we are allowed geofences — grace areas within specific locations where you are allowed to move without kicking yourself back onto the drive line. For example, you may drive two miles within the campus of certain mega-warehous- es. ... As long as you're within the geofence, you're fine. As to the hardest thing to deal with, I suppose it would be how the technology has forced the changing of the guard within the manage- ment structure of our company. I've always seemed to be most at home working for people who were capable of running the very load they were asking me to haul — you know, the good ol' boys. So when the nice young man tasked with administering the e-log program pulled in the gravel terminal lot with his SmartCar and Coexist bumper sticker, I intuited he had never found himself on the cruel backside of the Bronx, defecating into a "Thank You" bag. I suppose, conversely, to him I was a knuckle-dragging Neanderthal, with my pearl-snap Western shirt, belly and boots. … Turns out he's been a great guy to work with, which has made all the difference. Which brings me back to where we started seven in- stallments ago. If you are working for decent people who allow you enough time to haul your freight, this isn't that bad. In fact, at the risk of throwing all my outlaw creds out the window, after taking into consideration the raise [that came along with e-logs], the in- crease in speed, the lowering of my blood pressure, the weight loss … I don't think I would go back to paper if I could. E-log transition: Over and out We will figure out a way to survive this, because that's just what we do. Like we survived the CDL, the TWIC Card, the emissions-compliant motors, the hazmat fingerprinting, the demise of the old- school truck stop, the erosion of civility, the death of Claude Akins and, most egregious of all, the elimination of the Robert E. Lee CB Radio. — Wes Memphis, from his final installment chronicling his e-log transition on Channel 19. Find all of them via OverdriveOnline.com/ tag/Wes-Memphis