Overdrive

February 2018

Overdrive Magazine | Trucking Business News & Owner Operator Info

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Voices 12 | Overdrive | February 2018 Getting past paper logs' phantom limb BY WES MEMPHIS Amputees with phantom limb syndrome still feel pain in their missing limbs. Forgetting their condition, they try to pick things up, even though their arm is no longer there. I can't tell you how many times I reached for that log book in those first months on e-logs, as if prompted by a phantom limb. It was as if the part of you that got to tell your own story was severed forever. There was real pain in that. It was like picking up the phone to call your mom and curs- ing yourself for forgetting she'd passed. For me, e-logs constituted the imposition of a left-brained structure on a largely right-brained population. That is why creative folks hate and fear them the most. There is a learning curve. With paper logs, you rely on trailer numbers, for example, posted on your log sheet, when filling out your trip report. Well, after your first week on ELDs, you realize, damn it, I didn't write those trailers down, and I don't know how to retrieve them in this convoluted system. Meanwhile, dispatch has a learning curve of their own because a few of the trips you've been making for years on paper aren't really doable in real time. They don't know what you actually can do legally; they only know what you can show. What's worse is you've been jumping through so many hoops for so long that you're not even quite sure what you can do in real time. It took about six months to get all that smoothed out. I felt like a rookie all over again. It was like running a new set of super singles for the first time — you're just floating around out there, fighting the wheel. Three pieces of advice: 1) Allow yourself three major meltdowns before being completely broken into e-logs. In hindsight, I should have warned everyone around me this would happen. My third and final episode found me in my boss's office to put in my two weeks' notice. I was completely disarmed when he said, "You're getting ready to quit me, aren't you?" Slowly and skillfully, he talked me off the ledge. 2) Honestly, driver to driver, try to find some kind of outlet that doesn't wind you up in jail. Anything. Walking, cycling, You- tube-ing, blogging. Let's face it: 10 hours will bore you to tears if you don't have anything in your life besides driving a truck. 3) In a rapidly changing world, the ability to unlearn is sometimes just as import- ant as the ability to learn. I had to unlearn that it was all up to me, that I was a "runner," the go-to guy. You will hate me for saying this, but some good will come out of this unlearning for you. I no longer have the truck-wreck dream that has hounded me since 1987. I no longer have to go to the chiropractor. I no longer am dependent on sodas and sugary snacks to get through the run. The hardest part for me is I just can't stop to see extended family along the way anymore, or if I do, it's only for an hour. So I have to plan to make those times happen on my time. Sometimes that works, and sometimes it doesn't. It took me about six months to get past the phantom limb syndrome. Now I wouldn't go back to paper if I could. " It was like picking up the phone to call your mom and cursing yourself for forgetting she'd passed. " – "Wes Memphis," a pseudonym for the former owner-operator-turned-driver who was forced into making the e-logging switch almost two years ago and guest-blogged about the experience on Overdrive's Channel 19. He offered some thoughts (edited here) Dec. 19, the day after ELD-Day 1, for those adjusting to the new logs reality.

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