Overdrive Magazine | Trucking Business News & Owner Operator Info
Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/933951
February 2018 | Overdrive | 27 with the new reality. In the mandate's first weeks, the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association heard of similar occurrences, says association representative Norita Taylor. Rules are rules, says Collin Mooney, executive director of the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance. Regarding the wiggle room for hours that drivers had enjoyed with paper logs, there is no tweaking of the mandate in the cards that would restore that unofficial flex- ibility, he says. "The ELD rule is highlighting those hours of service rules," Mooney says. "Drivers and companies have been able to stretch them" on paper in some cases. "ELDs take away that whole practice. That's where people have the angst" they're experiencing, he believes. "It does require a little bit more plan- ning" in terms of parking preparation and load and unload timing. "The rule is intended to level the playing field between those who operate within the rules and those who have been extend- ing the rules." Yet what advice the federal govern- ment and some state officials have given for circumstances such as those in Santoianni's anecdote – log it like it hap- pened, annotate the log to describe the circumstances, and hope for leniency if it's questioned – is inadequate to address drivers' appropriate concerns. Hours- compliance records, as Santoianni and others have pointed out, now are more dependent on the whims of shippers and receivers, port/railyard operators, parking availability, the understanding – or not so understanding – nature of individual inspectors and so much more. While the anti-coercion rule gives drivers an avenue to blow the whistle on ship- pers, brokers and carriers who threaten economic harm for drivers' refusal to violate a regulation, otherwise nothing has changed about hours of service. Minnesota is among many states leaving it up to the officer's discretion whether to write a ticket for not having an ELD in a truck covered under the mandate. "We all realize this is a monu- mental change for the CMV industry and that people have waited until the last minute in hopes that something would have changed," says Capt. Jon Olsen. "Given that, I don't anticipate you will see inspectors from Minnesota scratching out criminal citations to drivers for failing to comply with the ELD mandate. Conversely, if a driver is stopped in February or March and has no ELD as required, has some falsifica- tion issues, etc., I can certainly see and support one of our inspectors giving a criminal citation to the driver for failing to comply with the ELD requirement." Georgia State Police Capt. Jeremy Vickery says his state is among those that will not be issuing citations for ELD noncompliance in the early going — prior to the April 1 date when it becomes an out-of-service violation. That's also when points for such viola- tions begin contributing to carriers' Compliance, Safety, Accountability scores in the hours category. Kansas also is among such states. Capt. Chris Turner of the state Highway Patrol says the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration didn't put out the violation code for ELD-related violations in the central enforcement system until a week ahead of the com- pliance date. "We won't even really be writing the warning" or documenting the violation in inspection reports "until a few weeks from now," he says. "There's going to be a learning curve, and I think most states are trying to err on the side of caution." Even with Georgia's planned leni- ency in the early months of the man- date, Vickery also expresses a view that concerns all drivers, as illustrated by the driver that Santoianni overhead in Minnesota: "If there is an hours of service violation, our officers will take appropriate enforcement action." The hours of service remain what they are, and the situation in Santoianni's anecdote is something every driver pondering a switch to e-logs has worried about — the inability to find a suitable parking space or other unfore- seen circumstance forcing a violation to be recorded by the e-log, something then to be cherry-picked down the line by an officer. Santoianni elaborated on the over- heard driver's situation. Though he can't swear it, he suspects the driver walked out of the exchange with a ticket. "His ELD was in order, but it was a heated conversation" over the hours violation, Santoianni says. "And it seemed like it happened a couple days back." He again paraphrases the driver: "I went through three truck stops, and there was no park- Todd Dills Trucking is still far from paperless, but log paperwork now takes a back seat to the reading on your ELD.