EOBRs Fail to Address Most Pressing Truck Safety Issues

New York, NY

EOBRs do not and will never solve the two most pressing Hours Of Service safety concerns:

1. The unknowable, unpredictable and unreasonable detention time at Shippers and Consignees

2. The rapid disappearance of safe parking areas with facilities that enable drivers to comply with the federally-mandated 10-hour rest period.
Examples of NO Parking signs found across the country. Electronic On-Board Recorders, EOBRs will do nothing to solve one of the biggest issues in complying with Hours of Service rules, parking. Big truck parking is rapidly disappearing, making it increasingly difficult for drivers to adhere to the federally-mandated ten-hour rest break for drivers.
The Electronic OnBoard Recorder, EOBR, or black box, is substandard technology that leads to driver harassment. Relentlessly and at great expense, the large motor carriers have promoted inclusion of EOBRs in the Senate Highways Bill. Members of the American Trucking Association and technology companies such as Qualcomm stand to reap huge profits by having EOBRs mandated. This is corporate-mandated regulation, the costs of which will ultimately be paid by drivers and the public.  

The motor carriers see EOBRs as a fleet management tool to control drivers' Hours of Service. It even gives the less scrupulous among them the ability to “edit” drivers’ logs.

The makers of EOBRs are simply salivating at the prospect of charging weekly rates for federally-mandated equipment. This windfall will be carried on the backs of small operators such as ourselves -- independent owner-operators. While large carriers can negotiate better rates, the small businesses of the trucking arena will become financial hostages. Not only does this threaten our very ability to remain viable, it has much broader repercussions for the industry’s safety performance.

Indeed, there is a need to track truck movements and ensure drivers remain safe under...

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How A Consumer Transaction Goes Bad, Real Bad

Portland, Oregon

This is a cautionary tale. A reminder that details count. That a consumer transaction is not over until it’s over because Life With No Fixed Address’s worst nightmare came true. Another bill, a PAID bill, fell into collection.

My nostrils flared with anger -- ask MacGyver -- as I read the email from our friend, who checked our snail mail in Florida.

Paid receipt from Mercy Medical in Canton, Ohio mocked me as completed consumer transaction spiraled out of control threatening my credit score -- again!She had a letter from a Columbus, Ohio debt collection agency, PCB, that claimed that I owed Mercy Medical Center in Canton, Ohio $176 for treatment received May 23, 2011.

How could this be?  Yes, it’s true. I was treated there for a suspected minor infection on May 23. One of the Arts of Vagabondry is that we do not leave bills behind.

Prescription in hand, I flipped out my Platinum American Express card  (I tell you this for a reason, which I’ll explain in a minute, because it becomes an integral player) on that May Monday last year and paid immediately. I was rewarded with a $35.80 “prompt payment discount.” The following month I paid the AMEX bill in full including the Mercy Medical charge for $140.20. Case closed.

Until July. That’s when the first bill arrived informing me that my account was overdue and I owed $176. This incident is not a simple billing mistake, this incident has financial consequences. A hit on a credit score -- even a blemish does not disappear quickly....

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Win a FREE Trucker's Essential

Rhinelander, Wisconsin

Win a hand-distressed, dog-eared, much-thumbed, always-dependable trucker’s atlas by answering a trucker riddle.

Hand-distressed trucker's atlas has been a constant companion aboard Black Beauty for some 300,000 miles in the Lower 48 and Canada

This 2011 Motor Carrier Road Atlas by Rand McNally, known by drivers as the trucker's atlas -- in use since mid-2010 because everything to do with wheels seems to be available a year earlier -- says adventurer. Proof that you have a few blocks under your belt.

It is split in two pieces, chicly divided at the Manhattan city detail map. One section is Alabama to New York, the remainder is New York to Wyoming PLUS the Canadian provinces and Mexico.

The cover, although detached, has been preserved and will be included. The page with the state-by-state fuel tax listings is missing, torn out and donated to a Canadian husband/wife team trying to get the best deal on fuel in the U.S.

This is a typical problem for commercial drivers in the...

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Spring Cuts Swath Through North America

Memphis, Texas

It’s Spring on US 287, a well-worn, asphalt trail cutting through the Texas Plains between Dallas, through Wichita Falls, Amarillo and Dumas, Texas, and Denver, Colorado.  Spring's rainstorms a confirmation of life in the barren stretch.

Heading east on US 287 towards Memphis, TX a Spring rainstorm rolls through bringing green grass to life.
Black, white and brown cows roam the emerald green grass fields dotted with purple, Texas Bluebells, colors more associated with the Pacific Northwest’s rain forests than sandy, rocky Texas with its parched river beds. Jamming their heads between the barbed wire for a good scratch in the warm sunshine as they hover, protectively over giant cow piles, calves, dropped only hours before.

The remnants of an Old West are on display....

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Potatoes, Metaphor for Unpaid Work

Albuquerque, New Mexico

The potatoes tumbled from the trailer onto a conveyor belt fitted with small trays. The question on my mind: How much of my time was I donating to this multi-national food maker?

Driving over-the-road has given us a peek behind America’s industrial curtain. To see how and where products that we take for granted, like potato chips, are made, and how much it costs a truck driver in unpaid work.

The trailer is backed onto the potato chippers' platform, the tractor is unhooked and the trailer is raised so that 22 tons of potatoes will roll out in a controlled unload directly onto a conveyor belt, while the driver sits, unpaid.

Studies by the Owner Operator Independent Drivers Association (OOIDA) shows that truckers donate 30 to 40 hours of their time a week to functions related to their jobs, things they have to do in order to remain employed, or in business and to keep themselves legal, none of which they are paid for.

In trucking there is so-called unpaid work, which is included in the rate per mile the drivers receive, and there is the real unpaid work caused the shipper, receiver, agent or customs broker, created by passing their costs onto the trucker by design or sloppiness, which saves them money.

Included in the rate-per-mile-for-unpaid-work is the pre-trip inspection, required by law, fueling, weather and traffic delays. Not included, and the most egregious abuse....

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