ELDs could cause driver shortages
Devices that will become mandatory take away the option of using common sense
In the not too distant future, I might be tempted to say, “I told you so.” For the time being I’ll just hold my tongue and play the waiting game.
It’s all about the advent of Electronic Logging Devices (ELDs), and as I told you last week they came into use in the U.S. last December, and will be legislated into use in our country in 2020. In the meantime, I expect the always-present driver shortage to continue to grow.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think the expected driver shortage will grow because of the forced use of ELD, but instead drivers will leave because they have had enough and can’t take being told how to do their job anymore. We drivers have been legislated and dictated to a level that most will not tolerate much longer.
Electronic Logging Devices will be, if not already are, the tipping point in our profession. I think I too will be walking away when ELDs become law in this country.
Back when I was doing long haul, and even when I was just running the I-5 corridor between Vancouver and Portland, I could pretty well judge how long it would take me to drive from one point to another. I was in my zone in the dead of night. I missed traffic, and always wanted to arrive at the first customer in time to have a snooze and be fresh for the day. Never slept well at truck stops. Just too much going on to assure me of needed sleep.
And if I ran into trouble on the route, I didn’t mind driving that extra 30 minutes to get to the customer, and you’d never know I was over my allowed time when checking out my log book. As the driver, I had the option to do my job as I thought best and safest to do. The ELD takes that option away from the driver.
In other words I always used my common sense and made a value judgment call based on the facts at my disposal. That usually meant what was outside my windshield, times the distance needed to travel plus the current weather and highway conditions. Common sense was expected of drivers, and by the company they worked for. Now, with the ELD, common sense is criminalized. To my way of thinking, based on years of highway experience and knowing what my body is capable of, just like all drivers, the motoring public will be sharing the road with drivers of big rigs who are tired, mad, upset, frustrated and at the breaking point because they have been pushed too far by some suit who doesn’t know a slack adjuster from a load lock. Not a happy thought is it?
Another topic that gets my dandruff up is the recent call, from within my industry, for a special award for dispatchers. I’m really at a cross roads with that one.
A dispatcher’s job is no-win. He/ she will never be able to please everyone all the time. The driver wants to be home for his wife’s birthday; the shipper has a rush load; and the maintenance people say the trailer is in urgent need of an inspection and service. The dispatcher has to sort through all those demands and still get the load from point A to B in the quickest possible time for the most amount of money for the company, and maybe a decent backhaul trip for the driver.
Not a fun task, and so I think to be a great dispatcher one needs to be a super great liar. It’s the only way a dispatcher can survive. Dealing with as many dispatchers as I have over my many decades of driving, I have become an expert in detecting a lie even before the sentence has been completed.
Maybe that award should come about. Let’s call it the “Liar of the Year” award. Has a ring of truth to it doesn’t it? Maybe too, the physical award could be a battery-operated sculpture of a pair of lips.
Hey, as always, one trucker’s opinion …