Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety « Road Scholar Transportation

Posts Tagged ‘Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety’

President Signs Highway Bill Part 4: Should EOBRs Become Mandatory on Trucks?

Wednesday, July 18th, 2012

(This is the final of four articles regarding the effects of the passage of the highway bill)

As you already know, the recent passage of the highway bill has come with many changes that clearly impact all members of the trucking industry. These include a field study that would look into the effectiveness of the 34-hour restart provision, the creation of a federal drug and alcohol clearinghouse, and requiring the mandatory usage of electronic onboard recording devices (EOBRs) on all trucks.

As groups, including the American Trucking Associations, Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, and Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance state, EOBRs would be beneficial to the trucking industry and all those on the road, leading to greater safety through HOS compliance, saving time by ridding of paper logs, result in better accuracy, and help fight detention by providing proof of times spent at docks.

At the same time, groups such as the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association note that driver harassment, pressure to meet their quota/driving tired and thus enforcing safety hazards, as well as cost remain large issues.

But the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) recently explained that EOBR implementation costs are not as expensive as estimated a year ago.

In a FAQ section, added to the agency’s website last week, the FMCSA acknowledged that they are “currently preparing a supplemental NPRM that will re-examine the estimated costs and benefits (both paperwork savings and safety) associated with an EOBR mandate for carriers using handwritten RODS.”¹

The FMCSA stated that last year carriers were told that they “would likely be required to spend $1,500 to $2,000 per CMV to purchase and install EOBRs, and several hundred dollars per year for service fees,” which was based on the retail value of Qualcomm’s Mobile Computing Platform at around $1,775 at the time.¹

An expense like this would cost the industry over $2 billion a year, OOIDA explained, and is a cost small carriers cannot afford.²

But since the last estimate, more vendors have come forward offering more cost-efficient products. FMCSA’s FAQ notes that Qualcomm has an updated version that costs around $899 and other vendors are offering products as low as $500.²

And while there is a cost associated with the new rule, the agency explains that the benefits outweigh the expense. FAQ states, “FMCSA’s RIA for the 2011 NPRM reported total benefits of $2.711 billion, resulting in an annual net benefit of $344 million. A significant portion of these benefits would come from $1.965 billion in annual paperwork reduction – a savings of $688 per driver each year – due to drivers no longer completing and submitting logbooks.”¹

Although passage of mandatory EOBRs would be a success to the ATA, OOIDA is hoping that an amendment to block the course will hold up.

The amendment, which was brought to light shortly before the President’s signature, states that “none of the funds made available by this act may be used to promulgate or implement any regulations that would mandate global positioning system (GPS) tracking, electronic on-board recording devices or event recorders in passenger or commercial motor vehicles,” although Congress would still be able to fund it with the appropriations bill.³

However, it appears that the chances of the blockage being approved are slim as the Senate has already supported the mandatory usage of EOBR on multiple occasions.

To read the FMCSA’s EOBR FAQ visit http://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/about/other/faq/faqs.aspx and select “Electronic On-Board Recorders” in the drop down box.

Are you in support or opposition of the EOBR mandate? Do you think that the reduced costs of implementation the FMCSA mentioned will attract more supporters? List your comments below.

¹http://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/about/other/faq/faqs.aspx

²http://www.truckinginfo.com/news/news-detail.asp?news_id=77508&news_category_id=3

³http://www.thetrucker.com/News/Stories/2012/6/29/HouseamendmentstripsfundingforEOBRmandate.aspx

Tags: 34-hour restart provision, Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, American trucking Associations, Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance, EBOR, electronic onboard recording devices, federal drug and alcohol clearinghouse, federal motor carrier safety administration, FMCSA, Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, Qualcomm, road scholar transport, trucking company, trucking industry
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Detention/Pay Forcing Drivers to “Cheat” Hours of Service…Are EOBRs the Solution?

Friday, May 11th, 2012

Electronic on-board recording devices (commonly referred to as EOBRs) have been a subject of debate in the trucking industry, especially recently with the passage of the The 2012 Surface Transportation Extension Act by the Senate which would require the mandatory installation of EOBRs on all trucks.

Against this proposal are groups (including the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association) who believe that the devices would lead to driver harassment, pressure to meet their quota and therefore driving tired and enforcing safety hazards, along with the expensive cost of $525 and $785 per truck.

On the other hand, there are groups (which include the American Trucking Associations, Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance, and many more) who support the proposal believing that EOBRs would lead to greater safety through HOS compliance, saving time by ridding of paper logs, and better accuracy.

But do EOBRs come with another benefit to an ongoing problem in the trucking industry…detention?

As a driver, have you ever pulled into a dock for a pickup only to find a long line of trucks ahead of you? You end up sitting there two and half hours, still waiting to be loaded. What do you do? Do you pull the truck and waste the driver’s time, fuel, and accumulate empty miles or do you wait it out? This detention not only threatens the next shipment on the driver’s truck being late, but also takes away from a driver’s allowed hours of service.

With a strict 11-hour driving limit, many drivers explain that they are being forced to cheat on their logs either due to financial reasons or because their employer is making them. As one individual commented, “Drivers cheat on their logs because the job doesn’t pay what it should and they need the extra time & money. Average truckers work over 70 hours a week without a penny of overtime. Companies threaten to have drivers sit for days if they don’t cheat.”¹

Another reason drivers provided for cheating on their logs, as mentioned earlier, was detention.

Let’s say you were detained at a shipper’s dock for three hours. This drastically reduces the amount of time you now have left on the road while complying with your hours of service. Since many drivers are paid by the mile, this now reduces that driver’s income, and therefore, the driver is more prone to “fix” their hours to have more time on the road.

According to a recent study, “More than 80% of drivers reported that they were unable to comply with the Hours of Service regulations after being “unduly detained” at loading docks.”²

As OOIDA states, drivers are spending up to 40 hours a week on docks, sometimes for days, costing the industry $3 billion annually and becoming the biggest efficiency problem in trucking. On top of that, OOIDA mentions the problem with compliance due to detention time spent on docks, causing drivers to lose productivity and, in return, higher the costs of consumer goods.

Last summer we witnessed initiatives, such as HR 756 and extending the FMCSA’s authority, in an effort to reduce the number of hours drivers are detained at docks to pick up or deliver a shipment. This month, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration decided to conduct “two important studies to examine how wait times and driver pay affect driver behavior.”²

Meanwhile, in order to compensate for detainment, many trucking companies are charging shippers/receivers detention fees, typically providing the first two hours free and charging for additional time.

But charging for detention does not always mean that the carrier will receive it. As one carrier utilizing a third-party for its loads notes, “If at the two hour mark I call the broker and complain, I usually hear something like: ‘I’ll call the shipper and see about detention.’ This is a kiss-off.”³

But many truck drivers/companies believe that EOBRs can help. How? One word…proof.

Let’s face it, we live in a world that requires a “see it to believe it attitude.” If you can’t prove that you were at the dock from time this time to that time, I’m not paying.

One carrier utilizing EOBRs labeled it a “powerful tool” when it came to customers known for detaining drivers. As he noted, “Given that stopped time and location is easily retrievable with the systems, I now have ready-made documentation to prove detention time to the shipper, beyond just me or my drivers’ word.”⁴

Do you think EOBRs can be a solution to driver detention? List your comments at http://gsfn.us/t/2uev4.