Flexibility needs to be built into EOBR rule: Truckers

TORONTO — Carriers frustrated with less scrupulous competitors cheating on their logs probably have every reason to demand universal electronic on-board recorders.

But is it still "cheating" when you run out of hours 100 klicks away from home and family –probably because you spent two hours waiting at the last  receiving dock — and need to "massage" your logbook to avoid a ridiculous layover?

Most people would say "no" and they’d be right. So, will hard-wired EOBRs, as they’re currently being proposed by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, turn drivers and carriage into proverbial pumpkins when the clock strikes a certain hour despite where they might find themselves?

It’s doubtful, but hard to say for sure. To accommodate such variances in driving, there are tolerances built into the compliance review, says CVSA’s Steve Keppler.

Trying Times: What to do when
the big hand points to empty hours
and the little hand points to home?

The new EOBR rule allows drivers to annotate such situations in the system. "There are going to be instances where these things occur and that’s why we have that (10 percent) non-compliance threshold," says Keppler. "Those anomalies, while they’re going to happen, hopefully aren’t occurring on a routine basis."

But, as is usually the case, the ultimate decision will rest with on-road enforcement and compliance inspectors.

Joanne Ritchie of the Owner-Operators Business Association of Canada (OBAC) advocates clearly established enforcement tolerances written into the rule, such as a so-called, "close-to-home" provision.

"In our minds, there’s a difference between wanton cheating that is running way over your hours to produce more revenue versus a driver who makes an adjustment or two in order to accommodate an unforeseen delay or traffic congestion," she says. "Nobody, absolutely nobody, will tolerate being laid over an hour from home or having to do a 36-hour reset a short distance from home. That, as far as we’re concerned, will be a deal-breaker."

Several messages relating to this matter were left for the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s chief communications officer, but were unreturned.

"We don’t know how willing the enforcement committee is going to be to look at that," says Ritchie. "We’ll have to wait and see."

For more on how carriers and enforcement officials are grappling with the Americans’ published EOBR rule, see our online feature, Electronic Comic Books? by clicking here).