The Canadian Trucking Alliance supports Electronic On-board Recorders (EOBRs) — often referred to as black boxes. The carrier association firmed up that policy decision more than two years ago, and is waiting for Transport Canada and the U.S. DOT to create the framework for eventual rulemaking for the devices. The technology is not yet ready to be deployed on a large scale, with several issues remaining unresolved, such as driver privacy, flexibility, ownership of the data, and others.

As officials in Washington and Ottawa work toward their implementation, the ultimate impact the technology will have on the industry is unclear. Proponents, like the newly appointed chair of the Canadian Truck Alliance, Claude Robert, CEO of Groupe Robert in Boucherville, Que., say it’s high time the industry took HOS compliance more seriously.

“Paper log books are a joke,” Robert noted in a CTA press release. “You can have all the internal audit protocols you want and you won’t eliminate illegal operations. Again, the industry has got (to) get serious about hours of service compliance. If we don’t, and some carriers and drivers continue to operate illegally, we will never get the rates we need, our drivers will never be paid what they are worth and we will not attract the quality people to the industry that we are going to need in the future.”

Opponents fear an erosion of driver income due to the inflexibility of the electronic recorders, along with less opportunity to “adjust” the logs as can be done with paper log sheets.

With governments on both side of the border anxious to embrace the technology, and trucking safety advocates saying the EOBR is the only method of HOS monitoring they are prepared to accept — with the possible reinstatement of the split-sleeper provision in the U.S. hanging in the balance — many believe EOBRs are inevitable. Not a matter of if, but when.

Bradley says EOBRs will ensure drivers get
their fair share for lost time

Today’s Trucking sister publication highwaySTAR went to David Bradley, president of the CTA, with a series of questions to get his take on what EOBRs will mean for trucking, and how his associations feel about their eventual implementation and HOS compliance in general.

HS: Why EOBRs? What data or evidence do you have that
suggests EOBRs are necessary?

DB: First, let’s be clear that CTA is not giving government carte blanche to do whatever it wants in terms of EOBRs. We have laid out the conditions upon which we think EOBRs should be made mandatory. The policy has been in place since April 2004.

In this day and age, I think it’s fair to say that the current method of managing HOS compliance with pencils and paper is antiquated and should be replaced. Managing all that paper is an inefficient use of a carrier’s resources and cannot be effective from an enforcement perspective either. Carriers are moving toward paperless systems wherever they can in their businesses, and are tracking all kinds of things electronically — speed, RPM, hard-braking, fuel consumption, engine performance, improper lanes changes, arrival times, delays, etc. — why not logbook information?

Not only do the carriers I report to feel that the introduction of EOBRs will help eliminate cheating, omission and other errors, but they could also provide carriers with the information needed to run their businesses properly and to charge their customers accordingly. Technology and its business applications are evolving every day. The possibilities are endless.

HS: Is there a problem, currently, with HOS compliance?

DB: Obviously, this is not something we like to broadcast publicly, but we would be sticking our heads in the sand if we tried to deny that there is a problem with HOS compliance. We see it in facility audits and we see it in the Level 3 roadside inspections. Regardless of what the actual degree of non-compliance is, the use of paper logs, which are not numbered or otherwise controlled, creates an opportunity for cheating.

CTA chairman Claude Robert says paper logs are a “joke.”

Maybe if shippers were to be obliged to indicate on the bill of lading, the time when a truck arrives at their plant, the time when loading/unloading starts and is completed, that might cut down on some of the cheating, but that isn’t going to happen. Also, it is important to keep in mind that there is a school of thought that suggests that the only way the industry is going to be able to win back some of the flexibility it recently lost in the latest round of changes to the U.S. rules — e.g., the ability to split time in a sleeper berth — is through adopting EOBRs. How true that is, only time will tell.

HS: Given a driver’s ability to “hide” wasted hours with paper logs, what do you expect to happen to capacity if drivers lose available working hours due to the inflexible nature of electronic data recorders?

The new hours of work rules make it difficult to “hide” waiting time anyway, since the controlling factor has, or will become the fact that (a) driver cannot work beyond the 16th hour (New Canadian rules, Jan. 1, 2007) regardless of what the driver does in those 16 hours — drive or wait. I don’t think this is a bad thing. You will recall, that when the first round of changes to the U.S. hours of service rules were introduced a couple of years back, it actually got carriers charging accessorial fees for delay times, loading/unloading, etc., which was a benefit to the driver. Carriers tried to convince shippers that the problems associated with the new rules could not be resolved on the backs of the drivers.

Tight capacity is a good thing for any industry, including trucking. It should make it easier for people to charge a decent price for their product or service. The capacity situation in trucking is the result of many factors.

Over the years, excess capacity allowed the situation to evolve where freight rates were depressed and many drivers are working too many hours compared to other occupations for the money they make. I don’t know of one of my carriers who feel that drivers should not be paid for all the time they spend working, or that drivers should not be making more, period. It will take time, but I believe the market will move in the right direction.

HS: Drivers are expressing concern that they’ll see reductions in income through the lost flexibility. What would you say to address driver concerns about a reduction in earnings when EOBRs become a reality?

DB: EOBRs, if properly implemented with appropriate enforcement practices and policies (e.g., driver privacy, reasonable tolerances for “going over” the allowable hours) should not impact a driver’s earning capability. EOBRs will not reduce the hours available for work. To argue that they will, indicates that drivers need to violate the hours of work rules on a frequent basis to ensure that income is not affected. If that is the case — and I suspect many believe it is — then the industry is going to have to deal with the real issue; the level of pay if log books can no longer be manipulated. So long as drivers feel they need to cheat to earn a decent living, and so long as they can get away with it, nothing will change.

I recall a few years back, OOIDA was promoting a campaign to run compliant for a week to demonstrate the impact it would have. I thought that was a real interesting idea. Of course, it didn’t happen because there is always someone willing to break the rules to get the business.

Many of the carriers I deal with also say that in the absence of better control and monitoring of driver hours and proper follow-up, inefficiencies during loading/unloading are that much harder to fix. If you don’t have the data to convince the shipper, what incentive will they have to get drivers in/out quicker? What justification would you have for charging for delays? Guess who gets hurt? You know it’s the drivers who are being victimized — they are the ones not being paid while they wait. In fact, the drivers are the victims and are being abused for not being paid while they wait.