CaptainRookPerson175
Read the article below and answer the following questions …
Read the article below and answer the following questions
Article: Truckers Are in No Hurry to Have Their Hours Tracked
Drivers worry about lost income with a December rule requiring electronic logs
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Electronic logs are aimed at enforcing a limit of 11 hours of driving during a 14-hour on-duty stretch. PHOTO: DAVID ZALUBOWSKI/ASSOCIATED PRESS
By Bob Tita
Updated Sept. 18, 2017 8:55 p.m. ET
87 COMMENTS
Electronic logs are taking fuzzy math out of trucking.
Federal and state officials have given truckers until December to install electronic monitors that track their time on the road. The new devices are meant to make highways safer by keeping drivers from overshooting the hours they are supposed to drive.
But some truckers who get paid by the mile could see their incomes drop with a more accurate accounting of the time it took them to make a delivery. And lower pay could exacerbate a driver shortage in an industry with a reputation for high turnover.
“You’ll see smaller carriers leave the business,” said Rod Nofziger, chief operating officer for the Missouri-based Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, which has 158,000 members.
Since 2003, truckers have been limited to 11 hours of driving during a 14-hour on-duty stretch. Waiting at a loading dock or getting stuck in traffic counts against that time. That tempts truckers to say in their logs that deliveries happened faster than they did. Driving-log violations are the largest share of citations that police issue during truck inspections, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration says.
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Mile Markers Truck drivers pulled over by law enforcement are
most often cited for infractions related to their records of time on
the road. Driving log violations 17% Others Speeding …
Show more
Even modest fudging can add up to hundreds of hours of unlawful driving. Road-safety advocates say off-book driving pushes up highway accident rates. The motor-safety agency estimates electronic logs will save 26 lives and prevent 562 injuries annually.
“The only reason anyone would oppose this technology is to skirt the hours of service,” said Chris Spear, chief executive of the American Trucking Associations in Virginia.
Some smaller companies that operate just a few trucks and independent drivers are resisting the switch.
“I don’t plan on it until the last minute,” said Monte Wiederhold, president of B.L. Reever Transport Inc., a six-truck fleet in Ohio.
He and other smaller fleet operators say allegations of cheating on paper logs are exaggerated and the safety benefits overstated.
With drivers paid an average of 40 cents a mile, small operators say the $1,000 cost for an electronic log and the monthly service fees of around $40 per truck to process the data is a financial burden. Small fleets and owner operators account for about half of the 1 million heavy-duty trucks for-hire in the U.S.
Acknowledging those concerns, the consortium of state and federal law enforcement agencies overseeing the change said last month that they will fine truckers found without electronic logs starting in December but won’t force their trucks off the road until April. Fines for log violations are based on state statutes and vary from state to state.
Paul Truman, president of Truline Corp., a larger trucking company in Las Vegas, has seen a 12% drop in weekly miles traveled since most of the company’s 220 trucks were converted to electronic logs. He says he hopes the reduction will be offset by higher shipping rates if there is less off-log driving and some owner-operators leave the industry.
“If you reduce the capacity and demand is the same, then pricing should go up and hopefully it makes the trucking industry more profitable,” he said. “To make this work, we need everybody to be compliant.”
Corrections & Amplifications
An earlier version of this article included a photo of trucks operated by Fastenal Co. , incorrectly implying that Fastenal may have been opposed to electronic logs. Fastenal isn’t opposed to electronic logs and has been using them since 2009, the company said. (Sept. 18)
Appeared in the September 15, 2017, print edition as ‘Truckers Balk at Electronic Logs.’
QUESTIONS:
1. How do performance measures encourage truck drivers to drive fast? What do you think the trucking companies want from their drivers? How would you restructure pay scales to reflect the goals of the trucking companies?
2. What challenges do companies face by having a remote workforce? How does the software described in the article address these challenges? What are the advantages and disadvantages to using this software?
3. How can productivity be measured and tracked for a home-based worker? Select an industry and provide examples of measures that could be used. What alternative solutions would you propose be used to improve and monitor the productivity of home-based and knowledge workers?
4. The article highlights the importance of carefully choosing performance measures that reinforce the behaviors your company desires. Describe a situation at your company where employees are repeatedly being told to avoid certain behaviors. Why are these behaviors recurring? What performance measures are in place that encourage these behaviors? List the performance criteria your company would like to encourage. Develop a composite performance measure that would incorporate these various criteria. What is preventing your company from incorporating your new performance measure?
5. The article provides some solutions for utilizing a remotely located workforce. Do you currently work from home? If so, explain how your employer keeps track of your productivity and progress. If not, examine how you could potentially work from home. How would your employer track your hours. How would you interact with your colleagues? What technology or other solutions would need to be in place for you to be able to work from home. Is this option cost-justified? Explain.
