I finally got the safety dept to fix the problem with elogs not resetting the start of the 34 hour reset when I start my break earlier, previously if I started my weekend at 11.00pm on Friday it would stay at that time every week after that, it should have returned to earlier start time when the next week I started at 19.00pm. I spoke with the woman who ran safety sveral times but she had no idea what I meant, recently she retired and a new man took over, I met him in Albany last month and told him the problem, all is now corrected and the weekly reset has changed and moves back to the previous weeks start 
Took some doing !
Pat Hasler:
I finally got the safety dept to fix the problem with elogs not resetting the start of the 34 hour reset when I start my break earlier, previously if I started my weekend at 11.00pm on Friday it would stay at that time every week after that, it should have returned to earlier start time when the next week I started at 19.00pm. I spoke with the woman who ran safety sveral times but she had no idea what I meant, recently she retired and a new man took over, I met him in Albany last month and told him the problem, all is now corrected and the weekly reset has changed and moves back to the previous weeks start
Took some doing !
Its all nonsense. We had a situation where probably a majority of drivers were confused by really quite simple log book regulations. Then elogs came and now its the machine, computers and office wallah’s who are confused, dont know what they’re doing and making the matter even worse and the drivers are still as clueless as before.
My truck has a new elog fitted, though its being turned off at my request and I’m still on paper logs. Its a Rand McNally one and from the other drivers at our firm who run them, its a hideous piece of crap. No allowance at all for moving off duty, even an inch kicks you back on duty, and it doesn’t recognise Canadian drivers hours, or at least they don’t know how to make it do so, so when they cross the border and drive in Canada over 11 hours, they’re showing as being in violation. I’d like to think that its only the drivers not knowing what they’re doing with it, but as there are so many brands of elog, and their paramiters can be changed to whatever the company wants, rather than a national standard as per EU tacho’s (not something I want here btw!) I’m not so sure. The whole system seems a complete mess to me.
I think elogs are the worst of both worlds. The driver no longer has the discretion to be the captain of his own ship and exceed driving time in the name of common sense to reach an appropriate location, but companies can actually alter the records from their end! What the hell is all that about?! All we have now are unscrupulous employers (of which there would be many in this part of Canada) who will falsify a drivers log book on their system and demand he continue driving. I’ve spoken about this issue to the Maine DOT and they know full well it goes on, but fail to say what they’re going to do about it.
robinhood_1984:
Pat Hasler:
The FMCSA site says the 34 hour rule is to make sure drivers get rest
How totally stupid is it if having two days off in the middle of the week doesn’t count as rest ?
I am at a loss ? … Time to throw the towel in I think.I think a lot are thinking the same way. Its only going to keep getting worse know, we all know from our experiences in Europe that once they get a taste for zealous regulation that its a slippery slope downwards.
^ This.What can you expect from a place where ze Germans are in charge and Obama seems to have a hidden hotline to the fuhrer for his instructions. 
All this ■■■■■■■■ about the reset incorporating two periods of 1am to 5am in the interest of safety is ridiculous when you consider that using recap, you get your hours back at the stroke of midnight!!!
If the elog kicks you back on duty for moving an inch then it is set up wrong by the boss, our’s are set at 2 miles now and having consulted with DOT it seems that once off duty it is not breaking any laws to log out when off duty and drive to a place to eat or even bob tail home so long as you remove any assigned load or trailer from the log. Once logged out the elog will not trip you back on duty.
So far i been pretty lucky and the new HOS have only messed up an early start a couple of times but I can see where for some of the big companies who reset their drivers as and where they want its a right pain
Pat Hasler:
If the elog kicks you back on duty for moving an inch then it is set up wrong by the boss, our’s are set at 2 miles now and having consulted with DOT it seems that once off duty it is not breaking any laws to log out when off duty and drive to a place to eat or even bob tail home so long as you remove any assigned load or trailer from the log. Once logged out the elog will not trip you back on duty.
But don’t you have to show at least 8 hours on continuous sleeper berth for a 10 hour daily rest? Ie you park up at 6pm, immediately log out of your elog and drive off to wherever, but to start duty again at 4am, would you not have to log back in to it at 8am to log that sleeper berth mode? I know if you’re at home or not actually in the truck then it wont matter but is it not a legal requirement to log sleeper berth while actually in said location? If so then the problem could still easily be an issue when you’ve been sitting on a loading dock for 5 or 6 hours, had the foresight to put it on sleeper berth and then want/need to move off the dock once you’re done and to park anywhere that is over two miles away, or whatever the elog is set for (some Canadian ones I’ve come across are 10 miles) so you’ll be kicked back on duty and in total violation. But you can’t log out, drive and then log back in again because it’d still have interrupted your 8/10 hours of sleeper berth and you’d then have to start over and that is just not economically viable to people paid by the mile. Thankfully this type of waiting time is a rarity these days but you never can tell when it’ll happen in North America because shippers and receivers do not give the slightest ■■■■ about keeping their free warehousing (us) sitting for just as long as is convenient to them.
Personally, if and when I’m forced on to an elog in the future, and I run out of time on a dock I’ll just refuse to move, either that or I’ll drop the trailer and bobtail off before my time is up and let them worry about it but I refuse to move a quarter of the way around the world to be put in the same situation I found myself in in the country I left behind because of such reasons where by you run out of time on a loading bay, refuse to move and then get all sorts of aggravation, hassle, threats and trouble from the company you’re at, trying to intimidate you in to moving and risking personal prosecution. Having an elog on general freight work in North America is just going to bring all the old worry and stress from Europe in to the job, no thanks.
North American road transport is just not efficient enough and geared up to be timed by the second or minute. The distances are too vast, the distances between parking places are often huge and the delays at shippers/receivers can be astronomical, none of which are compatible with a stop watch.
robinhood_1984:
Pat Hasler:
If the elog kicks you back on duty for moving an inch then it is set up wrong by the boss, our’s are set at 2 miles now and having consulted with DOT it seems that once off duty it is not breaking any laws to log out when off duty and drive to a place to eat or even bob tail home so long as you remove any assigned load or trailer from the log. Once logged out the elog will not trip you back on duty.But don’t you have to show at least 8 hours on continuous sleeper berth for a 10 hour daily rest? Ie you park up at 6pm, immediately log out of your elog and drive off to wherever, but to start duty again at 4am, would you not have to log back in to it at 8am to log that sleeper berth mode? I know if you’re at home or not actually in the truck then it wont matter but is it not a legal requirement to log sleeper berth while actually in said location? If so then the problem could still easily be an issue when you’ve been sitting on a loading dock for 5 or 6 hours, had the foresight to put it on sleeper berth and then want/need to move off the dock once you’re done and to park anywhere that is over two miles away, or whatever the elog is set for (some Canadian ones I’ve come across are 10 miles) so you’ll be kicked back on duty and in total violation. But you can’t log out, drive and then log back in again because it’d still have interrupted your 8/10 hours of sleeper berth and you’d then have to start over and that is just not economically viable to people paid by the mile. Thankfully this type of waiting time is a rarity these days but you never can tell when it’ll happen in North America because shippers and receivers do not give the slightest ■■■■ about keeping their free warehousing (us) sitting for just as long as is convenient to them.
Personally, if and when I’m forced on to an elog in the future, and I run out of time on a dock I’ll just refuse to move, either that or I’ll drop the trailer and bobtail off before my time is up and let them worry about it but I refuse to move a quarter of the way around the world to be put in the same situation I found myself in in the country I left behind because of such reasons where by you run out of time on a loading bay, refuse to move and then get all sorts of aggravation, hassle, threats and trouble from the company you’re at, trying to intimidate you in to moving and risking personal prosecution. Having an elog on general freight work in North America is just going to bring all the old worry and stress from Europe in to the job, no thanks.
North American road transport is just not efficient enough and geared up to be timed by the second or minute. The distances are too vast, the distances between parking places are often huge and the delays at shippers/receivers can be astronomical, none of which are compatible with a stop watch.
We use peoplenet elog and it gives me 10 miles before it switches. Also any off duty time you had before going to sleeper berth mode (incl. off duty pc) is automatic added to the sleeper berth time when you switch over. For example: park up at 6pm and go off duty, at 7pm go to off duty pc to go do some shopping and get something to eat, return at 11pm and then switch to sleeper berth then you will get 5 hours sleeper berth right away and be good to go at 4 am with 10 hours sleeper berth.
Don’t compare the elog with euro digitacho. They are 2 completely different things. Digitacho is useless and elog, once you get used to it, is ok to work with IMO unless you want to run 24/7.
I have legally logged over 700 miles in 1 day in the US or close to 850 miles in Canada and just over 4000 miles within 70 hours and that is more than enough for me
I certainly do not want to run 24/7 but I also know that once these types of things get in, in time they will be used just as severely to penalise a driver for a 10 minute offence as a 5 hour offence. I don’t want to be pulling my hair out at 10pm on a Wednesday night as rest area after rest area, truckstop after truckstop are all full with nowhere to park and watching the count down on the elog. In an ideal world we’d all park early, though if we did then all the truckstops and rest areas would be just as full, but earlier, but in my job its often not possible because I can’t leave the farm until the plants are picked, packed and put in to the trailer and thats often afternoon departures and late night arrivals near NYC, then trying to find somewhere to park. The only guarunteed parking would be Kittery, ME but that’s 5 hours before NYC so is not a realistic option. I know they’re not as bad as a digital tacho, but I do think they will be in the long term. I honestly don’t see the US DOT allowing any movement off card once they’ve succeeded in making them mandatory in a few years. We only have to look at Europe to see what happens when bureaucracy and regulation take off like a runaway train and no one stands up against it. I may be totally wrong, and I hope that I am, but I see the elog in its current form being the thin end of the wedge of what’s to come.
You don’t actually have to log at least 8 hours sleeper unless you are splitting the breaks, 2 and 8. I have logged off and logged out all night, then logged in but off duty to check my hours, in the past I have logged off duty, then logged out driven to diner then back a few hours later, logged back in and switched from off duty to sleeper, it automatically goes to all the time off as in the sleeper. If questioned why you did not go in the sleeper you don’t have to give a reason so long as you are off duty the whole time, I was asked once and just told the DOT cop I stayed at a hotel but saying you stayed in a house of friend would be ok.
As for 10 miles before switching back thats because the company has set the log that way, I am sure it’s not legal, each elog is set to whatever the company wants to suit their needs.
Pat Hasler:
As for 10 miles before switching back thats because the company has set the log that way, I am sure it’s not legal, each elog is set to whatever the company wants to suit their needs.
Is any distance legal? We all live in the real world where such things are needed but those that make the laws and those that enforce them are not on our planet. I’ve heard stories of drivers being prosecuted because the DOT have somehow found out that a driver arrived at a shipper/receiver, backed on to the dock with his doors closed (possibly a reefer) and then half way through his rest period the warehouse staff have turned up for work, knocked on his door, he’s pulled forward 2 or 3 metres, opened his doors and backed back on.
robinhood_1984:
Is any distance legal? We all live in the real world where such things are needed but those that make the laws and those that enforce them are not on our planet. I’ve heard stories of drivers being prosecuted because the DOT have somehow found out that a driver arrived at a shipper/receiver, backed on to the dock with his doors closed (possibly a reefer) and then half way through his rest period the warehouse staff have turned up for work, knocked on his door, he’s pulled forward 2 or 3 metres, opened his doors and backed back on.
If you look at the rule for the new 30 minute break as an example. The DOT say you can book that 30 minutes while being on a dock even if you are asked to move off a dock, we are allowed to be on a 30 minute break whilst in the tanker wash or waiting to enter it.
As for logging off and logging out off duty then driving, so long as you have no trailer attached you can drive 60 miles to get to your home if needed. The distance you can drive logged in but off duty without triggering the duty status is up to whoever sets the elogs on the company you work for.
Pat Hasler:
The distance you can drive logged in but off duty without triggering the duty status is up to whoever sets the elogs on the company you work for.
Are elogs not basically tracked via the satellite computers that they’re a part of? You dont have to physically write down your locations for each change of mode like on a paper log book do you? It was my understanding that it did all that via gps. If that’s the case and you go to off duty / sleeper berth and then at some point move a few miles within whatever the company has set before it’ll trigger you out of off duty / sleeper mode, your starting location the next day wont match the ending location the day before and do missing miles / kms from the end of one shift to the beginning of the next not matter either when using this 2 or 10 mile or whatever leeway programmed in to the system?
robinhood_1984:
I certainly do not want to run 24/7 but I also know that once these types of things get in, in time they will be used just as severely to penalise a driver for a 10 minute offence as a 5 hour offence. I don’t want to be pulling my hair out at 10pm on a Wednesday night as rest area after rest area, truckstop after truckstop are all full with nowhere to park and watching the count down on the elog. In an ideal world we’d all park early, though if we did then all the truckstops and rest areas would be just as full, but earlier, but in my job its often not possible because I can’t leave the farm until the plants are picked, packed and put in to the trailer and thats often afternoon departures and late night arrivals near NYC, then trying to find somewhere to park. The only guarunteed parking would be Kittery, ME but that’s 5 hours before NYC so is not a realistic option. I know they’re not as bad as a digital tacho, but I do think they will be in the long term. I honestly don’t see the US DOT allowing any movement off card once they’ve succeeded in making them mandatory in a few years. We only have to look at Europe to see what happens when bureaucracy and regulation take off like a runaway train and no one stands up against it. I may be totally wrong, and I hope that I am, but I see the elog in its current form being the thin end of the wedge of what’s to come.
You can probably bet that they wouldn’t obviously be trying to start the gradual change from log books to what is just effectively tachographs in all but name if the agenda wasn’t exactly what we’ve got in Europe in the long term.
The only way what you’re saying could possibly be wrong is if the log book option remains in all cases if the driver chooses it over using any type of tracked and/or recording method.Which would obviously make the whole idea pointless from the control freak government point of view.As for a euro type hours recording regime working over North American distances and operating conditions I think it would just magnify all the downsides to the job here,since tachos were introduced ,massively.
What ever happened to the PC miles?? When my last place was looking at putting me on elogs long as you wasn’t dispatched on a job you could go into an option on the qualcom and log in for PC. I think it said in the book that you can log where you change modes twice a day from what I can remember. Am still on the old logs so kinda pushed it all to the back of my mind but even though the elogs are not switched on where i am now they can still compare logs from the GPS against my books.
Carryfast:
As for a euro type hours recording regime working over North American distances and operating conditions I think it would just magnify all the downsides to the job here,since tachos were introduced ,massively.
That is also my opinion and fear.
I remember being at one tip and going into the office to see how long I’ll be as getting close to the end of my hours. The response I got was are you on E-logs or paper■■? I replied it doesn’t matter what I’m on you got 45 mins and I’m pulling out and be back in just over 10 hrs
taffytrucker:
I remember being at one tip and going into the office to see how long I’ll be as getting close to the end of my hours. The response I got was are you on E-logs or paper■■? I replied it doesn’t matter what I’m on you got 45 mins and I’m pulling out and be back in just over 10 hrs
Yes, I’ve also done this and paid the price for it in my wages when I did return in 10 hours, only to be told to book another appointment and to come back in another 24 hours from that point. While we get paid by the mile we’ll never be in a position to lay the law down and we’ll lose every battle we enter if they so wish.
Wait until the those e logs become law, my decision to run Canada only with 13hr driving days and none of that silly restart nonsense will make sense then 
Not that it matters to me, this lorry driving lark is only a stop gap until I win the lotto
newmercman:
Wait until the those e logs become law, my decision to run Canada only with 13hr driving days and none of that silly restart nonsense will make sense thenNot that it matters to me, this lorry driving lark is only a stop gap until I win the lotto
That decision won’t look so good though if Quebec and Ontario then decide to get the Canadian federal government to adopt EU hours and tacho regs and limiters set at 90 kmh .I think I’d be investing in buying lots of those lottery tickets.