Tracking devices split truckers

Transportation requirement to affect 3.1 million drivers

Randall Harrison, a safety and compliance instructor for P.A.M. Transport Inc., instructs a class of new drivers on the use of electronic on-board recording devices earlier this month in Tontitown.
Randall Harrison, a safety and compliance instructor for P.A.M. Transport Inc., instructs a class of new drivers on the use of electronic on-board recording devices earlier this month in Tontitown.

— Twentyfive of the newest truck driver trainees at P.A.M. Transportation Services Inc. gathered recently in the company’s training center to learn how to use gadgets that are the source of conflict in American trucking.

Randall Harrison, who teaches federal compliance, safety and accountability rules to new P.A.M. drivers, stood before them and guided the trainees on electronic onboard recording devices.

“When that truck moves it is going to do what, class?” Harrison asked the group at the center in Tontitown, west of Springdale.

Not hearing an immediate response, he answered his question.

“It’s going to start counting down,” he said, referring to the amount of time the driver has before he needs to pull over and take a break.

The countdown for installing the recorders in all commercial trucks started July 6, when President Barack Obama signed a transportation reauthorization bill that authorizes $112 billion in spending on the nation’s highways and bridges through Sept. 30, 2014.

Lawmakers incorporated the Commercial Motor Vehicle Safety Enhancement Act of 2012 into the bill, and among its requirements was the installation of “electronic logging devices” in all commercial trucks by 2015.

The mandate is subject to final rule-making by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration next spring. It will affect the nation’s nearly 6 million commercial trailers and 3.1 million professional truck drivers, according to industry figures compiled by the American Trucking Associations.

The electronic recorders, which use Global Positioning Satellite imaging to track the truck’s location and speed, are meant to prevent drivers from manipulating their paper logs to comply with their “hours of service,” which is the name for the federal rule governing driving time for interstate truckers.

Electronic tracking is part of a broader push to fight truck driver fatigue and reduce accidents.

The trucking industry is divided over the new rule, championed by U.S. Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark., as a measure to increase safety. It is favored by the American Trucking Associations, which represent the nation’s largest carriers.

It is opposed by the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association in Grain Valley, Mo., just outside Kansas City. That association, which represents more than 150,000 drivers, claims the measure creates an unnecessary expense and invades a driver’s privacy.

Five companies, including Arkansas-based J.B. Hunt Transport Services Inc. and Maverick USA, were the founding members of the Alliance for Driver Safety and Security, which formed in October 2010 to lobby for the legislation.

J.B. Hunt is the nation’s fifth-largest for-hire carrier and Maverick is No. 88 based on 2011 total revenue, according to Transport Topics, an industry trade publication.

Steve Williams, chairman and chief executive officer of Maverick in North Little Rock, said the devices ensure that drivers will comply with their hours of service.

Maverick already has installed them in its fleet of 1,420 trucks, Williams said.

“This is against a backdrop of a lot of other regulatory changes that have gone on,” Williams said. “This is the only way that the industry can fulfill its commitment to the motoring public that it is operating in compliance with the hours-ofservice rules.

“Our drivers love it,” he said. “They get more rest. They get less stress. They can plan their days better and it doesn’t put their driving record in jeopardy.”

Norita Taylor, spokesman for the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, disagrees.

“Our stance is that electronic on-board recorders will not ensure compliance with hours of service,” Taylor said. “They do not automatically record hours of service. They can only identify the location of a truck and if it is moving.”

Her association praised congressmen who, in a voice vote on June 29, adopted an amendment to the U.S. Department of Transportation budget that cuts funding to implement the trucking mandate.

Rep. James Lankford, R-Okla., who serves on the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, joined in the voice vote, he said.

While he supports electronic on-board recording devices in principle, Lankford said he believes the requirement mandating them goes too far.

“The issue becomes the smallest companies,” he said. “This is yet another burden for them. The prices for them are coming down significantly ... but we would like to give more latitude for the smaller companies. I would like to see a waiver giving the smaller companies time to catch up on it.

“The large carriers, they have the resources and they have the manpower,” he said. “For those smaller carriers ... this is a lot more difficult.”

‘CHEATING’ FAIL-SAFE

The devices aren’t new and the debate over using them started in the early 1990s. Werner Enterprises Inc., based in Omaha, Neb., became the first trucking company to switch to electronic logging in 1998.

The drivers association argues that the Obama administration estimates it will cost the industry $2 billion to follow the rule.

The trucking associations counter that research by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration shows the safety and operational benefits will outweigh the expense.

Gerry Mead, vice president of maintenance at P.A.M., said the company, which specializes in hauling automotive-related freight, has on-board electronic recorders in all 1,750 of its trucks.

P.A.M., the country’s 67thlargest for-hire carrier, spent about $1,800 for the equipment and installation of each device, Mead said.

“Safety is always paramount,” Mead said. “We felt it was a good thing for P.A.M., our customers and the safety of our drivers. We’re making a pretty good investment.”

Harrison, a retired U.S. Department of Transportation enforcement officer who joined P.A.M. in 2011, said he would often cite truckers for not keeping current logbooks.

The recorders automatically log a driver’s time behind the wheel after a truck starts moving, tracking whether drivers exceed an 11-hour daily limit. Drivers enter a code to time the periods when they’re offduty, loading or unloading.

Harrison said drivers are tempted to fudge their logs so they can spend more time on the road and making deliveries.

“I knew if they were on paper logs there was a possibility they might cheat” on their hours of service, Harrison said.

That’s why he favors the electronic log book, known in the industry as an EOBR, because it isn’t going to give the drivers “any latitude to falsify or cheat,” he said.

“The EOBR is their best friend,” he said. “It helps drivers. It makes them more responsible on the road. A company that uses EOBR cannot cheat.”

Lane Kidd, executive director of the Arkansas Trucking Association, said the nation’s major carriers followed Arkansas’ lead on electronic onboard recording devices.

The Arkansas association has had an electronic logging policy since 1999. The national association didn’t endorse the devices until recently, Kidd said.

In 2009, Pryor, who has represented Arkansas in the Senate since 2003, approached Anne Ferro, administrator of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, at an event in Little Rock.

According to Kidd, Pryor asked Ferro about “these recorders in trucks.”

At that time, Ferro’s agency had developed a regulation requiring them for carriers that had a 10 percent or greater violation rate of the hours of service.

In September 2010, Pryor and U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., introduced a standalone bill requiring electronic on-board recording devices in all commercial motor vehicles engaged in interstate commerce.

That’s also when major carriers such as Schneider National Inc. of Green Bay, Wisc., U.S. Xpress Enterprises Inc. in Chattanooga, Tenn., and Knight Transportation in Phoenix joined the lobbying effort, he said.

“Trucking is one of those industries that operates within feet of millions of people every day, so safety is an important factor,” Kidd said. “One of the worst-kept secrets is that drivers routinely lie on their logbooks. We do know that we have a situation where many truck drivers are choosing to exceed the number of hours they should be driving their trucks.

“There is a correlation between driver fatigue and accidents,” he said. “That’s been shown in a report conducted by the [Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration] last year that we obtained.”

Greer Woodruff, senior vice president of safety and security for J.B. Hunt in Lowell, was instrumental in building support for the rule, Kidd said. Woodruff, through a company spokesman, declined comment.

‘NO ADDED SAFETY’

The Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association convinced a federal appeals panel in August 2011 that there is no proof that the devices can accurately or automatically record a driver’s hours of service and duty status, and that a 24-hour monitoring is a violation of a driver’s constitutional right to unreasonable searches and seizures.

That ruling forced the federal agency to vacate its rule requiring the devices for companies with hours-of-service violations but did not stop Congress from including the requirement in the transportation bill.

The recording device “can’t tell if a driver is tired,” said Taylor, the drivers association spokesman.

“It doesn’t know if the driver is loading the truck or waiting to be loaded or stuck in traffic, taking a nap or eating a meal,” she said. “The EOBR is still going to require manual input from the driver. There’s no added safety.”

The proponents of the requirement are simply trying to drive up costs for their smaller competitors, she said.

Not true, Williams said.

“That’s some snake oil,” said Williams, who started Maverick in 1980 with one truck and one co-worker.

“The device that I have in my trucks has a price point over $2,000, but that’s not what everybody has to pay,” he said, adding that devices can be purchased for $400 or less.

That’s about the cost of one big-rig tire, he said.

Business, Pages 67 on 09/16/2012

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