I always thought that the EOBR would be the evil ogre that I would not allow in my truck. The carrier I am leased to decided to go to them. I thought I would try it out before I jumped ship. Had it now for almost three months and it has not had a negative effect on me. I rather like the darn thing. Sure has freed me up on the paperwork side of things. I still use the truck for personal use and not log a minute of it. I just select OFF DUTY DRIVING (which just keeps the EOBR in the OFF DUTY line while the truck is moving). So that takes care of when I move the truck around on the weekend while at home and still get in the 34 hr reset. Probably the only thing I do different is that I tend to use the 8 and 2 spit option a little more than I used to. I didn't even put the little sticker on the side letting the world know I have EOBR. To get my log pages for my own records, I just go online at qualcomm with my PC at home and print them up.
Sure, it isn't going to make anyone "safer". In a mishap though, It will make it a lot harder for some enterprising lawyer that wants to find fault with you because of a small mistake you made on a logbook months ago so that he can switch the blame from his client to you.
Maybe the "big" carriers feel the need to do it to "level" the playing field, but the smaller carrier (300 truck) outfit I am leased to just wanted to go to them so that it would remove a lot of headaches in compliance. They didn't raise the fee that gets charged to O/O for qualcomm ($10 a week), even though the new qualcomm not only has EOBR, but also a pretty good GPS routing feature that is as good or better than any of the units you can buy on the market. The board is smaller and is mounted in a way that it is arm's length away, has a pretty good speaker that gives turn by turn directions and will read incoming messages to you without having to take eyes off the road.
This outfit planned freight pretty good before they went to the EOBR, so it really hasn't made a difference for how much I am able to get done. Matter of fact, January was a real good revenue month for me.
In no way do I think EOBR should be mandated. They do not improve safety. I can see why a carrier would choose to use them, and if they are planning freight right, it will not have much of a negative effect on a truck.
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Freedom does not mean the choice to do whatever you want. It means the choice to do what you ought.
Last edited by Copperhead; 02-05-2011 at 04:33 PM.
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