Opinion: Might as Well Adapt — EOBRs Are Here to Stay

By James M. Bozeman

President

J.M. Bozeman Enterprises

This Opinion piece appears in the June 4 print edition of Transport Topics. Click here to subscribe today.

I wasn’t too keen on the idea of installing electronic onboard recorders (EOBRs) in my trucks when the Arkansas Trucking Association announced it would formally support a mandate. In fact, I hated the idea.

But sitting at the lake one day, I was mulling over the reasons why I opposed an EOBR mandate. I have been in trucks since I was 16, and I wanted to continue to operate the only way I knew how. And then it hit me.

The only reason I came up with to oppose EOBRs was so I could cheat.

There’s no other way to dress it up. Instead of GPS tracking showing your truck was down for four or five hours repairing a flat, I wanted to tell the driver to write down one hour in his logbook and get him back on the road. I wanted the ability to bend the rule.

I figured, I can’t go backward to those days. That’s not my nature, to go backward on anything. And EOBRs are coming. So at the beginning of 2011, I announced to our drivers we were going to log to the GPS and began a whole operational change. Many of them left.

Not long after, we had a customer in North Carolina who had a load coming back to Arkansas. He called me and said, “James, it’s not your rate that’s keeping you out of this business; it’s your time from pickup to delivery.”

Now, this is a 900-mile haul, and we had offered to pick up on Monday and deliver on Wednesday. I asked him to explain what the other carrier was offering.

He said, “The other carrier would deliver Tuesday.”

I told him, “Well, I can’t do that and neither can they under the hours-of-service rules.”

We didn’t get the business, and that really sounded like a liability problem for the shipper to me.

Those in our industry can make whatever excuses they want for not using EOBRs. The bottom line is they haven’t wrapped their minds around how to make money legally. I mean, they might as well be bootlegging whiskey. It’s the same damn thing.

But, for it to work, it must be for everyone. And shippers will have to get acclimated to EOBRs and what they mean. If we have a late truck, then we have a late truck. Stuff happens. A driver oversleeps or his wife was in a bad mood and he couldn’t leave . . . whatever.

Those pickups and deliveries will have to be in compliance with the hours-of-service rules. Or, at least, that’s how it should work. EOBRs level the playing field, so everyone will have to comply.

J.M. Bozeman Enterprises is a truckload freight company in Malvern, Ark. This editorial originally appeared in the February 2012 edition of the Arkansas Trucking Report.