2. EOBRs are a tool for driver harassment.
Kraft: Kraft made particular note of the verdict handed down last year that forced FMCSA to vacate the previous limited mandate for hours-noncompliant carriers to use EOBRs as remediation. That verdict “wasn’t really about driver harassment,” he said. What was it about? “FMCSA’s failure to address harassment as a potential problem,” he said.
Dinino: “We have a company policy in place … that first of all if the driver, whether he has hours available or not, if he can’t finish the duration of the trip, he will not be forced into that dispatch. It does take some preplanning on the driver’s behalf — if you have an eight-hour drive, you need to look to get there with some time left rather than having to back yourself up like you used to be able to.”
Lowry: “There’s a lot of guys that were on paper originally that just didn’t understand the hours of service – operations would spend a lot of time having drivers faxing logs in and harassment came more with the paper than the electronic logs. Under [regulation] 392.3 – a driver can’t drive while ill or fatigued. That protects the driver in that aspect. Dispatch has the responsibility to preplan and determine what a driver can and cannot do.”