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Old 07-07-2018, 11:57 AM   #561
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Not excusing his actions, but I would not be at all surprised if fatigue was a factor - most truckers are on the road too long.
There's law requirement behind how long you can drive. Do you mean the mandated drive time is too long, or are you suggesting most truckers break the law? If you're suggesting the latter I'd strongly disagree.

It happens but it's not common at all, the stakes are too high for fudging or ignoring log books. And certainly in this case if they found he was over hours or manipulated his log book it would be the most prominent piece of information released.
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Old 07-07-2018, 12:02 PM   #562
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This is not a typical day of a truck driver but it does happen. Sometimes regulations do more harm than good and force the driver to complete their day.

Most drivers are paid by the mile. You are on the clock as soon as you start your pre trip. That means the government has set a window for you for your work day. You have 16 hours to do what you have to do. Let's suppose your load is to be delivered in Vancouver the next day. It takes about 12 hours to get there. Pre trip is 8:00 am. Minimum of 15 minute pre trip on the truck. 8:15 you drive to warehouse to pick up your trailer. You get there at 8:45 and after the paper work and locating your trailer it's 9:00. Trailer pre-trip so another 15 min. You finally start your trip to Vancouver at 9:15. You haven't been paid yet. Everything is going great until you get to Revelstoke (4h30 min). They started avalanche control at Three Valley Gap. It takes 2 hours off of your day. So your up to about 7 hours on your log book. Almost a full working day for most you guys. You still have a good 6 hour drive to Vancouver. You get to Kamloops and you hear that the Coquihalla (the smasher) is getting a bit of snow. Do you risk it or do you take the canyon (highway 1). But if you take the canyon it will add about 2 hours to your trip and you are paid by the mile, but the company pays the shorter distance. So you are not paid for that extra distance by taking the second route.
Anyway it's around 6:30 or 7 in the evening in Kamloops. You have 6 hours before your 16 hours has elapsed. Plenty of time to get to Vancouver, but you are tired and would like to take a nap, but you can't because in order to make it before the 16 hour window you need to reset by taking 8 hours off. You decide to go through the smasher. Everything went well and you get to Vancouver around 10:30. 1 hour and 30 minutes of the 16 hour window.

Now an example of how log books do not prevent you from driving tired.

Let's say the morning went well you did your delivery and you are ready to come back to Calgary. There is no load until 10:00 that night. So you sit in your truck because you are well rested form sleeping the previous night. 10:00 comes and you get your load. You are legally able to drive all night back to Calgary tired as hell. What do you do? You quit.
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Old 07-07-2018, 12:19 PM   #563
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Is the texting thing a serious rumour that's being discussed or just hearsay? It seems one person just claimed they heard it as a rumour and then it suddenly dominated the discussion.

Any credible sources on that? I just hasn't heard anything.
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Old 07-07-2018, 12:22 PM   #564
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Let's say the morning went well you did your delivery and you are ready to come back to Calgary. There is no load until 10:00 that night. So you sit in your truck because you are well rested form sleeping the previous night. 10:00 comes and you get your load. You are legally able to drive all night back to Calgary tired as hell. What do you do? You quit.
This is a major breakdown in the system, you nailed it. Time off between trips is considered satisfactory "sleep" time to be rested enough to drive again. But the nature of the trucker life is that you're not always able to sleep during this period.
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Old 07-07-2018, 12:30 PM   #565
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Is the texting thing a serious rumour that's being discussed or just hearsay? It seems one person just claimed they heard it as a rumour and then it suddenly dominated the discussion.

Any credible sources on that? I just hasn't heard anything.
It's just a rumor that my dad was told by someone here. I don't know what connection if any they have to someone involved in the investigation.

Take it with a grain of salt just like every other rumor until details are released.

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Old 07-07-2018, 12:33 PM   #566
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This is a major breakdown in the system, you nailed it. Time off between trips is considered satisfactory "sleep" time to be rested enough to drive again. But the nature of the trucker life is that you're not always able to sleep during this period.
Yes and the 16 hour window. I can be in violation of the 16 hour rule and be well rested, but I can't drive. Also, I have asked DOT clarification on that 16 hour rule and got 2 different answers form them. My question was can you split sleep time to push the 16 hour window. One said yes and the other said no.
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Old 07-07-2018, 12:52 PM   #567
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It's just a rumor that my dad was told by someone here. I don't know what connection if any they have to someone involved in the investigation.

Take it with a grain of salt just like every other rumor until details are released.
Yeah, it'd be nice if in discussions like this these kind of details were not taken at all than with a grain of salt. You can see how it immediately changed everyone's perception and the discussion as a whole.

It's now become a solid part of the narrative that he may have been texting. There's enough tragedy and blame here, no need to add more unless it's verified through police/media.
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Old 07-07-2018, 12:53 PM   #568
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Originally Posted by jayswin View Post
There's law requirement behind how long you can drive. Do you mean the mandated drive time is too long, or are you suggesting most truckers break the law? If you're suggesting the latter I'd strongly disagree.

It happens but it's not common at all, the stakes are too high for fudging or ignoring log books. And certainly in this case if they found he was over hours or manipulated his log book it would be the most prominent piece of information released.
C'mon, really? Drivers run two log books ALL the TIME! You're either ignorant or naive. This is especially true for small companies who want to compete. When I managed a concrete company in Edmonton, Carrier Services conducted a surprise investigation and went through time sheets. The company got fined for several drivers found in non-compliance of Hours of Service (HOS). It was concrete, so commercial work in the day, residential pours when people got home from work, then civil work (ie bridges) at night. Drivers wanted juicy paychecks and accepted it, but at the same time complained about the excessive hours.

And then I managed a Boom Truck company. Drivers would knowingly fudge their books, call the payroll lady to ensure they're not shorted hours, and ask her to make adjustments on their timesheets, thereby pawning off responsibility. If the payroll lady complained, the owner of the company informed her that it was needed to compete in a tough market and if they didn't offer timely service, layoffs could happen. So, guess what happened? Nothing. This practice went on for years.

That was over 5 years ago. Since then I know of two other major organizations that I've worked for who failed an NSC audit.

You have zero idea what you're talking about. Scales can be avoided. Roadside inspection blitzes hit the radio and every trucker is aware of them within hours. And you could literally look up a list of 3rd party NSC auditors and call them to find out how many carriers fail basic HOS regulations if you don't believe me. Call Carrier Services and ask them about investigation findings and statistics. The struggle is real.
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Old 07-07-2018, 01:05 PM   #569
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Originally Posted by dre View Post
This is not a typical day of a truck driver but it does happen. Sometimes regulations do more harm than good and force the driver to complete their day.

Most drivers are paid by the mile. You are on the clock as soon as you start your pre trip. That means the government has set a window for you for your work day. You have 16 hours to do what you have to do. Let's suppose your load is to be delivered in Vancouver the next day. It takes about 12 hours to get there. Pre trip is 8:00 am. Minimum of 15 minute pre trip on the truck. 8:15 you drive to warehouse to pick up your trailer. You get there at 8:45 and after the paper work and locating your trailer it's 9:00. Trailer pre-trip so another 15 min. You finally start your trip to Vancouver at 9:15. You haven't been paid yet. Everything is going great until you get to Revelstoke (4h30 min). They started avalanche control at Three Valley Gap. It takes 2 hours off of your day. So your up to about 7 hours on your log book. Almost a full working day for most you guys. You still have a good 6 hour drive to Vancouver. You get to Kamloops and you hear that the Coquihalla (the smasher) is getting a bit of snow. Do you risk it or do you take the canyon (highway 1). But if you take the canyon it will add about 2 hours to your trip and you are paid by the mile, but the company pays the shorter distance. So you are not paid for that extra distance by taking the second route.
Anyway it's around 6:30 or 7 in the evening in Kamloops. You have 6 hours before your 16 hours has elapsed. Plenty of time to get to Vancouver, but you are tired and would like to take a nap, but you can't because in order to make it before the 16 hour window you need to reset by taking 8 hours off. You decide to go through the smasher. Everything went well and you get to Vancouver around 10:30. 1 hour and 30 minutes of the 16 hour window.

Now an example of how log books do not prevent you from driving tired.

Let's say the morning went well you did your delivery and you are ready to come back to Calgary. There is no load until 10:00 that night. So you sit in your truck because you are well rested form sleeping the previous night. 10:00 comes and you get your load. You are legally able to drive all night back to Calgary tired as hell. What do you do? You quit.
I would not wish trucking on my worst enemy. Companies are getting cheaper and rarely pay a living wage by the hour. Furthermore, they don't want to pay WCB, commercial insurance, and be subject to statutory liabilities, so they only hire "contractors" and make full-time drivers pay that.

Furthermore, the system punishes drivers. If you have a license plate light out, your subject to a pre-trip fine, even though the company knows about it and pumps out kilometers rather than shutting trucks down for maintenance. Drivers need money because they're paid like crap, so they roll the dice. They get fined, try to get the company to pay it, but the company refuses.

By law, the driver is supposed to refuse to drive a truck with any major defect and refuse to drive if a minor defect has been reported over 24hrs ago. If the driver refuses, the company calls him a "defiant" worker who's not a team player. So the driver is eventually fired after taking more than 15 minute smoke breaks. Driver wasn't given proper cargo straps, they face a fine (despite it being the companies responsibility). And worst of all, companies won't hire drivers who have a poor commercial abstract. But nobody cares if a company has a poor R-factor on their carrier profile.

Sure, carrier services conduct investigations, and there's the odd NSC audit, but it's way after the fact and highly reactive. There's like 30K Carriers in the province and only a handful of investigators.

Last edited by MarkGio; 07-07-2018 at 01:59 PM.
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Old 07-07-2018, 01:15 PM   #570
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Yes and the 16 hour window. I can be in violation of the 16 hour rule and be well rested, but I can't drive. Also, I have asked DOT clarification on that 16 hour rule and got 2 different answers form them. My question was can you split sleep time to push the 16 hour window. One said yes and the other said no.
Ugh, this what's funny about HOS; nobody has a good grasp of it.

You cannot exceed 16hr on duty status in a given 24hr window unless you fall under the exemptions, such as being an emergency responder, there's a natural disaster happening, or your a city bus driver on a scheduled route.

There is a 2hr grace for extreme weather. That's it. Drivers think they can defer 2hrs, team drive, or manipulate the 16hr rule by having a bunker. All of that is false.

Keep in mind these exemptions do not apply for federal carriers. Only AB ones who stay within the province.
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Old 07-07-2018, 01:34 PM   #571
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All classes of licenses are way too easy too attain, but I can't believe how many terrible truck drivers I've encountered since moving east of the city, near the CN rail yard. Some of them are complete strugglers or else complete dickheads. I'll be cruising down the highway at the speed limit (trust me, you are unwise to speed around here) and a truck with a sea can will pull out right in front of me regularly.

Stuff like that is frustrating and dangerous. Most of the time when I'm on my little highway, there are very few vehicles. If I'm literally the only car coming, why the F do you pull out in front of me, causing me to brake hard, and proceed to take 90 seconds to get up to speed?

I guess I know the answer to that. They don't make money if they're slow, so to hell with everyone else; gotta get paid. There is one intersection I go through daily, that I slow right down for, because there are trees blocking the view from where the trucks are coming from. I often see rolling stops from these guys coming from the direction of their yard at that intersection, where the highway has no stop, but they have a stop sign.

I feel bad for the safety-first drivers when I say this, but automated trucking or hyperlinks can't come soon enough. People need to make money to survive. I get that. And the trucking industry is tough. So once you remove the person that needs to hurry up for the sake of getting paid, you're left with autonomous vehicles that DGAF what time they arrive, they simply follow the rules, and get there when they get there.

But for every bad truck driver I've encountered, I have shared the road with 100 of them that were driving just fine. This isn't about all truckers, it's about the dangerous ones that are unqualified and/or reckless.
Ever profession has its bad eggs and it's pros. I will say this about trucking:

1) It doesn't require the slightest high school or post secondary education
2) Investment into the career is cheap (ie, less than 5 grand in most cases)
3) It's appealing to those want a "gravy" job. New drivers think it's not physically demanding relative to roofers or concrete finishers or military personnel.

The combination of these factors give you a worker who is often uneducated, relatively lazy, and looking for quick and easy cash. Now, I've met a lot of good truckers and it takes a special breed to face the chaos of Granny's on the road who cut you off on a regular basis, so I hate depicting all drivers in this manner.

But I've rarely met a driver who wasn't fully understanding of the Traffic Safety Act and Commercial Vehicle Regulations. The class 1 program briefly touches on it nowadays in the written exam, but for ol'time truckers that wasn't always the case. Even today's written exam is very watered down version of what is needed to know.
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Old 07-07-2018, 01:37 PM   #572
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What do you mean by manipulating bunker time(I am assuming splitting your sleeper birth)
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Old 07-07-2018, 01:42 PM   #573
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What do you mean by manipulating bunker time(I am assuming splitting your sleeper birth)
Yeah, sleeper birth. You have minimum sleeper birth times in a 24hr window, but your still subjected to 16hrs in the SAME 24hr window.

So basically, your off-duty time is still 8hrs in a 24hr block, but your basically screwing over your sleep if you want to split it. Drivers only utilize the sleeper birth so they can maximize kilometers in that 24hr period (ie, drive at night when traffic is bare).
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Old 07-07-2018, 02:14 PM   #574
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Yeah, it'd be nice if in discussions like this these kind of details were not taken at all than with a grain of salt. You can see how it immediately changed everyone's perception and the discussion as a whole.

It's now become a solid part of the narrative that he may have been texting. There's enough tragedy and blame here, no need to add more unless it's verified through police/media.
Fair enough, I should have just kept it to myself and waited for details to be released. I figured that by adding "rumor" that people would hold judgement until the actual reason was released.
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Old 07-07-2018, 02:40 PM   #575
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Fair enough, I should have just kept it to myself and waited for details to be released. I figured that by adding "rumor" that people would hold judgement until the actual reason was released.
Unfortunately people take one persons speculation as the undeniable truth. Especially when they want to direct their anger towards something and the speculation helps that. It doesn't even have to be a conscious thought to do so.
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Old 07-07-2018, 03:48 PM   #576
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Yeah, unfortunately there isn't much difference between unsubstantiated and substantiated rumours when it comes to group discussion online, things move too fast and the info that started it gets lost. You bring it up, it eventually gets added to the narrative.
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Old 07-07-2018, 09:09 PM   #577
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What are the chances that uncovering issues with the driver will actually cause positive change to the industry? Will they blame the driver in isolation or look at the circumstances that put him in that place, at that time, without the tools to do his job safely?

Some industries seem to be bulletproof.
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Old 07-07-2018, 09:45 PM   #578
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What are the chances that uncovering issues with the driver will actually cause positive change to the industry? Will they blame the driver in isolation or look at the circumstances that put him in that place, at that time, without the tools to do his job safely?

Some industries seem to be bulletproof.
Or even just the general mindset of people.

I've seen so many comments here and in other places about the attitude that running stop signs is OK if "its almost always safe" or some such nonsense. Its a stop sign. Stop. That's it. In bike terms, an Idaho stop is one thing, but running it at 80% of full speed is entirely different.

Seriously, the industry might have its own issues, but the population at large is more at fault, in my opinion.

Throw the book at the driver, and actually start ticketing the morons that run stop signs, urban, rural, whatever.
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Old 07-08-2018, 12:28 AM   #579
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I found when I was driving out to the Winnipeg to see the inlaws by Swift Current you'd get so zoned driving those straight monotonous roads it was easy to drive through lights or stop signs, especially in the winter when everything was white, the sky the ground everything
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Old 07-08-2018, 07:32 AM   #580
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I work in office for a large national carrier and things are a lot different for our guys. Everyone is on electronic logs and if you go 10 minutes over you'll have our safety department calling you and shutting you down. Electronic logs are going to become the law for every carrier in very short order, so there won't be any fudging of paper logs any more like there was in the past. Our drivers also get paid waiting time if they are stuck in road closures/weather, layovers if they have to stay somewhere overnight due to bad weather, safety bonuses (additional money per mile) for hitting certain milestones without accidents, full authority to shut down if they are feeling too fatigued or if conditions are too dangerous, etc.

I'm sure things are very different at the small carriers, but at the big boys safety and regulations are VERY important and focused on. Probably our biggest focus.
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