EOBR's & Mentoring

This past Tuesday I woke up in Whitewood, Sk feeling worn out, tired and grumpy.  That's unusual for a truck driver! *sarcasm*  I was trying to figure out how to get from there to do a drop and a pick in Winnipeg then get back to Edmonton by Thursday morning without showing a violation on my EOBR.  It wasn't going to happen.

Now we all know that the sun is always shining, the roads are always clean and dry, there is no construction, traffic on Canadian highways always travels at 100 kph and there is a bypass around every town in northern Ontario.*more sarcasm*  So it makes sense that when I leave Ayr, On. and my total trip is 6,400 km that it will only take 64 hours plus the required time for pretrips, pick & drops and fuel stops.  Well under the 70 hours I'm allowed.

You can imagine my surprise when my EOBR (hooked into the trucks ECM & wired to a sensor on my drive axle) tells me it takes 72 hours and 29 minutes just to drive it! *even more sarcasm*  That's before I log any on duty time.

Hmmmmmmmm.

I'm not opposed to running actual time/miles.  Just citing that example to make it known that we all have work to do on this issue.  The changes lay in communication and training.  At least in this truck drivers opinion.  More on this down the road.

Mentoring and training keep coming up on my radar lately.  Maybe it's because I've been testing the EOBR for a while and I'm a target for information, and that's okay.  I was surprised to hear from a newer driver that the first company he worked for paid him a whopping $150 a week for spending time with a driver/trainer.  Ummmm, $150 per week?  I thought he was pulling my leg.  He wasn't.  As companies grow in size and smaller companies are eaten up by them I can see an increasing problem.  We can have tremendous training been done at the entry level that stresses safety and following the rules.  But once you have your ticket and are sent out on the road the picture changes.  There's too many driver's out here still white knuckling it through the mountains and wondering why they are on the log audit s**t list every month.  It's not from wrong intent or lack of effort.  It's lack of knowledge and experience.  A little quality mentoring goes so far in this business.  It puts the new person at ease and builds their confidence.  Throw them out there on a hope and a prayer and you shatter their confidence and stress them out.

Seasoned driver's talk about the good old days.  I think what they really miss is the network.  The mentoring of new drivers and sharing in the good times and the tough times.  We manage much more by the bottom line these days.  Big corporations, big money, lots of employees.  Glad I work for a privately owned small to mid size company that focuses on values.  I heard a saying many years ago: "Profit is the result of good management, not the reason for it".  I have always liked that.