van line haul distance

[RLENT]

Since relying on personal responsibility has been a failure in all areas it's been tried in the alternative of sensible regulations has been implemented ... at least in theory sensible.

Good grief man ........ that's ..... well .... just .... wow .... I'm speechless ....

Lemme just think about that for a minute: "personal responsibility has been a failure in all areas it's been tried"

.... wow ....... do you even actually realize what that says about your view of the nature of your fellow man ?

I guess I see it quite a bit different than you: while it is possible to find individual, isolated instances where someone has failed to exercise personal responsibility and conduct themselves ethically, by and large the vast majority are responsible and ethical - and they would be so, even if no rules existed whatsoever.

Not all of them are sensible and that's a shame. Pretty much all of them are necessary.

Well, speaking from a broader perspective, you must be really pleased about the current state of affairs in this country - with almost every aspect of life being highly regulated.

If that is your view of what freedom is, and what it means to be free, you and I have vastly different understandings.

As to your subtle or maybe not so subtle insults to me, yes, I drove an HOS truck and now am moving into a van.

No insult intended to you personally whatsoever .... however you may fairly assume that I find some of the ideas you are expressing beyond the pale .... and I find that downright scary ....

No, I haven't hauled van freight yet however I do know something of the industry, certainly enough to have a valid opinion towards it.

Well I would certainly think that ought to be case .... however .....

While under HOS I always exercised good judgment, some of those times being when the piece of paper said I was fine to drive and knowing better I said I wasn't and refused to do so.

That's good - you were being responsible - so I guess that in at least that one case, we have an instance where personal responsibility actually managed to triumph .....

I've been in somewhat similar, if slightly different circumstances (in that I have no constraints in terms of HOS) a number of times - like just yesterday (Wednesday): Dispatch called me with a load - it was a decent load (albeit a little high on the deadhead) - 824 loaded miles and 184 miles to the shipper to make the pickup.

I had a decent week going so far at that point, and running those miles that early in the week I would have been sitting pretty by Thursday afternoon. While i enjoy the scenery, that ain't the sole reason I'm out here.

The load picked up immediately, and delivered straight-thru.

I didn't even bother to ask what it paid - I just explained that no, I wasn't interested .... because I couldn't do it safely.

The Load Planner that called me about it looked at my info on the computer and said: "Oh ...... yeah .... I see you just dropped (another load - a fairly long one) .... no problem, I understand." Done, case closed.

Now before some nimrod goes down this road, in response to the above, let's just get it out of the way:

Some will say: "Well, considering that you just dropped, Load Planning should have never even called you ....."

Oh yeah - iz that right ?

Is that what you really want - someone, who, unbeknownst to you, filters the load offers you receive - without even bothering to inform you about it, or give you the opportunity to decline ? A little more Nanny-ism ? (like we already ain't got enough ?)

Think about that one very, very carefully.

I suppose if you are one of those types who feel you can't depend on yourself to make sane, rational choices and to do the right thing, well then ...... yeah ..... you probably need someone else to police you. Go ahead, sign on up .... just don't try to inflict your personal shortcomings on me ... cause I ain't havin' none of it. They're yours - not mine - please hang onto them.

If there are no finite limits, many folks will push the limits, some of them doing so often. Eventually some of that group will push too far and someone will suffer because of it.

The fallacy here is finite a rule, regulation, or so-called "limit" will actually stop an irresponsible or unethical person from doing something bad.

Seems to me that case has been made with regards to guns: outlaw guns and the only ones who will have them are criminals and other unethical and irresponsible types - the very thing that the law or regulation was intended to prevent. And if I had to guess Leo, you yourself have probably made that argument ... and likely on more than one occasion.

There will always be ways to "get around" such limits - big trucks do it now, with those that fudge their logs.

All it would do is criminalize yet another behavior .... which is probably just peachy - if you want to end up living in a society of criminals.

The key lies in education, and the fostering of personal responsibility and ethics - not in the application of force to compel certain behaviors. It would take some intelligence, and maybe even some wisdom to figure out how to do that .... any idiot can use force to try and alter the behavior of another .... if you doubt it, go hang out at a bar sometime ....

You don't care. I do.

Oh .... I absolutely do care - more than you may ever possibly know. Remember: I have actually lost a friend in an accident out here - so please keep your self-inflated ego in check - and don't lecture me about what I don't and do care about - I can assure you: .... you don't have a clue.

 

[RLENT]

Please be serious... good grief. Advocating regulation just for the sake of regulation? Have you crossed over to the Dark Side ?

Sometimes it's just amazing the quarters from which things come .... especially when you thought you knew them so well

BTW - 2000 loads ..... very impressive ...... well done !

 

[RLENT]

I think someone is really yanking our chain here.

Bzzzzzzzt ...... wrong ...... not even.

Greg,

I'm not ignoring you - I've wanted to reply to some of what you wrote and the issues that you have raised ..... unfortunately only so many hours in the day. I've actually started to ..... hopefully I'll get a little spare time in the next 24 to do so.

Right now I gotta go take a shower and then head up to KC though. Maybe after I've had some of that rest/sleep that us - how did you put it .... "yahoo frickin' cowboys ?" ........ seem so adverse to .....

 

[highway star]

When I entered this biz 11 years ago, 2 things were commonly said about cargo vans. 1, that being subject to HOS was going to happen at any time, and 2, that they were going to disappear from the industry. Neither of these things has happened. With HOS having been through a major change, it certainly would have happened then if it was on any significant radar.

I'm with Aristotle, show me the numbers that suggest there's even a remote possibility that a change is needed. Of course there's been accidents, that will never change.

Leo, regs will be an assurance of safety? C'mon...

 

[Moot]

Good morning boys and girls. Did you sleep well and have pleasant dreams last night? I thought so. Today we will learn a new word. That word is NO. Can you say NO? There, I thought you could. NO is a small word which can have a huge effect on our daily lives.

If dispatch offers you a load that you feel can't be completed safely and on time, what do you say? NO! Very good. If Mr. McFeely wants to show you the backroom at the post office, what do you say? NO! See I knew you could say NO. Sometimes in the real world we must say NO. We can't spend all of our time in the land of make believe. Keep practicing saying NO while I change into a clean cardigan.

 

[greg334]

Rlent,
I know you're not ignoring me.

The problem I am having is that you are tying the work we do with the right to drive or it looks like that.

We work under the same laws and regulations, there are no real exceptions but if you as a van driver don't need to log in 49 states, great, but this does not exempt one from running their vehicle under rules that are setup for safety - like those for sleep.

Any DOT officer can put you, a van owner/driver out of service for 10 hours if they want to under those regulations and there isn't a thing you can do about it. It is not an infringement on your rights as much as the CBP officers inspectiing your sleeper at the border, these are things we have to do to maintain our privelge to drive a commercial vehicle.

I understand what Leo is getting at, but I also know that we as truck drivers didn't give up anything to be in the cab, we fulfilled the requirements to be there.

Yea I think you are yanking our chain with all of this, because you are not the "yahoo cowboy" who is reckless but an intellegnet person.

 

[Turtle]

It is difficult for me to speak on this issue without becoming livid. I will try, again. Where are the statistics showing highway fatalities caused by expedite van drivers?? I imagine that number to be so small, almost nonexistent, that it does not merit tracking.

I was going to respond to Pilgrim on this issue, but didn't. Now, I'm forced, forced I tell you, to respond.

Apparently, a lot of people don't know why bigs and straights have to log. Like Highway Star says, people have been saying for a long time that cargo vans will soon, any day now, any minute, be subject to HoS and logging. Why hasn't it happened with all these cargo van accidents? Where are the numbers?

Well, the numbers are there, actually. Carriers track any and all accidents for big trucks, straight trucks, and cargo vans. To wit:

"...cargo vans are only one tired-driver accident away from being subjected to the same HOS regulations as straight trucks. This mandate would have NOTHING to do with an infringement on individual freedoms - it's about public safety."

Well, when is this back-breaking, cargo van accident of a straw going to be placed on the camel's back? Fact is, cargo van accidents happen a lot. A lot, a lot. Yet cargo vans are not subject to HoS regulations, no one is screaming for it to happen (other than those who are subject to the regulations) and the FMCSA isn't even considering it. Why not?

As Pilgrim so vividly pointed out, if a cargo van loaded with 2500 lbs of ball bearings has a head-on collision with a mini-van carrying a soccer mom and 5 kids, they're just as dead as if they had been hit by a straight truck. Well, yeah, but they'd also be just as dead if they had been hit in a head-on collision with a Toyota Camry or a Lincoln Navigator.

The rate of accidents, and the numbers of associated fatalities and injuries, of cargo vans is exactly the same as that of the non-regulated general public. The numbers are tracked and reported by the carriers to the FMCSA and the NHTSA. These raw numbers numbers were presented as part of several studies at the recent Distracted Driving Summit, which dealt with all facets of public safety and not just distracted driving. Distracted driving with cell phones got the headlines, but the Summit was about far more than that. CMV's were discussed, the 85th percentile speed limits were discussed (which is really kewl, by the way, especially when presented with the data on the relationship with aggressive driving), and accident rates of all vehicle types.

From the Summit: The 100-Car Naturalistic Driving Study tracked the behavior of the drivers of 100 vehicles equipped with video and sensor devices for more than one year. During that time, the vehicles were driven nearly 2,000,000 miles, yielding 42,300 hours of data. The 241 drivers of the vehicles were involved in 82 crashes, 761 near crashes, and 8,295 critical incidents.

When accidents and accident rate information from the FMCSA is compared with the 100-Car and other studies, the numbers don't change. When cargo vans have an accident, the frequency with which they happen, and the end result with respect to injury and fatality, exactly mirrors that of the general driving public. Thus, cargo vans present precisely the same risk to the general public as, well, the general public does. There's no outrage over cargo vans, and regulating them would have little to no impact on public safety.

On the other hand, when a truck gets into an accident, the accident is usually a devastating one, like a plane crash or being hit by a train, where the fatalities outnumber the injuries.

Big trucks scare the public, anyway, and both the reality and the public perception is, everyone gets killed in an accident with a truck, except the driver... the driver walks away. And that's what pіsses people off, and that's why trucks are regulated with HoS. In an accident with a van, the fatalities are less, the same as with with the regular driving public, and the van driver is killed at the same rate as that of the driving public. If most van drivers walked, and most of the people in the other vehicle didn't, there would be outrage, and regulation.


As a side note to Greg: "We work under the same laws and regulations,..."

No we don't. Non-regulated vehicles absolutely do not operate under the same laws a regulations as regulated commercial motor vehicles. The DOT regulations are very specific about this.

"Any DOT officer can put you, a van owner/driver out of service for 10 hours if they want to under those regulations and there isn't a thing you can do about it."

No they can't, and yes there is. Cargo vans are not subject to HoS regulations, and I promise you, a DOT officer cannot put a cargo van driver OOS for 10 for violating HoS regulations. And if he does, you can bet there is something you can do about it. The only laws and regulations that a DOT officer can apply to an unregulated cargo van are the ones that also apply to the unregulated general driving public. Some exceptions like Michigan notwithstanding, having DOT numbers and a carrier name on the door does not make you a commercial motor vehicle and subject to the US DOT laws and regulations of a commercial motor vehicle, unless you actually are a commercial motor vehicle at the time, with placarded HAZMAT or with 14 legal Mexicans stuffed into van.


Incidentally, on a side note to Aristotle: "Would you prefer the government stipulate your food habits? Overindulgence of food kills millions every year."

The Government Makes You Fat

My new favorite term for soft drinks: Liquid Corn.
Fascinating.

 

[greg334]

I just got a bunch of emails from different DOT contacts about vans.

I sent them five qeustions, one about under 10k vehicles, one about drivers, one about Fatigue and Sleep, one about insurance and one about record keeping.

All of them responded to all the questions

One question is "Does the driver of an under 10k vehicle used for commerical purposes have to follow the Federal Regulations outside of the need to scale within your state and have complete duty logs?"

So far out of 30 emails, I have all yes's.

A few emails explain about duty logs, a few went into the BOL, load securement and even insurance. So they are not letting the vans just slide.

By the way, Alabama no longer has a different set of regs, they follow the feds now so no more logging and scales for vans.

Honestly Turtle, I am not trying to slam van drivers outside of the idiots who take big risks. There is needs for a lot of enforcement of different regulations in this business and we are all the same because we make money off of this, not doing it for fun. The issue really is safety, not freedoms or rights but safety.

 

[RLENT]

I just got a bunch of emails from different DOT contacts about vans ..... So far out of 30 emails, I have all yes's.

Yeah ...... and you can contact IRS personnel with tax questions and I think the surveyed rate of error was something on the order of 90% ... or some such astronomical amount ... and they are the very folks charged with enforcing the Federal tax laws ....

IOW, I ain't impressed.

Heck, I called a local Ohio State Highway Patrol office near where I live - one which specifically had a unit that dealt with Commercial Vehicle enforcement .... and the officer that I spoke to (which was the guy that was with CMV enforcement) told me that they didn't care how heavy your vehicle was loaded (in excess of GVWR) .... as long as you had the vehicle plated correctly for the amount of weight you were carrying.

Huh ?

Do you really think that is correct ?

Would you rely on that officer's advice, or interpretation of the law ?

Bottomline: I can read, and I am more or less literate ..... at least to some small degree - I don't need some so called "authority" to interpret the law for me and tell me what it "means" .... so that I can then slavishly follow it .....

If it is written, I can read it and most times make sense out of it ... unless it is written in Lithuanian or something.

There is needs for a lot of enforcement of different regulations in this business and we are all the same because we make money off of this, not doing it for fun. The issue really is safety, not freedoms or rights but safety.

That is the issue you want it to be .... some of us view it a bit differently .....

I certainly don't think that "we are all the same" ...... no way, no how ........ (probably just a bad choice of words on your part)

Like I said to Leo ..... if you believe that somehow laws, regulations, and rules are the be all and end all, in terms of getting people to have/possess/maintain a sense of personal ethics and responsibility, then you must indeed be very happy with the present state of the Republic ...

 

[LDB]

No, I am not happy with the way things are and no I don't think laws/rules/regulations are a great thing. I don't need them because I will always say no when I want to or need to. I don't care if it makes the dispatcher mad or whatever, if I believe I will not be 100% safe I will say no. Not everyone is willing to do that. It is for those people that all of us must endure all the laws/rules/regulations we currently endure, in all areas not just trucking. Those people are out there. I don't want to rely on their common sense to do the right thing because they don't have it. That's the whole point. There is a subset of our group, whether that group is vans, 6, 10 or 18 wheel trucks, that are going to abuse the system in the absence of laws/rules/regulations prohibiting it. There is a subset of that subset who are going to abuse things regardless and I don't know how you keep that from happening. The first set will follow the rules if they are in place and that reduces the pool of potential accidents/problems. That's been my position all along and remains so.

 

[RLENT]

Good morning boys and girls. Did you sleep well and have pleasant dreams last night?

Actually .... I did have a dream last night .... although it ended up being far from pleasant:

I was driving down a lonely stretch of road out in the middle of nowhere, in the wee hours of the morning. I had just passed a open scalehouse a few minutes earlier. I looked back in my mirror and saw a vehicle's headlights appear over the hill behind me. It was approaching at a very high rate of speed.

Pretty soon the blue lights came on and I pulled it over on the shoulder. I rolled the window down and placed both my hands outside so that they were in plain view of the officer, as he approached my vehicle, with his gun drawn. He was standing just to the rear of my door and I could see the gun out of the corner of my eye ..... when he said ominously "License and registration please ......"

I got them out and handed them to him, continuing to look more or less straight ahead .....

Then I heard him say: "It's YOU !"

I turned my head to look at him ..... and it was Leo ....

"Boy ..... you in a heap o' trouble ....."

 

[Turtle]

"A few emails explain about duty logs, a few went into the BOL, load securement and even insurance. So they are not letting the vans just slide."

No, they are not just letting vans slide, but many of the the laws apply to the general driving public as well. If my van is clearly overloaded and an officer suspects that I'm overweight, they can require me to pull into the scales, or they can weigh me right there with portable scales. But they can also do that with Bubba in his F-150 or Bubba Anne in her Bronco. BOLs are covered under instate commerce laws, or interstate commerce laws, depending, regardless of the type of vehicle, be it a truck, van or station wagon.

BOLs are a motor carrier authority requirement, regardless of the type of vehicle that is used to carry the freight, be it a truck, van, car or moped. Same with insurance. If you haul freight, even on a moped, your carrier is required to have insurance to cover it, and most carriers will require you to pay for it.

There are no laws, rules or regulations that apply specifically, and solely, to commercial motor vehicles, that can be applied to the general public (A.K.A., any non-commercial vehicle), unless the same law, rule or regulation specifically applies to all vehicles. I promise you, the laws governing commercial motor vehicles only apply to commercial motor vehicles. The laws governing the general public apply to everyone, commercial or not.


"Honestly Turtle, I am not trying to slam van drivers outside of the idiots who take big risks. There is needs for a lot of enforcement of different regulations in this business and we are all the same because we make money off of this, not doing it for fun. The issue really is safety, not freedoms or rights but safety."

Oh, I know. And that's why most carriers treat vans the same way they do trucks, even though most of the rules and regulations don't apply to vans. They have to as an attempt to get van drivers to "think" like big trucks. The more of the CMV regulations they can get vans to abide by, the better, because it is safer, by and large. Most van drivers have never driven a big truck, and are therefore not really cognizant of the seriousness or the level of responsibility that is required to be a professional driver. They've been driving all their adult lives, so how hard is it to drive a van? Never enters their mind that there's so much more to it beyond merely driving a van than they can fathom.

I still maintain that the general driving public should still have to take, and pass, the CDL test in order to get a regular operator license, simply because of the increased knowledge and awareness. For example, someone driving a car really doesn't need to know about the importance of securing freight insofar as you should check the freight securements every 3 hours or after each 150 miles, or about GVW and balanced loads, but in having to learn it, and pass it on the test, it will not only make them more aware of what commercial vehicles have to deal with, but it will make them better drivers if nothing else in having to learn about centers of gravity, shifting loads, and how a vehicle's handling characteristics can change depending on how it's loaded, so that maybe they won't cut off a cattle hauler which results in dozens of cow legs snapping.

You should see the typical written test they administer to regular operators in Germany. People here would be doing deer impressions if presented with such a test.

 

[Turtle]

Isn't Lithuania a Slavish State?

 

[RLENT]

Isn't Lithuania a Slavish State?

..... knew there had to be a reason I couldn't understand it ...... I don't habla Slavish

 

[OntarioVanMan]

WoW..I come back to all this....

Sure speaks volumes....don't be messin with us van drivers...leave us alone...

 

[blizzard2014]

Ban the van!!!

Hate the srtraight!!!

Chuck the big truck!!!

Put the cargo on a train!!!

 

[comet_4298]

Well, I guess next week,we all be going into the scales after the right or wrong person gets ahold of this discussion.

 

[OntarioVanMan]

I can remember when I was a kid....
some of my uncles were truckers some carried guns and some baseball bats..it was and still is a dirty business.. the dirtier the better and more successful you are....swing the biggest bat and roll all over the competition...
and the when I was in my early/mid 20's so was I...one thing I learned real quick....Trucking is still a dirty business

Some of us pansy drivers in expedite have tried to sanitize the industry...maybe on a singular effort you might clean up your little part of your world...but as far as getting freight and pricing and swinging deals with other fleet owners..skulllduggery is still the buzz word....cut throat!

It is a penny/nickle game and you are either all in or fold'em and walk away.

Most of us wouldn't have survived the 40's/50's...
There is nothing fair in trucking...the strongest survive, the weak fade away or get beat down.

 

[OntarioVanMan]

Well, I guess next week,we all be going into the scales after the right or wrong person gets ahold of this discussion.

I think this discussion went well...most of us veteran van drivers showed that we do discipline ourselves fairly well....

It is those nasty straight drivers want to jam their rules down our throat so we won't be taking their freight off the dock...they want to "level the playing field". Bunch of darned liberals they are...spread the wealth....extend the HOS to try and slow us down....gee whiz...

 

[Dakota]

It is those nasty straight drivers want to jam their rules down our throat so we won't be taking their freight off the dock...they want to "level the playing field". Bunch of darned liberals they are...spread the wealth....extend the HOS to try and slow us down....gee whiz...

That's the plan