Not long ago I was sitting in a traffic backup due to a construction zone. On the Citizen Band radio, I heard a lot of talk on how the Hours of Service (HOS) and the Electronic Logging Device (ELD) were causing other truck drivers a problem. This started a thought process in my head on was the HOS and the ELD the real problem they were having difficulty with? As my thoughts drilled down into this subject my answer was “No, it was not a problem with HOS or the ELD… It was a problem with the traffic jam.”
As I sat there in the congested traffic I continued to delve in to what the real problem was. The reality of the situation was that the real problem was the rate of compensation which did not account for the delay caused by the construction zone.
At the end of the day I really don’t have a problem with a shipper, receiver, weather, or traffic conditions. What I do have a problem is when my rate of compensation does not reflect the impact of these delays.
The reality of it is a fourteen-hour day leaves plenty of opportunity to be amply remunerated for your time yet at this point we are putting the main value on miles. The questions become that in the end will the ELD change what we base our rate of compensation on, from miles to by the hour?
An example of this in another profession is when a lawyer is crafting a document the rate of compensation would be the hour not by the number of words needed to complete the document. Could you imagine how long the documents would be if lawyers were paid by the word?
Let me close by saying our time surely would have more value if time was used to measure our rate of compensation. By the way when was the last time you ever heard someone willingly waste a lawyer’s time?