The reality of running fully electronic — with a device connected to the truck’s engine control module automating drive time recording — versus with paper logs or their laptop/smartphone-program equivalents is staring down most owner-operators, as we know. The conventional wisdom is that e-logs represent a threat to income, as you can see in this poll, conducted here at OverdriveOnline.com over a couple weeks. The first graph comprises responses to the question only from those not yet running e-logs:
A whopping 9 in 10 Overdrive readers who haven’t switched to e-logs expect a negative effect on income with ELDs. However, for those who’ve already made the switch, mostly leased owner-operators if trends seen in our surveys from last year hold, actual results show a much more mixed distribution of positive, negative and neutral outcomes, with the last nearly as likely as the negative so many have seen:
Former owner-operator, current company driver (and pseudonymous Channel 19 contributor) Wes Memphis told his story of switching to e-logs at a small-to-mid-size Midwest carrier last year. He returned to the blog a couple weeks back with a report on his own income numbers for the first, mostly full year of e-logs, compared to the year before that. As noted then, he found a more or less neutral effect, though he did make about $50 more, all things considered (and a lot of them at that), in the first e-log year. There were several questions asked in the comments. (Also in those comments, some howled like a President of the United States, delivering charges of fake news and the like, at the reality he noted — that $50 I mentioned earlier.)
In any case, Memphis particularly wanted to respond directly to some the questions, which follow. If you missed his prior check-in, you can read that via this link:
Memphis’ responses follow:
