The practice of falsifying driver hours is an open secret in the industry; truckers routinely refer to their logs as “comic books.” Fines are small. The federal motor carrier agency does not have the staff to monitor closely 700,000 businesses and almost eight million trucks.
Timothy L. Unrine, a 41-year-old driver from Virginia, said in a recent interview that he was taught to conceal excessive driving hours during training last January by his former employer, Boyd Brothers Transportation of Birmingham, Ala. Mr. Unrine said his orientation instructor told his class that government inspectors were allowed to examine a monthly logbook if it was bound. But if the staples were removed, the log was considered “loose leaf” and inspectors could require an examination of only those pages from the most recent seven days, Mr. Unrine said the drivers were told.
Company officials advised drivers to use fuel credit cards that recorded only the date, not the time, of the fuel stop, he said.
Mr. Unrine added that the company pushed him to work longer hours than permitted, and that his logbooks were “adjusted” many times to make it appear he was within the limits. Several times, when he told a dispatcher he was too tired to make another trip, he said, he was ordered to do so after just a few hours’ sleep.
“I never felt safe driving under these conditions,” said Mr. Unrine, who left Boyd last June because of a legal dispute over medical bills from a fall. “I talked to many drivers on the fuel islands, truck stops and rest areas. Logbooks are so fake; it scares me that there aren’t more accidents on the road.”
Richard Bailey, the chief operating officer at Boyd Brothers, and Wayne Fiquett, the company’s vice president for safety, disputed Mr. Unrine’s claims. They said that drivers might have been instructed to keep only seven days of log entries, but denied that they were encouraged to violate the rules.
We have run into a fair bit of this in our practice; I was amazed at the allegations about Boyd Brothers. Here’s hoping they are not having these problems today.