Do you have to violate laws/regulations laws to meet schedules? Perhaps malicious compliance and adhere to all laws. As some have said, a union could help. If you don’t have to violate laws/regulations to meet schedule, perhaps consider adhering to laws/regulations.
Give your truck a lobotomy.
Stick a chewing gum on the thing’s speaker and start singing songs with very dirty and explicit lyrics, like gangsta rap and Bloodhound Gang.
All day long, everyday.
Persuade your colleagues to do the same.
They will have an endless string of report notifications they can’t do shit about.
Fight smart.Edit: still the best thing to do is unionize as many others already suggested, but fighting on more than one front is a good tactic, wars are won by exhausting your opponent.
- Talk to your union
- If you don’t have a union, form one
- If no one else cares, get a new job trucking
As much as others may hate it, hexbear has actually pinned great sources to start your own union.
Hexbear has a lot of good things, it’s just it’s users are sometimes a pain.
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No. If you want privacy, transportation is the wrong career. Trains are much the same.
Those Solera devices you’ve got are relatively common automotive IoT fleet trackers. They usually have gps antennas. They talk to the engine and transmission directly over canbus. Then they process that data and report what they see over a cell network. If they see nothing, they report that too with a heartbeat signal and various error codes.
Depending on the model, they sometimes have external cell antennas connected with a mini coaxial cable. Find it and unscrew it all the way, then re-screw it in by only 1 and a half rotations so it’ll hang on but barely. Then clip the nearest ziptie so the cable wobbles free. It’ll cause the nut on the coax to get a stress fracture in under a year. They will have to replace the gps/cell antenna module and those are like $300 a piece through Samsora. In the meantime you’ll get iffy signal responses. Don’t let them catch you cutting the zip tie on camera or you WILL lose your job.
Your truck will be in the maintenance shop relatively frequently at the request of whoever reads the reports for repair of that cell module. They won’t find anything wrong with it, scratch their butts, then just screw it back down and replace the ziptie.
Unscrew it and clip it again.
don’t let them catch you, you WILL lose your job
Hey director of IT for a trucking company here, i just want to reiterate this part!
Don’t fucking do this. Any of this advice. You WILL lose your job and we WILL blacklist you from the industry for this shit. Maybe if you drivers could actually mange your fucking log books and follow the safety regulations we wouldn’t need to have ELDs and camera and GPS and fucking canbus monitoring and annual inspections and all of the other “”“invasive nonsense”“” the government requires.
I dont want it either. Its all crazy expensive, annoying to manage, and I have to constantly deal with drivers complaining about it.
Sorry. I’m a little upset with this issue because its a constant issue i have at work. But no there is nothing you can do besides just get another job.
I just want to reiterate it again. Do NOT mess with the equipment your company has in your truck. At best you’ll just get fired but I’ve seen my company respond with legal measures in the past.
Man i have had drivers i work go full on road rage. No really he reached up and tried to tuen off the camera. Im not sure if had a fake button or he jist pressed the wrong on. Bit he the grabbed a gun and got out. This was after pushing a car in the cement baracade.
Its crqzy what some people do in cars
I’m a little upset with this issue because its a constant issue i have at work.
maybe find a new job where you don’t act like completely garbage manager? or work to find a human centric solution rather than… oppressive digital technologies?
I hope you end up with a neurolink in your skull and are constantly monitored for wrongthink.
you drivers could actually mange your fucking log books and follow the safety regulations
you are part of the reason everyone hates management. the overburden of society by technofascists like you will result in many horrible repercussions down the line.
giving nerds any power over workers was a mistake
Hey so it’s actually the federal department of transportation that decides we need super invasive tracking! And they decided that after a ton of accidents directly caused by drivers not paying attention and working crazy hours.
I also don’t want to pay or manage this crap but here we are.
Counterpoint: I would love to not be run over by a truck driver that decided that when redbull stops working a swig of whiskey will help him be awake after skipping the night sleep. You know how I know that I would love to not be in this situation? Because this exact situation happened to me and it sucks, even though I survived.
If anal probes is something that prevents heavy equipment operators from breaking the rules, so be it. I would prefer them not need that also.Personally I’m very pro-probe. All the probes, all the time.
My dude. How would you like a camera over your shoulder every minute of your workday, recording your every move? What might you do faced with that?
shown it my nuts
Name checks out
Nice
I work in an office with cameras ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
“I’m oppressed so I must also oppress those I have power over”
What’s their justification for needing them?
I sure hope they don’t use the word “team.” Because that ain’t it.
Its an office space we lease. I am not sure who originally installed them as they were there when we moved in.
We do manage them and retain the recordings though.
…and you’re okay with being recorded all day long, just like that?
I understand the practical limitations of privacy. But as the IT admin i am also the one who manages the cameras and access to them so that helps.
If i were a new employee I would see it as a lack of trust. Also as some kind of buy-in to the idea that you must be doing “justifiable” actions every minute of the day.
And that’s completely understandable.
But I know, at least in our case, it’s just there for insurance purposes in case something happens. Which, thankfully nothing has.
You’re the fucking problem. Maybe if you treated people with humanity and worked towards a common solution instead of using technology to drain people’s souls, you wouldn’t have people that hate the shit you’re slinging.
What you do makes the world a worse place to live in.
He didn’t say he was management and bought the stuff. He said he worked in IT. So with any power to make decision across a fleet.
I appreciate you defending me, but I did say I was director of IT so unfortunately I am management. But it wasn’t me deciding to install this stuff on our fleet, it was the federal government.
I’m also a supervisor at work but I don’t always get to decide on things. Often senior management gets an idea in their head and then I have to figure out how to implement it without breaking everything.
I do get to say I’m against something and I told you so. Which is usually followed by a compromise solution.
The director of IT at a trucking company absolutely would have power over the devices used by said company.
Trucking is so funny. There is an adversarial relationship between the drivers and the office, which you can see in this comment.
The industry is trying to solve safety issues caused by the nature of long haul driving and maintenance of profit in logistics by companies that use their services.
Trucking used to be a way a person could provide for their family, remain independent, and feel in control. Now, trucking is an industry where you are trapped in a moving computer designed primarily to reduce the insurance rates of the company that employs them, because their business practices and demands were so dangerous, individuals truckers had to drive more hours, get paid less for those hours, and literally drive themselves, and other motorists around them when they crashed, to death.
Then they blame the truckers as they race to bottom in hiring. Don’t even get me started on nafta. Your industry sucks for the employees who are necessary to keep the economy moving.
Reading this thread is really selling that dream job.
You all keep doing what you’re doing and there will be no drivers left to squeeze out and make their life even more miserable.truckgpt will be here soon, unfortunately
The IT lackey just trying to make ends meet has no say in this process.
ah, the just following orders guy
this is a similar argument to the nazis. this is how bureaucracy and management normalize oppressive conditions. a bunch of weak yes-men
Reductio ad Hitlerum is a really weird thing to pull out of your ass on this particular discussion.
idk man, it only happened like 80 years ago. seems to be more relevant than ever.
That’s the idea. Replace them with driverless vehicles.
Who tf references a truck driver blacklist?
This is gonna blow your mind… But other transportation companies…
Truck driving companies…??
So, what I’m hearing is “don’t struggle or it’s gonna hurt more”. I think this advice is horrible.
No. It’s two things.
-
Maybe truck drivers should have followed the rules better and drove safer. Drivers cooking their books have caused enormous amounts of harm and death, and that’s ignoring the huge loss of money when a driver crashes because they’ve been driving for 26hrs straight.
-
Don’t fucking damage company property. This is actually my biggest sticking point for this whole thing. I dont care if you like it or not, the hardware is not fucking yours and the hardware being there is part of your employment agreement. Don’t like it? Tough shit buddy take it up with the DOT.
Look, Jim, I know you don’t like the explosive collar we bolted to your neck, but you’ve GOT to stop messing with company property
-you
No its more
This thing is not owned by you and is required by the federal government. Please dont damage our very expensive hardware
But yeah blow it up to an unreasonable level and anything sounds crazy.
The only part required by the govt is the electronic logbook. It doesnt need gps. It doesnt need ai. It doesnt need cell. It only needs the electronic logbook. So yeah - blow it up
Fun fact, ELDs require GPS. It’s easy to find public information. There is also this web page which goes into more details about the “why” we have to have ELDs installed in trucks.
And the cell service is to allow the actual device to communicate back to the parent. At my company we use Samsara and Motive.
We do not use any AI features because we don’t need them but I have talked to guys at other offices that do use it. Largely it’s because of insurance. You can get crazy discounts on insurance for running something with the AI tracking. There are also some AI programs that optimize routing but those are “”“AI”“” features not necessarily AI.
That’s an awesome sermon from somebody who knows literally fuck all about trucking.
The industry created the problem by demanding that drivers go beyond any form of reasonable work, drive endless unsafe stretches and cook the books or they’re the ones getting canned. It’s an industry which downloads all the pain onto the drivers.
Shut the fuck up when you don’t know what you’re talking about. Don’t just show up to scold people and make crap up and pull things out of your ass. You know nothing about trucking and that’s clear.
I like how you ignored the part that actually upsets me about this.
Don’t fucking damage company property
-
Well the whole bit about backing out the nut is to cause it to fail in a manner that looks more like a maintenance problem and not a driver problem. Even when stuff like that only happens on one cab, it’s not enough to point at a singular driver.
And yeah all of that advice comes with the rider that “you may be unemployable” afterwards.
Yeah I get that. But you aren’t clever and you aren’t the first one to think about that.
We will catch you
Eh, that’s never true. Some people will be caught. And the typical person who gets their CDL only works a few years before they realize the industry sucks for drivers and burnout.
I’m not going to claim a 100% catch rate, because that’s impractical.
But we absolutely do frequently fire drivers for tampering with their trackers. Theres about 15 layers of checks and balances preventing a driver from disconnecting or otherwise disabling it.
Man getting unemployment sounds like heaven.
Doubt it
Lol I don’t care about OP getting caught. This isnt the r/goodlifeadvice
You know there’s plenty of control freaks micromanaging everything underneath them even if it pisses off their best people to the point of quitting.
Especially those 1 or 2 rungs higher up the chain who need to make up problems to solve so they can justify their existence and build their profile.
Shit in the glove compartment to assert dominance.
Cup holders are just cups to hold your cups…piss in them.
This is the reason Unions exist.
Individually you have no power. As a group you do have power to force them to revoke these decisions.
Your choice is joining a Union or not.
Only if US drivers would stop driving like idiots and idling their motors wasting fuel.
Don’t American cars have a start stop automation that stops the engine as soon as the car isn’t driving? Or are they also disabling it?
It exists in some cars, but it’s clunky and anyone with used car experience gets a jump scare every time it happens. It’s really only well implemented in hybrids.
That’s gotta burn out starters really fast.
The few times I’ve heard anyone discuss auto stop/start in Oklahoma, it was to complain about it or comment that they’ve disabled it. Meanwhile in my work vehicle, the stop/start has saved hundreds of hours of idling over the car’s lifetime, and it’s only about halfway to being retired.
You form a union and bargain with your employer. Thats about it though
Or seek greener non-ai-infested pastures
Yea give up to A.I. that’s the only choice.
Don’t be a pussy.
I think you misunderstand what a union does.
Pretty sure literally nobody here said that
Try to fight your company without organisation and you will be giving up your job. Look up the laws wherever you are and form a union. Be smart about it though and dont get caught in the act of forming it.
that’s what your company wants you to believe
Nope, refuse.
Are you paid by the hour or per delivery? If by hour, malicious compliance. Stay 5mph below speed limit because you don’t want to be flagged. AI doesn’t recognize the street as such? Take a long detour, it didn’t allow me to take that route. It complains about overtaking? Never overtake ever again someone was to close to the truck when you tried to back in? Never back in again unless the premises is completely clear of people. Oh and find a better employer. An employer that doesn’t trusts its employees is never worth it.
It’s usually per mile if its long haul, which is the root of all the problems because that incentivizes the driver to go faster and spend less time on other things. And it fucks the driver over because they don’t get paid if they’re not moving, even if they’re waiting on someone else.
You seem kinda despairing and dismissive of the obvious answer… talking to your union.
You have no power over your employer, but your union does.
Additionally, and this is kinda wild but, have you spoken to your supervisor? What did they say? Did you explain what it is about it that’s so annoying?
I’ve worked as a consultant for companies that use this type of thing and most disable the verbal warnings and stuff because they’re not helpful in any way.
Not all of us have Unions… Just saying
Sure ok.
IDK how things roll in the US. In Australia I think most jobs can find a Union.
Even if you don’t formally unionise, talking and negotiation is the way to resolve this. If all the drivers express their misgivings to their supervisor in unison they’re likely to be heard.
In the US the manager is likely to tell them all to pound sand if they dont like it. We have very few workers rights here sadly. You are correct that being in a Union would be much better. I wish we had more of that here, but a lot of people believe the BS that they get fed from thier corporate overloards that Unions are bad.
Whats wrong with joining a union? Some 50 yrs ago, over 80% of factory workers were unionized, today its more like 30% iirc. Its not because unions dont work, its because they do and companies spend copius anounts to get them discredited.
JOIN A UNION.
I love how people talk about joining a union like it’s making an order on Amazon.
If it was that easy bro probably wouldn’t be asking for help.
The reality is in a lot of cases the easier thing to do is quit and fuck everyone else.
Unions do very little to make it easier to create a new one if you are not part of one already, and even if you have the will, you also need the network, people skills, patience, money and contacts to make it work.
Okay, I have to assume you dont actually know how unions work.
Unions arent employer specific. They can be industry specific but they dont have to be.
You just put your city or the industry you work into your favorite search engine and give the first 5 pages a cursory look. Whatever seems most interesting, you do a little research about. It the impression is net positive, you join them. Most unions also have some kind of solidarity thing where people who dont have a lot dont have to pay a lot.
In return, they help you with work problems, help you find new work in some cases and even strike with you.
Please join unions.
Are you in the US? I just tried that for my job and found exactly as many options as expected. I’ll give you 0 guesses how many it was.
I am not, which I realize is a huge privilege at this point in history. I’ve gone ahead and just searched workers union in atlanta (first city that came to mind) on duckduckgo and found this: https://ufcw1996.org/
You can also join the international version of the union which i am a member of. They’re more radical and demand system change and quite large, depending on the country: https://www.iwa-ait.org/
I realize that the us has been completely gutted in terms of unions. That does not excuse not trying to join one and it is exceedingly stupid to blame anyone but the powers that be for this.
Individualizing systemic oppression is one of the largest weapons against an organized population. Making you hate your neighbor, the local soup kitchen etc for some bogus reason is what isolates people an makes them easy to manipulate.
Keep that in mind if you get frustrated with democracy inducing organizations sometimes not being perfect. “Perfection” is another bogus idea of our sick system. “Works” is what we should strive for and noting more because that means more exploitation of life.
I wish you a good read and feel free to contact me if you need help.
Unfortunately, there is nothing you can do. “Tattling” programs are quickly becoming a staple of any sort of logistical jobs. Companies will parade it around as if it keeps people safe, or it protects the honest employees. It’s designed to give them reasons to get rid of you.
You speak the truth.
I know it sucks. And corps are playing with the automation line. They don’t want to replace too many jobs with automation because that will trigger the need for UBI to off-set the amount of jobless people no longer driving the economy. So, instead they’ve resorted to “churn and burn” practices. Things that allow them to burn people out and toss them aside and make it the workers fault.
I program tattling programs for non-logistical industry. It does let us know if people mistreat equipment or even break speed limits. But what pays the bills is predictive maintenance or responding to reactive maintenance needs more quickly. We can reduce scheduled maintenance for longer and prevent failed parts from causing too much damage.
Sure it’s a different industry but generally employees are expensive to hire and even more expensive to lose. Losing a job because of a number in an algorithm that decides to tattle is rare unless that employee is a total piece of shit that we were looking to sack for other reasons. Usually its a “Dude samsara told us you blew the speed limit in this town and we’re going to get fined out the wazoo and you’ll lose your DOT license. Dont do it again”. If they do stupid shit again and get caught by the police, they might lose their DOT status for some number of months and be unemployable until it is restored. So really it is a safeguard to prevent that from happening in the first place and helps them KEEP their jobs longer.
More than that. It’s designed first to enrich insurance, AI, and other business interests, to drive down wages and eventually replace humans with autonomous vehicles. Irobot.
Yeah, in a world where we are short of drivers and they are hiring questionable people, they are looking for reasons to fire you.
Doubly funny if OP is American, where you simply don’t need reasons to fire people.
Right to work is very misunderstood online. It’s not the freebie everyone seems to think it is.
If you terminate sometime without documented cause, you can’t deny their unemployment claims and must keep paying them in all 50 states.
The myth that they can fire you with no recourse is something they want everyone to believe so that nobody files for unemployment. when they’re entitled to it.
That’s definitely going to change in this political climate. There will be states where the head of the unemployment insurance will just stop paying at Trump’s direction and ignore court orders. MMW
This is true in every state but Montana.
