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Toll backs electronic work diaries

Toll linehaul chief Bob Lovf says electronic work diaries will aid chain of responsibility on fatigue

 

A senior Toll manager has called for greater “maturity” in the debate over electronic work diaries.

Toll linehaul and fleet services general manager Bob Lovf says the technology will aid chain of responsibility on fatigue.

“I think the industry has to mature a bit in the debate on electronic work diaries,” Lovf says,

Lovf likens resistance to electronic diaries to some opposition within Toll itself — from people “living back in 1974” — to the company’s mandating of auto slack adjusters for brakes on trucks and trailers.

“They’ve (auto slacks) been mandated around the place – US, Canada, EU etc – for the last 20 years and here we’re still saying we’re different. When you see electronic work diaries operating overseas, why on earth they’re not operating here,” he says.

Lovf says that under chain of responsibility Toll is responsible for the “itinerant subbies” it uses, but apart from well-regulated linehaul trips, it’s difficult to “fully understand” what they do the rest of the time under the current paper-based diary system.

“The only time I’ve seen people get caught on them (logbooks) is when they have made a mistake in filling them out,” says Lovf, a 40-year industry veteran.

“We have to have that debate on electronic logbooks to give us that level of comfort that we know what they do.”

Toll Group media manager Christopher Whitefield adds that electronic diaries “would make a lot of subbies accountable for the hours spent doing PUD work that may not otherwise get captured in paper diaries”.

“Time spent loading and unloading, waiting in queues, inspecting the truck and filling it with fuel are also considered work – as it should be – and an EWD needs to be able to accurately account for this too,” Whitefield says.

Toll says it supports continued research and development on electronic diaries.

You can read our full interview with Bob Lovf in the February issue of Owner//Driver.

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