Every morning when I get to work, there is a brief moment of peace The office is relatively quiet. The Mountain Dew is cold, I don’t drink coffee. Nobody has called yet. No alarms are going off. No driver has started a conversation with the words, “Mark, I don’t know what happened…” For approximately three minutes, life is good. Then I open Motive. And that is when I find out what kind of day I’m going to have. Some people check the weather forecast. Some people check the stock market. I check Motive. If everything comes up green and nobody appears to have violated the laws of physics, transportation, or the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations overnight, I immediately become suspicious. Because Motive does not give you peace. Motive simply waits.

Good Morning, Mark. Here’s Your Problem

There are mornings when I open Motive and immediately know I should have stayed home. A truck isn’t connecting. A driver is still showing Driving even though he has been parked long enough to grow tomatoes beside the truck. GPS has apparently decided one of our trucks is somewhere it most definitely is not. Somebody’s tablet won’t sync. A log needs corrected. A driver forgot to certify something. Another driver has managed to discover a screen, button, menu, or feature that I have never seen before in my life. And then the phone rings. “Mark, Motive is doing something weird.” Of course it is. Motive doing something weird is not really news anymore. That is just Tuesday. I have reached the point where I can usually tell how serious the problem is by the first five words of the phone call. “Hey Mark, quick question…” Probably manageable. “Mark, I don’t understand something…” We may be here awhile. “Mark, I didn’t touch anything…” Clear the rest of the morning.

Truck Drivers Are Remarkable Human Beings

Now before the drivers start sending hate mail, let me say something in their defense. Truck drivers can do things that most people couldn’t do if you gave them three tries, a map, a measuring tape, and a professional spotter. A good driver can back a 53-foot trailer into a space that looks like it was designed for a riding lawn mower. He can find a customer tucked behind three abandoned warehouses, down a gravel road, with no sign, no street number and directions that basically say: “Turn left where the old gas station used to be.” And somehow he finds it. Drivers will run through rain, snow, wind, fog, ice, construction, detours and traffic jams while piloting 80,000 pounds of equipment. They can figure out how to get into a loading dock that was apparently designed in 1947 for a delivery van. They can hear a strange noise coming from somewhere underneath a diesel engine and say: “That sounds like the left rear inside tire is about four pounds low.” And they’re probably right. These are capable people. Resourceful people. People who solve problems for a living. Which makes what happens next even more fascinating.

Ten Hours Means…Ten Hours

Federal hours-of-service rules require a driver to have the proper amount of off-duty time before driving again. For many situations, that means 10 consecutive hours off. Ten. Not nine hours and fifty-nine minutes. Not nine hours and fifty-eight minutes because “that’s basically ten.” Not “close enough.” Ten. You would think I had handed them an advanced differential equation that would have Albert Einstein scratching his head and asking for more chalk. “Mark, why won’t it let me drive?” “How long have you been off?” “Ten hours.” I look. Nine hours, fifty-nine minutes. “That’s not ten hours.” “It’s one minute.” Yes. Exactly. That is the problem. We are missing one of them. Somewhere along the line, people developed the belief that government regulations operate like horseshoes and hand grenades. Close counts. DOT does not subscribe to that theory. Ten hours means ten hours. This is not negotiable. There is no rounding feature. Motive does not look at 9:59 and say: “Well, bless his heart, he tried.” It waits. For that last minute.

Then We Have the 30-Minute Break

The same mysterious mathematics apply to the required 30-minute break. Thirty minutes. Again, the number has been conveniently placed right there in the name. A 30-minute break. Yet somehow we occasionally get: “Why isn’t my break showing?” I look. Twenty-eight minutes. Because that is not a 30-minute break. “That was almost 30.” Correct. And I was almost six-foot-four and playing linebacker for the Chicago Bears. Unfortunately, reality eventually gets involved. Twenty-eight minutes is not thirty minutes. Twenty-nine minutes is also not thirty minutes. Thirty minutes is thirty minutes. This concept should not require a calculator. And yet I will stare at that screen while somebody on the other end of the phone is trying to negotiate time itself. “But I was stopped.” Yes. “For almost thirty minutes.” Also yes. “So why didn’t it count?” Because almost is doing a lot of work in that sentence. Sometimes I think I should create laminated cards for every truck.

Motive Knows

The problem with Motive is that Motive has no sympathy. Motive does not care that you were only one minute short. Motive does not care that you really need to leave. Motive does not care that dispatch is waiting. Motive does not care that you have been driving trucks since before electronic logs existed. Motive simply looks at the numbers and says: Nope. And then the driver calls me, apparently under the impression that somewhere on my computer is a large red button labeled: IGNORE FEDERAL REGULATIONS AND MAKE THIS GO AWAY

I assure you, there is no such button. If there were, I would keep it locked in a drawer. Probably inside another locked drawer.

“But I’ve Always Done It This Way”

Another phrase Safety Directors hear occasionally is: “I’ve always done it this way.” That is valuable historical information. Unfortunately, it is not a legal defense. I have looked through quite a few regulations, and so far I have not located the section that says: “Unless the driver has always done it this way.” I’ll keep looking. Right after I find the section explaining why 28 minutes sometimes feels like 30.

Then Motive Decides to Join the Fun

Of course, it would be unfair to blame everything on the drivers. Sometimes Motive itself decides we’ve been getting along too well. A truck stops communicating. GPS disappears. A tablet refuses to connect. A driver finishes driving, parks the truck, goes home, eats supper, watches television, goes to bed, gets up the next morning and Motive appears to believe he is still somewhere on Interstate 57 doing 63 miles per hour. Now I become an investigator. Is it the tablet? The cable? The gateway? The truck? The cellular connection? The driver? Motive? Solar flares? At some point all possibilities are on the table. We have had equipment swapped between trucks just to figure out which piece was causing the problem. Sometimes the same box that refuses to cooperate in one truck works perfectly when installed in another. That is when troubleshooting crosses over from technology into witchcraft.

And Then Comes the Magic Phrase

Every person who has ever worked with computers knows this sentence: “I didn’t do anything.” Drivers have their own version. “I didn’t change anything.” Maybe. But something changed. Because yesterday Motive worked. Today Motive believes you, the truck and possibly the entire state of Illinois no longer exist. So we start working through it. Turn the tablet off. Turn it back on. Check the connection. Check Bluetooth. Check the cable. Check the gateway. Stand on one foot facing north. Sacrifice a printer cartridge. At this point, I’m open to suggestions.

The Most Dangerous Moment of the Day

The most dangerous part of my morning is when I open Motive and everything looks normal. No violations. No connection problems. No strange alerts. No missing trucks. No drivers calling. Everything is exactly where it should be. That is not comforting. That is terrifying. Because I know something is coming. Motive is just giving me enough time to drink half my Mountain Dew before it happens. Sure enough, eventually the phone rings. “Mark…” Here we go. “Motive is doing something weird.” Of course it is. “What’s it doing?” “Well…” There is always a pause after ‘well.’ Never trust that pause. ‘I’ve been off for ten hours, but it still won’t let me drive.’ I pull up the log. Nine hours. Fifty-nine minutes. I stare at the screen, take another drink of Mountain Dew, and somewhere I swear I can hear Einstein laughing. Welcome to another morning in trucking. I’m Mark. I’m the Safety Director. And apparently my primary mission in life is explaining that ten means ten and thirty means thirty. Tomorrow morning I’ll open Motive again. Maybe everything will be green. Maybe all the trucks will be connected. Maybe every driver will have exactly the hours he thinks he has. And maybe I’ll hit the Powerball on the way home. I like to stay optimistic.