New Company Policy. Does It Cross The Line?

Bud A.

I quit being a manager partly so I don't have to make or enforce policies any more. The least I can do for my managers is follow their policies the best I can, but that's because I've felt that pain they have from people who fight everything.

This is why I have run my course in the hospitality industry. All I want to do is cook. Nothing more. But that doesn't even begin to cover my bills.

I can't say that this is micromanaging or not. I just know that I want to be as safe as possible, so I don't think that this policy would bother me.

Speeding is obviously serious but there is such a thing as going too far with it too. I mean, why not fire a driver the first time they go 1 mph over? Why not take away someone's CDL for five years? Or throw people in jail? Or put em on death row for 1/10th of a mph over, right? If mean, if we're gonna lock it down and get serious, let's get deadly serious, right? Let's put a stop to this completely. You speed one time and we hang you in public and force your family to live out their existence in a concentration camp.

Yeah, now that sounds a little crazy, right? Well where is that line? Where does it stop making sense and start sounding crazy?

And that's just speeding. What about logbook rules? Is driving beyond the Federally mandated hours not just as serious? If it takes you five minutes longer to find parking than the Federal mandate allows, why should you ever get to drive a truck again? Take away your CDL license permanently if you can't follow a simple rule, right? You get 11 hours a day to drive, 14 hours to do it in, and 70 hours per week to work. If you can't get parked in time then maybe you're too sloppy and undisciplined to be driving trucks on America's highways.

And what about a safe truck? Is that less important than the others? Say you have a turn signal out, you go to change lanes, someone doesn't see it, and you cause a wreck. You could've killed someone! Is having functioning turn signals too difficult for you to manage? Well then so is driving a truck. You lose your CDL for life.

Seriously, where do you draw the line with this stuff?

Sue, you said you're deadly serious about obeying the speed limit. That means you must be equally serious about the logbook rules and having a safe truck. Give me one reason you shouldn't lose your CDL license for life if I find that you went one minute over on your logs or one small safety infraction on your truck. Why should our society tolerate that from you or anyone else, right?

Speeding is obviously serious but there is such a thing as going too far with it too. I mean, why not fire a driver the first time they go 1 mph over? Why not take away someone's CDL for five years? Or throw people in jail? Or put em on death row for 1/10th of a mph over, right? If mean, if we're gonna lock it down and get serious, let's get deadly serious, right? Let's put a stop to this completely. You speed one time and we hang you in public and force your family to live out their existence in a concentration camp.

Yeah, now that sounds a little crazy, right? Well where is that line? Where does it stop making sense and start sounding crazy?

And that's just speeding. What about logbook rules? Is driving beyond the Federally mandated hours not just as serious? If it takes you five minutes longer to find parking than the Federal mandate allows, why should you ever get to drive a truck again? Take away your CDL license permanently if you can't follow a simple rule, right? You get 11 hours a day to drive, 14 hours to do it in, and 70 hours per week to work. If you can't get parked in time then maybe you're too sloppy and undisciplined to be driving trucks on America's highways.

And what about a safe truck? Is that less important than the others? Say you have a turn signal out, you go to change lanes, someone doesn't see it, and you cause a wreck. You could've killed someone! Is having functioning turn signals too difficult for you to manage? Well then so is driving a truck. You lose your CDL for life.

Seriously, where do you draw the line with this stuff?

Sue, you said you're deadly serious about obeying the speed limit. That means you must be equally serious about the logbook rules and having a safe truck. Give me one reason you shouldn't lose your CDL license for life if I find that you went one minute over on your logs or one small safety infraction on your truck. Why should our society tolerate that from you or anyone else, right?

This brings up a very valid point. There's not one of us who follows HOS regs to the letter. If you did there's no way you would ever get anything done and your graph would look like a seismograph during an earthquake.