The Wild And Wacky World Of Qualcomm And E-Logs

Since it is apparent that Sat/Cell in cab communication and electronic logs (saying Qualcomm and E-Log is kinda like calling all colas Coke) are now as much a part of today's trucking world as traffic, construction and weather; I thought it might be fun for those of us using them to share funny occurrences we've had dealing with them.

Let me introduce you to Nancy. She's a parsnikity little thing made by Qualcomm. She keeps track of my logs and tells me things my company wants me to know and has a built in G-P-S. Ain't that cool? It's a trucking one too so it knows where not to send me (yeah right). Never used one before. It's always been the laminated Rand McNally, truck stop guide and a notebook I wrote my turns and routes on in a very unique shorthand. She'll play tunes for you and she has the same games as Windows default and she'll even monitor your performance like MPG and other performance metrics the company is interested in. Pretty neat stuff, but I don't think she likes me. Her sister seemed to like the fellow that showed me how to use her in Disorientation, real well. They got along great. Nelly did everything he wanted with his slightest touch of her screen. All that cool stuff. She was so quick and cooperative, such a better way than my old ways. Couldn't wait. This is gonna be great. Should have gone with this years ago. Then I met my Nancy. Nancy and I . . . not so much so. She won't do the fun stuff. Plus she has an attitude sometimes. She talks funny too. She read me the daily Safety Message that first day and I think some fellow in Greece sent it and forgot to translate it to English. Plus I think the old girl had a stroke a few years back because she gets real confused about things. She thinks St. Louis and St. George is Street Louis and Street George, and St. Augustine is Street AwgUstInee. AND if I don't have to load or unload the load she says; "Driver load unload north." Huh? Girl, we're heading south. Whatchou talkin bout unloading north? You need a nap or something? Then she gets in her moods where she doesn't want to talk to me at all. Usually just when I want her to the most. I admit, these past 2 months I've gotten slack and after 2 months of learning her language and using her GPS sometimes I take off without writing down the local directions. I don't need to write down my route most times because using these E-Logs and running legal I get to run the big roads and don't have to dodge scales so I know where I'm going until I get local. I just use her GPS to compare her route to mine and remind me of upcoming turns and I don't have to do math counting mile markers (she keeps a running count of how many miles left in the trip) and I don't have to guess how many more miles than dispatch told me the trip really is. She'll tell me exactly from point to point - as long as I follow HER route. Which she's fussy and real sensitive about me following HER route. It hurts her feelings and makes her mad when I know something she doesn't and don't follow HER route. Like yes that is 30 miles shorter but all hairpin twisty turny state routes in the mountains and I have a 40K pound load and it'll take me 2 1/2 days to go 400 miles shifting 6,7,8,9,8,7,6,7 all day and not getting it into the big hole even once. I remember that route. Not taking it again unless real light. Nope, taking the big road and making human time even though it's longer it's MUCH faster. Used to be OK running paper. Just do what you gotta do and make the paper fit. Not now. See Nancy's also a spiteful tattletale and keeps 4 DOT countdown timers on me counting every minute of my time. She'll rat me out and announce to the WHOLE world (at max volume - calling me by my given name) "YOU ARE OUT OF DRIVING TIME. ANIMAL HAS VIOLATED THE HOURS OF SERVICE REGULATIONS". Then that's ALL she wants to talk about. Me being a "violator". Everytime the directions pop back up she knocks them back off and announces that I'm in violation. "I never violated a thing in my life you little snitch. Fudged a little here and there but it wasn't violating. Well, maybe it was just a little. Ok more than a little. Now just put the directions back on or I'm gonna be a big violator again taking the grand tour of the city when YOU know right where to go. Heifer! I knew I shoulda wrote the local directions down!" Then she decides to tell the whole world I'm a speeder. In a 65MPH truck. "ANIMAL HAS VIOLATED THE COMPANY SPEED LIMIT. A SPEED OF 71MPH FOR APPROX 1 1/2 MINUTES WAS DETECTED ON I81 AT GPS XXX.XX IN VA." Sweetie, it was a big hill. VA is eat up with them. The speed limit was 70. It was 2 hours ago. Can we talk about what a bad driver I am later and get those local directions back? Pretty Please? I'll introduce you to a nice IPad I know. "OUT OF ROUTE. PLEASE DRIVE TO ROUTELINE BEHIND YOU OR REROUTE FROM HERE." "Reroute please". "ANIMAL HAS VIOLATED THE HOURS OF SERVICE RGULATIONS. What are you doing Animal? Please pull me back in the truck. It is unsafe for me to hang out of the window. My chord may break and I may become damaged. Please roll the window down and pull me back inside or I will have to report this unsafe behavior." "Add it to your list sweetheart."

In all seriousness we get along pretty good now and I've actually grown quite fond of her. Like my wife, she aggravates the tar out of me but she keeps me straight and when we disagree all I have to do is leave her alone for a day and we're both all better. That's a good thing.

Animal, I've enjoyed your twisted sense of humor, it's always refreshing to hear a truck driver who can look at the realities we face with a chuckle instead of a bunch of belly aching. I'll tell you that my "Nancy" is a mute. The sound never has worked on this truck's qualcomm (this is my third truck). Twice the repair guys have offered to fix it for me when I was at the terminal and I respectfully declined their services. Sometimes I just prefer to have Nancy's company without all the running commentary on my driving and the route we should be taking. We get along just fine as long as she doesn't say anything!

Our Nancy is a pain. The company I work for doesn't let her have GPS, instead I get turn by turn directions that are a pain to line up with my gps. She also has a bad stutter. Sometimes the home button gets stuck (they said it was a brand new one but I cleaned gunk out of most of the buttons, so I KNOW it's been used somehow, perhaps a cupholder was it's previous job). When she get's stuck on home, this is what I hear: "Ho...ho...ho....ho...ho...mess...ho...ho...mess..." until she gets unstuck. Longest stretch was 7 minutes. Dear lord, I tried everything I could to turn the sound off on that one.

That little chirp is great, except now I hear birds and I start looking for the qualcomm. And when I get a load in, the chirps last forever it seems and then she starts trying to talk over herself.

Oh, and some guy named Arystoph Machuir is on my reports. Apparently he does all the driving and the company can't fix it.

Nancy can't count either. My husband and I had noticed some little errors between our book keeping and hers. We found out if we took our thirty minute break in the last hour of the 8 hour time, then somehow when we get off that thirty minute break we have 5 hours left. Try that math out.

And she is laggy!!! It takes a good two minutes to get the red alert flash light to stop after she yells at you about being in your last hour. Can't seem to get her to respond at all to my touch. I've poked gently, hard, at different angles... with different tools. So far the best thing I have found is to use the earpiece of my glasses.

Ah, and if you drive team, make sure the right person is logged in, because even if you put yourself on driving she will change it around as soon as the truck moves. You have to log in everytime you drive.

I turned the volume down to zero on the qualcom-there is a way to do that-was too irritated to listen to that voice.

My Qualcomm once said the F word when it was reading a message sent to me from my DM.

Ours likes to say colorado driver instead of co driver. Montana'a abbreviation of MT makes it say empty. And to hear the thing try to pronounce mexican names, puerto. pooerto lolololol

Ours likes to say colorado driver instead of co driver. Montana'a abbreviation of MT makes it say empty. And to hear the thing try to pronounce mexican names, puerto. pooerto lolololol

I loved when I hit St. Louis because she would say street loo. I thought she was telling me of an English public restroom. Our Dallas terminal is on Peterbilt ave. but she pronounces Peter with the short 'e'. I don't understand because she can pronounce Tucson correctly.

My "Nancy" has a less flattering name. She goes by the name of" *****ing Betty". While she can be very helpful when in her silent mode, she a royal pain for the rest of the time. And just to head off any potentially sexist comments, if she had a deeper voice I would call it *****ing Barry. lol

By the way Animal, I really enjoyed your essay on Nancy.

These are great ya'll. I laughed my butt off Animal. I have a truck PC which I now know is very boring. It only will read incoming messages, nothing more ( that I have found anyway). The voice is so annoying I turned the volume off. It's prounaction isn't any better than qualcom's, trust me. My company has the gps feature turned off. They are such a tease. I got my own anyway. They too give me routes according to some magical route planner software. Mostly good, but I've had a couple I just shook my head over. My FM asked on one trip why it took so long to get there. I simply told him to get me a route without multiple 6-8% hills, take the governer off, and oh yeah give me a hot box for the stop lights that flourish on the route the company choose. He hasn't brought the subject up again for some reason. But when he does, I'm ready with my requestion for at least the hot box.