this post was submitted on 19 May 2025
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[–] wetbeardhairs@lemmy.dbzer0.com 70 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago) (5 children)

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.

[–] Lv_InSaNe_vL@lemmy.world 42 points 6 hours ago (8 children)

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.

[–] MonkeyBrawler@lemm.ee 2 points 1 hour ago (2 children)

Who tf references a truck driver blacklist?

[–] Lv_InSaNe_vL@lemmy.world 6 points 1 hour ago

This is gonna blow your mind... But other transportation companies...

Truck driving companies.....??

[–] Fiivemacs@lemmy.ca 43 points 5 hours ago (2 children)

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

Those companies would deploy this shit anyways even if the logs were perfect. Anything to blame the employee can and will be deployed.

[–] Lv_InSaNe_vL@lemmy.world 2 points 1 hour ago

Look I can tell you that no company wants to spend enormous amounts of money (we spend close to 7-figures per quarter for asset tracking) and pay an entire team of people to micromanage drivers. Plus companies and drivers make less money because they have to actually follow the rules now.

ELDs have been around for a really long time. It didn't become standard until 2017.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 21 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

Those companies would deploy this shit anyways even if the logs were perfect.

I want to say that businesses are famous for spending enormous amounts of money to fix a solved problem sarcastically but I've been working too long to believe it.

Still, so much of the problem isn't with the monitoring but the annoying middle-management response of stack-ranking all the drivers. Rather than just playing your hand, big employers are constantly trying to reshuffle and "optimize" staff in order to squeeze out an extra ounce of profit. And the end result is everyone being immiserated in order to give someone with a marginal fluctuation in performance a raise.

Anything to blame the employee can and will be deployed.

Shit rolls downhill.

[–] AWistfulNihilist@lemmy.world 42 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] HelixDab2@lemm.ee 5 points 2 hours ago

Trucking used to be a way a person could provide for their family, remain independent, and feel in control.

Still can. There are still owner-operators, and they have significant control over how they do their job, as long as they aren't caught cooking their books (...which is what most drivers used to do before there were crackdowns, because you got paid per mile). They usually get paid a lot more than fleet drivers, because fleet drivers aren't responsible for the maintenance of the truck.

[–] SoftestSapphic@lemmy.world 30 points 6 hours ago (2 children)

The safe way to fight back is through the trucking unions, which don't seem interested in getting rid of this invasive software.

But if every trucker did this they couldn't blacklist them all.

[–] Lv_InSaNe_vL@lemmy.world 15 points 5 hours ago

Unions aren't interested in pushing back against the invasive software because they know drivers haven't been following the rules.

Basically nobody in the industry wants this. It makes it harder to do our jobs, it's more annoying, and it's crazy expensive. But it's what you gotta do when drivers run 2 or 3 log books.

[–] bradorsomething@ttrpg.network 10 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah, this is a problem of pushing compliance to a level above the operator in an area where the perfection demanded by policy relies on traffic behaving perfectly, and drivers never experiencing delays or problems, to operate. The only way this goes away is a scarcity of drivers.

Someone who believes they know how to drive will suggest automated trucks, but the accident lawsuits will probably bankrupt the first companies.

[–] MDCCCLV@lemmy.ca 2 points 4 hours ago (2 children)

It would work if you made lanes for self driving trucks.

[–] Saledovil@sh.itjust.works 17 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

You could then tie a bunch of trucks together, and have them run on this special lane.

[–] dgdft@lemmy.world 15 points 2 hours ago (2 children)

This is brilliant! You can even let the front truck pull all the others tied behind it so you need fewer working engines.

What if you added guide rails to the lane so the trucks didn’t have to steer?

[–] YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today 6 points 2 hours ago

And we could manage traffic stops when one is going to cross another street so it can save on fuel for not having to stop!

[–] milicent_bystandr@lemm.ee 7 points 2 hours ago

I dunno, companies would start cutting costs by firing all but the front driver. Need strong unions in place before that.

[–] bane_killgrind@slrpnk.net 3 points 2 hours ago

Yeah, and you assume other drivers won't drive in the wrong lane

[–] wetbeardhairs@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 6 hours ago (4 children)

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.

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[–] frozenpopsicle@lemmy.dbzer0.com -3 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

So, what I'm hearing is "don't struggle or it's gonna hurt more". I think this advice is horrible.

[–] Lv_InSaNe_vL@lemmy.world 5 points 1 hour ago

No. It's two things.

  1. 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.

  2. 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.

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[–] Decq@lemmy.world 33 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] MDCCCLV@lemmy.ca 19 points 4 hours ago

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.

[–] daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com 89 points 9 hours ago (7 children)

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.

[–] milicent_bystandr@lemm.ee 1 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Another comment said unions aren't interested in getting rid of this.

[–] daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 56 minutes ago* (last edited 55 minutes ago)

Not my experience.

In my job they are trying to do something similar (AI driven productivity control) and unions are fighting against it.

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[–] jerkface@lemmy.ca 14 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

20 years ago truckers were offended by GPS tracking

[–] reksas@sopuli.xyz 13 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago) (1 children)

Its understandable though. Even though its also understandable the company would want to know where the trucks are, its also telling the drivers that they dont really trust them to do their job without surveillance. It should be enough that the freight gets delivered within agreed time and not too much fuel is used up in the process.

Personally i would compare the gps to office having sensors that record constantly which room you are occupying. With the ai its like having a camera constantly monitor exactly what are you doing at every given moment. And if you do anything company doesn't like you will be punished. Not only is it insulting, its exhausting having to ceaselessly consider is everything you are doing acceptable to whatever sensible or insensible rules the corporate executives have decided.

People who want to be truckers most likely are kind of people who like working by themselves and not having to answer for every single thing they do at every moment and now even that is being taken away from them.

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[–] Wilco@lemm.ee 10 points 7 hours ago

Quit. Let them know why you quit. You are a truck driver and can get another job within a week.

[–] null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com 47 points 10 hours ago (2 children)

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.

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