this post was submitted on 19 May 2025
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[–] wetbeardhairs@lemmy.dbzer0.com 122 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (79 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 85 points 3 months ago (70 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.

[–] Fiivemacs@lemmy.ca 78 points 3 months ago (3 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.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 35 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months 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.

[–] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 15 points 3 months ago

Same old shit. Companies treat employees like machines and numbers on a spreadsheet and demanding more and more productivity while paying lip service to rules and regs yet knowing that employees will skirt, bend, or break the rules to meet whatever sterile metric the beancounters set within the expected window.

Don’t meet the metric? Get some bad performance reviews. Start referencing the safety rules that slow you down? Not a team player. Get fired for some nebulous problem.

Most of the time it’s ignored, but when something goes wrong the company just blames the employee for failing to follow regs.

Automated system reporting just keeps the costs down by creating a higher turnover of employees.

[–] Lv_InSaNe_vL@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months 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.

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