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this post was submitted on 19 May 2025
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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.
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.
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.
My dude. How would you like a camera over your shoulder every minute of your workday, recording your every move? What might you do faced with that?
shown it my nuts
Name checks out
I work in an office with cameras ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
"I'm oppressed so I must also oppress those I have power over"
What's their justification for needing them?
I sure hope they don't use the word "team." Because that ain't it.
Its an office space we lease. I am not sure who originally installed them as they were there when we moved in.
We do manage them and retain the recordings though.
If i were a new employee I would see it as a lack of trust. Also as some kind of buy-in to the idea that you must be doing "justifiable" actions every minute of the day.
And that's completely understandable.
But I know, at least in our case, it's just there for insurance purposes in case something happens. Which, thankfully nothing has.
..and you're okay with being recorded all day long, just like that?
I understand the practical limitations of privacy. But as the IT admin i am also the one who manages the cameras and access to them so that helps.
maybe find a new job where you don't act like completely garbage manager? or work to find a human centric solution rather than... oppressive digital technologies?
I hope you end up with a neurolink in your skull and are constantly monitored for wrongthink.
you are part of the reason everyone hates management. the overburden of society by technofascists like you will result in many horrible repercussions down the line.
giving nerds any power over workers was a mistake
Hey so it's actually the federal department of transportation that decides we need super invasive tracking! And they decided that after a ton of accidents directly caused by drivers not paying attention and working crazy hours.
I also don't want to pay or manage this crap but here we are.
Counterpoint: I would love to not be run over by a truck driver that decided that when redbull stops working a swig of whiskey will help him be awake after skipping the night sleep. You know how I know that I would love to not be in this situation? Because this exact situation happened to me and it sucks, even though I survived.
If anal probes is something that prevents heavy equipment operators from breaking the rules, so be it. I would prefer them not need that also.
Personally I'm very pro-probe. All the probes, all the time.
You're the fucking problem. Maybe if you treated people with humanity and worked towards a common solution instead of using technology to drain people's souls, you wouldn't have people that hate the shit you're slinging.
What you do makes the world a worse place to live in.
He didn’t say he was management and bought the stuff. He said he worked in IT. So with any power to make decision across a fleet.
I appreciate you defending me, but I did say I was director of IT so unfortunately I am management. But it wasn't me deciding to install this stuff on our fleet, it was the federal government.
The director of IT at a trucking company absolutely would have power over the devices used by said company.
Reading this thread is really selling that dream job.
You all keep doing what you're doing and there will be no drivers left to squeeze out and make their life even more miserable.
The IT lackey just trying to make ends meet has no say in this process.
ah, the just following orders guy
this is a similar argument to the nazis. this is how bureaucracy and management normalize oppressive conditions. a bunch of weak yes-men
Reductio ad Hitlerum is a really weird thing to pull out of your ass on this particular discussion.
idk man, it only happened like 80 years ago. seems to be more relevant than ever.
truckgpt will be here soon, unfortunately
That’s the idea. Replace them with driverless vehicles.
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.
Yeah I get that. But you aren't clever and you aren't the first one to think about that.
We will catch you
Eh, that's never true. Some people will be caught. And the typical person who gets their CDL only works a few years before they realize the industry sucks for drivers and burnout.
I'm not going to claim a 100% catch rate, because that's impractical.
But we absolutely do frequently fire drivers for tampering with their trackers. Theres about 15 layers of checks and balances preventing a driver from disconnecting or otherwise disabling it.
Lol I don't care about OP getting caught. This isnt the r/goodlifeadvice
Who tf references a truck driver blacklist?
This is gonna blow your mind... But other transportation companies...
Truck driving companies.....??
So, what I'm hearing is "don't struggle or it's gonna hurt more". I think this advice is horrible.
No. It's two things.
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.
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.
That's an awesome sermon from somebody who knows literally fuck all about trucking.
The industry created the problem by demanding that drivers go beyond any form of reasonable work, drive endless unsafe stretches and cook the books or they're the ones getting canned. It's an industry which downloads all the pain onto the drivers.
Shut the fuck up when you don't know what you're talking about. Don't just show up to scold people and make crap up and pull things out of your ass. You know nothing about trucking and that's clear.
I like how you ignored the part that actually upsets me about this.
Don't fucking damage company property
-you
No its more
But yeah blow it up to an unreasonable level and anything sounds crazy.
The only part required by the govt is the electronic logbook. It doesnt need gps. It doesnt need ai. It doesnt need cell. It only needs the electronic logbook. So yeah - blow it up
Fun fact, ELDs require GPS. It's easy to find public information. There is also this web page which goes into more details about the "why" we have to have ELDs installed in trucks.
And the cell service is to allow the actual device to communicate back to the parent. At my company we use Samsara and Motive.
We do not use any AI features because we don't need them but I have talked to guys at other offices that do use it. Largely it's because of insurance. You can get crazy discounts on insurance for running something with the AI tracking. There are also some AI programs that optimize routing but those are """AI""" features not necessarily AI.
You know there's plenty of control freaks micromanaging everything underneath them even if it pisses off their best people to the point of quitting.
Especially those 1 or 2 rungs higher up the chain who need to make up problems to solve so they can justify their existence.
Man i have had drivers i work go full on road rage. No really he reached up and tried to tuen off the camera. Im not sure if had a fake button or he jist pressed the wrong on. Bit he the grabbed a gun and got out. This was after pushing a car in the cement baracade.
Its crqzy what some people do in cars