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Last year and the year before that I remember these guys on the news bitching and moaning that they had to use GPS enabled phones. I can't say I am surprised at this story. ON the way back from work today (cleaning job) I saw no less than 10 trucks parked underneath an underpass (GPS doesn't work under bridges) and right next to this underpass is a Dunkin Donuts.

Plow drivers charged with cheating state
By Associated Press
Friday, March 11, 2005

HINGHAM, Mass. - As snowplow driver Paul V. Gratta made his rounds during a fierce winter storm, the state police troopers tailing him say they saw him stop along the road, put a device tracking his movements in a paper bag and leave it sitting in a pile of snow.
With the global positioning system sending out its signals from the snow bank, it would appear to Massachusetts Highway Department officials keeping tabs on the crews clearing snow that Gratta was idling alongside the highway.
But Gratta was actually doing more lucrative private plowing jobs at the same time he was being paid $105 an hour by the state, Attorney General Tom Reilly said.
"He was pretty crafty and shrewd,'' Reilly said at a news conference near the same stretch of Route 3A where Gratta was making his rounds. "He left that GPS in that bag near where they generally stop for coffee. So that would have been the explanation for that: that he had stopped for coffee or to get a bite to eat.''

For the apparent double-dipping, Gratta, 50, of Cohasset, was charged Friday with fraud and larceny, along with employee and alleged accomplice Frank Eddy, 33, of Hull. Both pleaded innocent at their arraignment in Quincy District Court and were ordered to return to court on April 14.
Gratta, owner of Hull-based Hub Construction, has been a state snow plow contractor for 15 years, said his attorney, Robert L. Jubinville.
"I think it's a kind of sketchy case from what I know of it,'' Jubinville told The Associated Press. "It seems to me to be a big fuss about nothing. It'll work itself out through the court system.''
Messages left at Gratta's home and at Hub Construction on Friday were not immediately returned. A phone listing for Frank Eddy could not be located.
The alleged scam was an end-run around the GPS system that MassHighway put in place last winter. Worried about fraud, the state began requiring its plow drivers to bring along a phone containing GPS technology, so officials would know whether they were doing the assigned work. [continue]