Fleet Management News & Business Info | Commercial Carrier Journal
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6 commercial carrier journal | march 2018 ELD compliance: Out of excuses After two years to prepare, late adopters struggle to keep up BY JEFF CRISSEY W hat comes first: driverless trucks on the na- tion's highways, or an end to the griping over the new electronic logging device require- ments? Lately, I'm beginning to wonder. Complaints about ELDs were a common theme in open-ended questions on business and economic condi- tions in the 2018 CCJ Economic Outlook survey (page 58). The majority of the consternation over the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's ELD mandate that took effect Dec. 18, 2017, comes from small fleets that are more cost-sensitive to the purchase, installation and monthly fees associated to ELD compliance than large fleets. Survey respondents also cited the ongoing burdens of ELD implemen- tation and accounting for delays due to weather, detention time and traffic conditions. Some states are even getting into the act of stonewalling the ELD conver- sion and not issuing ELD citations during the soft enforcement period that ends April 1. Legislators in four states – Idaho, Missouri, South Dakota and Tennessee – have taken it a step further, introducing legislation to block funding for ELD enforcement and calling for a repeal of the ELD mandate entirely. Let's briefly review how we got to this point. FMCSA's original electronic onboard recorder final rule – pub- lished in the Federal Register in April 2010 – was thrown out before its effective date by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit after the Owner-Operator Inde- pendent Drivers Association filed suit over concerns of driver harassment. Under congressional mandate, FMCSA published the current version of the ELD final rule in December 2015, which gave the industry two years to convert from paper records of duty status to ELDs. However, many drivers and owner- operators accustomed to paper logs took a laissez-faire approach to ELD adoption, optimistic another OOIDA-led lawsuit against FMCSA filed in 2016 would again save the day. After making it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, however, the lawsuit was dismissed, and those that held out hope suddenly found themselves behind the 8-ball with just six months to make the switch from paper logs to ELDs. The upfront cost argument, particularly from a small-fleet standpoint, is valid. But using FMCSA's estimates of running ELDs at an average annual cost of $495 per truck and assum- ing 100,000 miles per year, that would require a rate increase of less than half a cent per mile to offset. In its cost/benefit analysis, FMCSA calculated drivers using ELDs would gain 19 hours of productivity otherwise spent filling out and submitting paper logs, a savings of $705 per year. Overall, FMCSA estimates the ELD mandate will have a $1.17 billion annual net benefit to the industry, avoid 1,844 crashes and save 26 lives each year. Yet the same arguments continue to surface. Take South Dakota's concur- rent resolution, for example. Among other flawed claims, state legislators argue that the use of ELDs "essentially compels a decrease in driving hours and hurts productivity …" Really? I don't recall language in the final rule that changed HOS rules, but ELDs do curb a driver's ability to fudge their way into more miles and minutes past the 11-hour drive limit. The resolution also states ELDs are an invasion of privacy. This again? FMCSA already addressed driver privacy issues in its 2015 rulemaking, and subsequent court challenges by OOIDA have been turned away. In their simplest form, all ELDs do is streamline roadside data transfer, digitize and help automate an archaic paper log process and eliminate the practice of pencil-whipping to make up for delays on the road. Carriers that want to recoup productivity lost when the ELD mandate took effect need to shelve arguments against ELDs and instead get behind efforts to increase flexibility of current hours-of-service regulations and work with shippers and receivers to limit detention time. UPFRONT JEFF CRISSEY is Editor of Commercial Carrier Journal. E-mail jcrissey@ccjmagazine.com. Graphic courtesy of CCJ 's sister publication Overdrive magazine.