ELD Comments Pour Into FMCSA

This story appears in the July 7 print edition of Transport Topics.

Comment from fleets, owner-operators and others concerned with electronic logging devices poured into the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration right up until the deadline.

As of July 2, the agency was still posting messages received by the June 26 cut-off date, and displayed 2,092 entries.

The ELD rule, proposed in March, would mandate use of the technology for recording drivers’ hours of service.

After considering the comments, FMCSA will have to formulate and then post a final rule.

 Commenting in favor of ELDs, Reggie Dupré, CEO of Dupré Logistics in Lafayette, Louisiana, said, “Our company has utilized ELDs for over five years, and our drivers find ELDs easy to use and effective for their duty status reporting.

From a company perspective, I believe this is the most effective tool to monitor and comply with HOS rules.”

Dupré Logistics was among the larger carriers that tended to support the proposal. They tended to have desirable experiences with the devices. Small fleets and owner-operators were strongly opposed.

Included in the docket was a university study commissioned by FMCSA that found the devices to be effective.

The Virginia Tech Transportation Institute report examined five years of driving history from 11 large trucking companies and found that trucks with electronic logging devices were 11.7% less likely to be in a crash than trucks without them.

Vehicles with ELDs were also 5.1% less likely to be involved in a preventable crash, and drivers were 49-53% less likely to have an HOS violation when using the devices, the study said.

The study did not identify the 11 large carriers surveyed, but it said their drivers accumulated 15.6 billion miles traveled over the five years, or about 283.6 million miles per year for each of the companies.

“Anecdotally, it seems to make sense . . . from what I have been hearing on the violation side,” said Stephen Keppler, executive director of the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance, when asked about the report.

CVSA represents law enforcement agencies that perform truck and bus inspections.

Commenting on the report, Rob Abbott, a vice president of American Trucking Associations, said, “In the context of [the federal Compliance, Safety, Accountability program], FMCSA has shown a strong correlation between HOS violations and crash risk.

Fleets that use ELDs see a big drop in HOS violations, mostly related to paperwork, or form and manner errors.”

American Trucking Associations said in a June 30 statement it would like to see FMCSA enact the rule swiftly and that it supported such a rule in 2012 when Congress instructed FMCSA in its MAP-21 funding law to write the regulation.

The Truck Safety Coalition, which includes Parents Against Tired Truckers and Citizens for Reliable and Safe Highways, applauded the proposal, saying it brings the United States in line with Europe and countries such as Brazil, Israel, Japan, South Korea, Turkey, Venezuela — all of which require ELDs.

The Truck Safety Coalition said its members want the rule applied as broadly as possible with minimal exceptions.

Opposing comments said the devices are much more expensive than paper logbooks and of limited usefulness for an owner-operator. Several comments were from older drivers who said they had lengthy, safe careers and were being smothered by rules that actually made it more difficult to drive safely.

And some threatened to quit driving if the rule is enacted as written.

Paul Oakley, senior vice president of the American Moving & Storage Association, said his group supports the mandate only if its effectiveness is first verified by a pilot study. He also asked for tax credits and subsidies to cover the cost of purchasing ELDs.

The director of safety and compliance for ATC Transportation of Pleasant Valley, Wisconsin, had a comment reflecting the type of freight his company hauls. ATC delivers new heavy-duty trucks from factories, and that creates a special problem. ATC executive Mahlon Gragen said that when trucks are turned into freight, several are stacked in a piggyback formation and pulled down the road. He said the truck actually being driven should have an ELD, but the empty vehicles being pulled as freight should not.