Speculation that the Department of Transportation’s proposal to reform driver hours-of-service regulations may force the industry to adopt paperless logging systems presents trucking executives with an new quandary: What’s coming on market that will fill the bill?
Tachographs have been used in trucks for decades.
At one end of the spectrum is the Cadillac quality of the comprehensive communications software developed by Werner Enterprises that successfully tracks driving hours, among many other functions. Werner is in the midst of a two-year test run of its automated logging system under DOT’s sanction (4-5, p. 8). No other carriers have stepped forward to participate in the trials.
But a Werner-style system may not be for everyone. Cost, as always, is a major factor in the decisions that fleets will face, and so is the complication of the technology — which brings us the to other end of the spectrum.
Even the common tachograph, which basically charts the time a truck is moving, has a role. Although mechanical tachographs have been in use for decades, manufacturers such as VDO North America in Winchester, Va., and Abbott Enterprise in Pine Bluff, Ark., are marketing advanced electronic models that track hours of service in a digital format.
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