FMCSA Delays Publication of E-Log Rule to November
This story appears in the Feb. 23 print edition of Transport Topics.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — An official with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration said the agency plans to publish its final electronic logging device rule in November, rather than on the agency’s previous projected date of Sept. 30.
The rule will include new technical specifications for the devices, provisions to protect drivers from harassment from their employers and requirements for supporting hours-of-service documents, Ava Herman, manager of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s regulatory development division, told attendees at a Feb. 16 session of American Trucking Associations’ Technology & Maintenance Council meeting.
The rule has been delayed since an appeals court in August 2011 revoked FMCSA’s February 2011 proposed ELD rule. The court chided the agency for not including language in the rule that ensured drivers would not be harassed as a result of using ELDs.
FMCSA issued a supplemental proposed rule in March 2014 but, nearly a year later, has yet to finalize the rule.
Herman said the proposed rule allows drivers to transfer HOS data to law enforcement officers in several ways, including via printout, wireless, a USB 2.0 port, Bluetooth and others.
Regardless of how the data are transferred, a recent congressional mandate that suspended parts of the hours-of-service rule required electronic logging device manufacturers to make costly adjustments and retest their software for customers, company representatives said.
Several ELD makers attending the TMC meeting told Transport Topics that, after President Obama signed the suspension provision into law in December, they had to quickly make software changes to allow their
customers to continue in compliance with the existing hours-of-service rule that became effective July 1, 2013.
“We needed to tweak and test the software to reflect the change to the existing hours-of-service rule,” said Alexis Capelle, ELD program manager for Continental Commercial Vehicles & Aftermarket. “We actually needed to replace the entire ELD software module.”
Frank Lancaster, regional sales manager of Rand McNally’s mobile communications group, said the fact that the suspension did not include a requirement that drivers take a 30-minute break before the first eight hours of driving time made the software changes more difficult.
“When they suspended the restart rule, they kept the eight-hour break,” Lancaster said. “If they had taken the eight-hour break away, we could have just gone back to the old rule.”
It took a couple of weeks after the bill became law to adjust and test the software, Lancaster said.
“We’re pretty agile in the things that we do, but at the same time, we had to change our whole system around, and then we had to do over-the-air updates, said Fred Fakkema, vice president of compliance with ELD manufacturer Zonar Systems.
