Trucking, Suppliers Continue to Await Release of E-Logging Rule by FMCSA

This story appears in the Jan. 6 print edition of Transport Topics.

The trucking industry and makers of electronic logging devices started 2014 braced for the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to publish its long-awaited rule.

Congress ordered that a rule be available on ELDs by Oct. 1, but FMCSA Administrator Anne Ferro said in March that the agency would not meet that deadline.

FMCSA later said it would unveil the rule by the end of 2013, but that deadline also passed.

“We expect to publish the rule in the near future,” Marissa Padilla, FMCSA’s director of communications, told Transport Topics. “It is currently at [the Office of Management and Budget] and we have no new updates on a specific date.”

By “near future,” FMCSA means sometime in 2014, Padilla said. OMB declined to comment on when it would finish its review of the proposed rule.

The mandate to have ELDs on all trucks was contained in MAP-21, the transportation reauthorization law signed by President Obama in 2012. Highway safety experts advocated for an ELD rule, saying it would help enforce hours-of-service regulations.

But efforts to come up with an ELD rule go back years, with the trucking industry split on its support for the rule.

American Trucking Associations supported the directive in MAP-21, saying that the devices would increase safety.

“ATA supports a universal mandate for electronic logging, and we look forward to seeing how FMCSA intends to achieve the mandate through this rulemaking,” ATA spokesman Sean McNally said last week.

Opposition to the devices has been just as strong, however. The Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association has fought the mandate in the courts and in the halls of Congress. It reiterated its opposition last week.

“Since EOBRs [electronic onboard recorders] cannot automatically record the job status of a driver and can only track location and movement of a truck, they are no more reliable than paper logbooks in ensuring compliance with hours-of-service regulations,” OOIDA said. “The safest thing to put into a truck is a well-trained, experienced driver.”

For companies that make ELDs, the anticipation has more to do with the elements contained within it, said Eric Witty, vice president of product management for Cadec Global Inc.

“What is actually in the rule is more interesting than whether or not they release it today or February or whenever,” Witty said.

FMCSA has not said whether it will require technology companies to go through a lengthy certification process for ELDs.

“They may soften and just go, ‘Here’s how it works and . . . if you’re not compliant, we’ll eventually identify your system by name and then you’ll have to take action to become compliant,” Witty said.

“But if they go down the certification route, there’s probably additional time and cost and [a] whole convoluted process,” he added.

Witty said he expects the rule to contain a grandfather provision that allows carriers to keep their current ELDs for a certain period of time before they have to meet any new standard.

Witty also said he expects that tech companies will have to update software, not design an entirely new product.

Among other companies that market ELDs are Omnitracs LLC, PeopleNet Communications Corp., Rand McNally, J.J. Keller and Associates Inc., XRS Corp. and Telogis.

FMCSA’s first attempt to write a rule on ELDs was a limited effort in 2010 that would have required the devices only on trucks owned by carriers with poor safety records.

In 2011, the agency proposed to expand the rule to almost all interstate carriers. However, OOIDA went to court, arguing that the devices, which record truck-engine activity, were intrusive and could be used to harass drivers by forcing them to drive while fatigued.

In August of that year, a federal appeals court sided with OOIDA and said that FMCSA had failed to guarantee in the rule that carriers would not use ELDs to harass their drivers.

In 2012, as FMCSA was formulating a new rule that incorporated the court’s requirement, Congress included the ELD mandate in MAP-21.

Republicans in the House tried to pass a bill that would have cut off any funding for implementation of an ELD rule but later dropped their opposition.