Truckload Carriers Association Opposes EOBR Proposal

This story appears in the Feb. 14 print edition of Transport Topics.

The 700-member Truckload Carriers Association plans to oppose a proposed federal mandate requiring the use of electronic onboard recorders because there is no evidence that the technology will improve highway safety, the association’s president said.

“There’s got to be a nexus between EOBR use and improved highway safety,” Christopher Burruss, president of TCA, told Transport Topics. “The other issue that we have is that, rather than coming out with a mandate, we would like to see a pilot first.”

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s proposed rule, announced on Jan. 31, would require nearly all interstate carriers to install EOBRs to monitor their drivers’ hours-of-service compliance.

Officials said they planned to have a final rule in place by June 2012 and that carriers would have an additional three years after that to comply.

The agency said the rule would improve highway safety because the technology would “enable motor carriers to track their drivers’ on-duty driving hours accurately in order to prevent regulatory violations or excessive driver fatigue.”

Yet, FMCSA was cautious about making the direct link between EOBR use and improved safety because the agency said it doesn’t have the ideal data to back up that connection.

For that reason and others, two other trade groups, the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association and the National Association of Small Trucking Companies, also have indicated they will oppose the mandate.

Both groups dispute claims that EOBRs will improve safety, and have complained they will be cost-prohibitive for their members.

Meanwhile, American Trucking Associations is continuing to review the proposed EOBR rule, said Dave Osiecki, ATA’s senior vice president of policy and regulatory affairs.

“As much as we have individuals in our industry who are unwilling to embrace electronic logging, it’s going to happen,” said Bill Graves, ATA president. “If you happen to be one of those folks, I suggest you start to think in those terms.”

On the safety issue, however, Osiecki said that “relatively new data captured by the CSA program in 2009 and 2010 [are] showing a relationship between hours-of-service compliance and safety performance.”

Graves agreed as he spoke at the Technology Maintenance Council’s annual meeting in Tampa, Fla., last week. “There actually is data that creates a correlation between those companies that log drivers’ hours electronically and the safety of that company,” he said.

But Burruss said he’s not convinced there is evidence to back up the agency’s safety contention.

“I’m not saying it’s not true,” Burruss said. “I’m just not sure there’s been enough time to be able to make a solid claim that, in the end, EOBRs have an impact on highway safety.”

Osiecki said ATA has some concerns with the proposal because, even with an EOBR, a carrier still would have to retain and use a potentially significant amount of supporting documentation for a portion of a driver’s on-duty time that may not be accurately verified by EOBR data.

Many large trucking companies are installing EOBRs because they said the technology not only helps them comply with the hours rule but also assists in fleet management.

Randy Mullett, vice president of government relations and public affairs for Con-way Inc., Ann Arbor, Mich., said the carrier’s truckload division has installed EOBRs on 1,000 of its 3,000 trucks and plans to equip all the division’s trucks by midsummer.

“The experience so far has been very positive, both from a driver acceptance and asset management point of view,” Mullett told TT.

“One of the unexpected benefits from EOBRs was a lot more robust information on exactly what driver had what time available, so that we were much better able to match customer demands and requirements with the drivers available, not just where is the equipment available,” Mullett said. “We really do think that the return on investment justifies the expense.”

James Mullen, general counsel for Werner Enterprises, Omaha, Neb., said the company developed its own EOBR technology, beginning in 1998, and since then has installed electronic data recorders on all 7,300 of its trucks.

“It makes operations easier,” Mullen told TT.

Mullen said the company doesn’t keep accident numbers but that it has seen safety benefits.

“On the claims side, I hear stories that, when folks who run paper logs have accidents, there’s litigation and they have problems oftentimes with hours-of-service issues. We just don’t have that,” Mullen said.

But, for the most part, small trucking companies don’t really need the EOBRs to manage their fleets, nor can they afford the additional expense, said David Owen, president of the National Association of Small Trucking Companies.

Owen dismissed claims of safety benefits of EOBRs.

“We’ve been fighting this hysterical misrepresentation of the facts about fatigue for over a decade,” Owen said. “The data that’s been used for 12 years to support fatigue as a major cause of crashes is phony.”

Todd Spencer, OOIDA’s executive vice president, agreed that EOBRs will not improve highway safety.

“This proposal is actually another example of the administration’s determination to wipe out small businesses by continuing to crank out overly burdensome regulations that simply run up costs,” Spencer said in a recent statement.