U.S. Seeks EOBR Mandate

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

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration last week proposed requiring nearly all interstate commercial motor carriers to install electronic data recorders to monitor their drivers’ hours-of-service compliance.

The proposed rule, an update to the agency’s April 2010 proposal, would dramatically expand the EOBR mandate to roughly 500,000 from an estimated 5,700 carriers, FMCSA said.

The plan, announced on Jan. 31, would also ease the current requirement that fleets keep paperwork to document drivers’ hours-of-service records.

“This proposal is an important step in our efforts to raise the safety bar for commercial carriers and drivers,” FMCSA Administrator Anne Ferro said in a statement.

Industry reaction to the proposal was mixed, based at least in part by fleet size. Many of the larger fleets have already backed EOBRs while smaller ones, and some driver groups, have expressed opposition.

The agency said it expected to have a final rule in place by June 2012, and that motor carriers would have three years after the effective date of the final rule to comply. Officials said they will accept comments on the proposal until April 4.

The proposal calls for interstate carriers that currently use paper logbooks to document drivers’ hours of service to install electronic onboard recorders to “systematically and effectively” monitor their drivers’ compliance with HOS requirements. Short-haul interstate carriers that use timecards to document drivers’ hours would be exempt from the requirement.

Carriers that violate the EOBR requirement would face civil penalties of up to $11,000 for each offense. Noncompliance also would negatively affect a carrier’s safety fitness rating and Department of Transportation operating authority, FMCSA officials said.

The proposal would be an upgrade to the agency’s April 2010 proposed “remedial” rule that EOBRs be required for carriers that have a higher violation rate in their hours for rule noncompliance and driver-log noncompliance.

FMCSA said the cost of purchasing and installing EOBRs would range from $1,500 to $2,000 per truck, plus several hundred dollars annually in service fees for each unit. The rule would require that carriers still retain hours-of-service records for six months.

The proposal said the annualized cost for a motor carrier that does not currently use a fleet management system or other “EOBR-ready” system ranges from $525 to $785 per power unit. For a motor carrier that uses an “EOBR-ready” system, the annualized cost is $92 per power unit, the agency said.

“Considering that the estimated annual revenue per power unit (on an industry-wide basis) is approximately $172,000, the annual cost of an EOBR is between 0.3 percent and 0.5 percent of operating revenue,” the proposal said.

But the agency also estimated that motor carriers would save an estimated $688 per driver annually in record-keeping costs.

While the proposal would relieve interstate motor carriers from keeping hours-of-service supporting documents such as delivery and toll receipts, it would still require that supporting documents contain such required elements as personal identification, date, time, and location, either in an individual document or in specified combination.

The supporting documents provision in the EOBR proposal was required by the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., in connection with a lawsuit filed last year by American Trucking Associations.

David Osiecki, ATA’s senior vice president for policy and regulatory affairs, said he was not surprised by the scope of the proposal, but that the supporting documents provision “appears to represent an improvement over the agency’s existing guidance.”

“Over the coming days, ATA will be carefully evaluating the proposal, especially with re-spect to the agency’s explanations for expanding its scope, and the accompanying analyses,” Osiecki said.

Meanwhile, the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association harshly criticized the proposal. “EOBRs are nothing more than over-priced record keepers,” said Todd Spencer, its executive vice president.

“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.

But several larger carriers, including Schneider National, Maverick USA, J.B. Hunt Transport, Knight Transportation and U.S. Xpress Enterprises, already have installed EOBRs on many of their trucks. The five carriers are pushing EOBR legislation and have banded together to form the Alliance for Driver Safety and Security.

Alliance spokesman Bill Vickery said that despite the FMCSA announcement, the group is still planning to push for EOBR legislation in Congress.

“We can’t wait around for the bureaucratic process,” Vickery told TT. He said a legislative mandate could be in place quicker than an agency regulation, which would not likely go into effect until 2015.

Patrick Quinn, co-chairman and president of U.S. Xpress, said his company has equipped 3,100 trucks with EOBRs, more than a third of the company’s 8,000-truck fleet.

“You put your head in the sand if you don’t think this is coming,” Quinn told TT.

In addition to helping monitor the hours rule, EOBRs help make company trucks more productive, Quinn said.

The electronic data recorders also “level the playing field with those people in our industry that have been less than honest with their hours,” Quinn said.

But for some small carriers the extra expense would be unsettling, said Patsy Moore, president of F.L. Moore and Sons Inc., a Concord, Va., truckload carrier that owns 46 power units.

“That would put a really hard burden on us,” Moore told TT. Right now the way fuel is, we’re doing good just to pay for that each day.”