The ELD Mandate: The Hard Truth for Professional Drivers

Posted by akohdon on March 11th, 2019

ELDs, or electronic logging devices, for fleets and commercial drivers to track important information on the road, as well as communicate with other drivers.

So, if you're gonna be in this industry, make a commitment to being in this industry, you should be pushing your fleet to be at the front edge of that and get your experience before it's too late.

We have a number of comments that we get through our social media channels where some Drivers actually have made the transition to ELDs and it hasn't been positive, right at the to start just for some of the reasons that we're talking about.

And our perspective on it has been that if you have inefficient shippers and inefficient carriers, then you put ELDs on top it, then that's really detrimental to the Driver, where the way we've responded to those comments is that our expectation is that this is going to force shippers and carriers to be more efficient and it's going to shine the light on dark spots in our industry.

But ultimately, that will take the responsibility off of the Driver's back and put it where it should be, on the carriers and shippers.

So, I'll just tell you that we're properly aligned. It's about using the tool as we've stated before. Best use of the Driver's time.

We have more visibility than we've ever had. We can take that information, and even if it's not right on this trip, we take that same information back to the customer and make sure that we find improvements over time, or that we get paid and subsequently pay for that inefficient use of time.

So we're expecting these tools to make us better. We're expecting the Driver has 70 hours to make a living.

We have to make use of that 70 hours and there's no discretion. The 14-hour window is a hard stop, no ifs, ands, or buts.

And so, every day we wanna have an accountability for time, and that we deliver, work with our Driver very closely to make sure that they get what they need out of their day.

So just to wrap things up here then, we've talked about a number of the ins and outs around ELDs from a Driver's perspective.

The way how I see it is the ELD's is a good thing. Our time on the road will be, like Rob said, we will make 70 hours more efficient. That's one thing.

Second would be for our customers to be on time, that's the part where the dispatch will look after us.

You'll see what's going on. There will be no surprises for when...

It's like, "Oh, my goodness, Driver calling me. He doesn't have hours in the middle of the trip." No, he is aware.

We can do the switch if it's necessary to be on time. But that's when we can make the shipper, receiver, happy, be on time.

And for us as Drivers, we are thinking about avoiding any violations though, which is important.

Me as a Driver, I don't have to worry. It's just like everything is there.

In my part, there's only just be on time to collect, switch the duty status where I am, what I do, and at the scale I don't have to worry. I just go through it with a big smile.