Safety Information and Updates

Friendly reminder that December 16th 2019 is the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Association (FMCSA) hard deadline for the Electronic Logging Device Mandate. There have been some "soft" deadlines and delays on this mandate over the last several years but there is no indication we will see another delay, so if your fleet is not fully converted to ELD, definitely get moving on that ASAP.  

We have personally been running E Logs for almost a decade, it made sense for our fleet and our footprint and we like the accuracy and uniformity of the data we get from our system. I will say there is definitely a learning curve involved in making a change over of any kind though, especially one involving software.  But this particular change actually does really make life easier in the big picture when it comes to making sure you are in HOS compliance, and in terms of pulling information for any kind of audit or certification, etc. 

Anyway - if you haven't moved your fleet to ELDs, the time is now. Don't wait til you are fined to get compliant. Good luck! 

This summer we had another successful round of our annual "Safety Jeopardy" game at Driver Safety meetings. We've discussed before how we try to cover as much relevant safety info and training as possible to all our drivers at our monthly meetings. Safety Jeopardy has the same goal, but even the Safety Department will admit it's more fun to review safety stats and info via Jeopardy. 

It's easy to lose sight of the truly monumental amount of information that drivers need to know and remember on multiple topics in order to do their jobs safely, and Jeopardy is a fun way to refresh everyone's memory with a little friendly competition. 

Looks like the team enjoyed it, based on those smiles (even Ed Burke and some Sales Reps got in on the action!)

This week the White House signed off on a final version of the proposed regulation to require e-logs to be used across the trucking industry in order to more efficiently track driver hours for both employers and, more importantly, to ensure DOT hours of service compliance.

The DOT has announced that the final language of the regulation and its effective dates will be published by the end of this month.

E-logs have been a contentious issue in the trucking industry for the past several years - So much so, in fact, that the proposed regulations have been pushed off and delayed several times.

There’s some consensus that e-logs are a good thing, a lot of the issue is a feeling that implementation costs etc.  affect smaller fleets and owner operators much more severely than say larger, or national fleets. That’s very true. There’s also concern about yet another mandate.

A pretty good summary on what the for and against arguments are that I read was recently published on a CCJ Point-Counterpoint Recap and you can read the whole thing here:( Point-Counterpoint: Truckers Square off in Debate)   (As an aside, CCJ is an excellent news source on all things trucking)

For our part, we have been using e-logs for quite some time and would never go back. It definitely simplifies tracking compliance for the DOT, and even more importantly it saves our drivers from the time and aggravation paper logs can be the source of.  However, we’re a pretty large fleet, so it made sense for us and our drivers, that may not be the case for everyone.

It will be interesting to see what the final ruling looks like and how long fleets will have to implement, and if there will be any exceptions for smaller operators.

What are your thoughts on the e-log mandate?