Although members of the U.S. House of Representatives recently tried to delay the mandate for a year, they were unsuccessful.
A delay in the upcoming mandate on electronic logging devices for carriers is highly unlikely to occur, federal regulators and stakeholders said at the Connected Fleets USA conference yesterday.
Jon Dierberger, field administrator at the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, assured attendees that the agency is prepared to carry out the mandate come Dec. 18.
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He stressed close attention will be paid to the self-certification, self-validation process with the ELD rule. Under the rule, manufacturers must guarantee ELD output files conform to the required technical specifications.
Improvements in safety across the board is expected to improve with the ELDs. The devices are replacing paper logs to track work time hours-of-service, with the goal of addressing driver fatigue. Many large fleets already comply with the rule, while smaller carriers and owner-operators continue to raise concerns about the cost of implementing the mandate.
“This ELD rule is, I think, going to be as big or bigger, in terms of the total impact to industry and safety,” Dierberger added.
