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Monday, June 9, 2025

ELDs are Allowing Carriers and Shippers to Collaborate

ELDs have caused quite a bit of controversy this past year;ย  however, experts are saying that the mandate has shined a light on HOS and detention causing a tighter collaboration between carriers and shippers.

Now that the industry has ELDs, people can more closely calculate the effects excessive detention has on productivityโ€”causing shippers to maintain efficiency at the warehouse level to increase turn-around time.

Sam Hough, Executive Vice President and COO for Covenant Transport Services, said, โ€œWe have been fortunate to develop deep-seated relationships with customers that allow transparency, which promotes empathy and a greater understanding of how to use a professional driverโ€™s hours better.โ€

Additionally, the enforcement of the ELD mandate forced poor-quality performers out of the industry in the sense that they were not typically compliant with HOS regulations and were oftentimes responsible for a higher number of incidents.

Research Vice President for Transportation Technology at Gartner, Bart De Muynck, said that ELDs โ€œactually drove capacity out of the industry,โ€ but the shakeout of carriers was overall beneficial as โ€œthe worst of the worst left the industry.โ€

ELDs are also benefiting brokerage arms, as access to real-time data sets can allow for more accurate assumptions on available capacity.

President of SJ Consulting Group, Satish Jindel, said he believes ELDs will also provide fleets with a new set of predictive analytics that will give them the tools to analyze the best opportunities. According to De Muynck, freight brokers will also benefit from real-time analytics provided from ELDs, allowing them to better predict when and where capacity will become available.