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The First Lessons Learned: ELD
Two months have passed since the Electronic Logging Device (ELD) Mandate has been strictly enforced, and changes have been noticed not only in the lives of shippers, carriers, and enforcers but in market trends as well. While it is still early in the process; there are valuable things that can be learned and applied in the future, to improve situations as the kinks are worked out of the enforcement system.
Shippers:
The trucking capacity decrease has resulted in higher rates, causing many companies to stockpile inventories in response to fears of trying to meet on-time delivery demands but not being able to find the trucking capacity to move it (Kingston, 2018). Additionally, the decrease in capacity has increased the need for shippers to have increased awareness in the following areas: time, ordering/releasing cargo, and carrier relationships. Time awareness is a key part of being able to not only meet specific transit time requirements, but to ensure avoiding rising detention fees as one delay to a driver will cut into allotted driving times and have a ripple effect in all their other pickups. The ordering and releasing of cargo follows in that same vein, but is also heightened the need for a good carrier relationship. Since capacity is tight, carriers are encouraged by market effects to take higher paying loads – this means that your relationship with a carrier can come in handy to ensure your lower value loads continue to be moved. Also, if a carrier relationship has gone bad this might be the time to repair it as carriers can, and have, decided which shippers they would like to conduct business with – leaving those with past challenges out (Commendatore, 2018).
Carriers:
The level of ELD violations has dropped sharply after hard enforcement went into effect; which could be caused by companies waiting to install ELDs due to anticipation of the ELD mandate changes, or drivers stopped driving. If drivers have stopped, there should be a resulting imbalance in the spot market, which has not revealed itself yet. Smaller carriers have also been shown to be more likely to violate the ELD Mandate, with 38.3% of violations made up of companies that have 4-19 trucks, 22% for one truck operations, and fleets of 2-3 trucks accounting for 18.3% (Kingston, 2018). As far as ELD training, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) could not anticipate or provide the extensive training to account for all the differences across all devices. Drivers are still enduring the growing pains of learning how to use their devices, getting technical issues resolved, determining which devices are most efficient for inspections, and learning how inspectors want to see the information contained within the device. However, these growing pains are expected to diminish as time goes on. (Abt, 2018).
Enforcers:
The issues with ELD training for carriers are similar for the enforcers, as there is confusion as to which devices produce what type of data formatting and this can initially take some time to determine. Additionally, while many technical issues are the responsibility of the driver to fix, when a driver comes in to an inspection those technical issues can take 20 minutes or more to troubleshoot and determine there was no driver fault or malice involved. There has been a large influx of exemption requests and waivers since April 1st, which if granted, are going to add more confusion to the enforcement process. For the time being, enforcers are being asked to be reasonably understanding while everyone gets used to the process and their devices (Abt, 2018).
Market:
The spot market rates had risen leading up to soft enforcement in December 2017, and dropping on April 1st – however, this could be a seasonal effect (Easter) that just happened to coincide with the April 1st effective date. The numbers as they are now do not suggest a looming catastrophe related to hard enforcement (Kingston, 2018). Carrier capacity is down due to a decreased driver pool and increased carrier costs. This could be magnified by The Commercial Safety Alliance. They are preparing for their annual “Inspection Blitz” from June 5th to June 7th which will focus on hours of service compliance this year and use a 37-step process to complete. Last year, inspections put 15-20% of vehicles out of service for vehicle or driver related issues – in 2018 we can reasonably expect that number to rise given the confusion and complexity the ELD Mandate adds to the process (Cuthbertson, 2018).
In conclusion, Shippers need to be more aware of carrier constraints to make sure freight gets out in an appropriate amount of time to keep deadlines and keep good carrier relationships to continue moving freight. Carriers need to become more familiar with their devices and the expectations for inspections, and enforcers need to do the same. Both carriers and enforcers would be reasonable to have a certain degree of forgiveness while the growing pains of enforcement work themselves out. The market is dealing with a shortage in carrier capacity, and a decrease in spot market rates. Carrier capacity is going to be a continuing struggle - especially with the looming “inspection blitz,” but spot market rates cannot be directly attributed to ELD strict enforcement.
Contributor: Taylor Rathka
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References
Abt, Neil. “Enforcing the ELD Mandate.” Fleet Owner, Informa USA, Inc., 4 Apr. 2018, www.fleetowner.com/driver-logs/enforcing-eld-mandate.
Commendatore, Cristina. “Holding Shippers Accountable in the ELD Era.” Fleet Owner, Informa USA, Inc., 9 Apr. 2018, www.fleetowner.com/regulations/holding-shippers-accountable-eld-era.
Cuthbertson, Tom. “Post-ELD Enforcement Date: Regulatory Update.” ELD Facts, Omnitracks, LLC, 8 May 2018, eldfacts.com/post-eld-enforcement-date-regulatory-update/.
Kingston, John. “Impact of the ELD Mandate Exists, but It's Muted: FTR's Monthly Analysis.” FreightWaves, Freight Waves, 13 May 2018, www.freightwaves.com/news/eld-ftr-may-2018.