ELD Mandate Ranks in the Top 10 Issues in the Trucking Industry

The "hard" deadline to comply with the ELD Mandate is December 17, 2019. On that day,
operators of commercial motor vehicles covered by this law will be required to use electronic
logging devices, or ELDs. Are they ready? BlueArrow Telematics CEO and Puryear Tank Lines
CTO discuss the issue.

Raleigh, NC, August 22, 2019 --(PR.com)-- Since 2012, the electronic logging device (ELD) mandate
has ranked in the Top 10 Of Issues in the trucking industry, according to the American Transportation
Research Institute. The regulation began to take the industry by storm in 2017, but it wasn't until this year
the mandate was fully in effect and enforced.

What is the ELD Mandate?

The ELD mandate, or ELD Final Rule, is a U.S. federal government regulation specifying that operators
of commercial motor vehicles covered by this law will be required to use electronic logging devices, or
ELDs.

These devices are designed to record data related to operation of the vehicle and to driver activity. The
driver information mainly concerns hours of service. Commercial truckers are restricted to a maximum
number of hours they are permitted to drive between rest periods.

Although hours-of-service rules haven't changed, the ELD mandate eliminates any wiggle room in
recording hours-of-service as all driving time must be strictly accounted for.

It's well known that long-distance or extended periods of commercial driving, sitting behind the wheel for
several hours at a stretch, can be physically tiring. Several studies over many decades have established
that fatigue is a major factor in increased street and highway accident rates.

“Safety is still the number one concern for both companies and the drivers who operate long-haul trucks,”
says Stuart Lamm, president of BlueArrow Telematics, whose company has served the industry for over
28 years.

The first federal law that required commercial drivers in the U.S. to keep these service records was passed
in 1937. Paper logbooks were originally used, with the information entered by writing. The ELD mandate
requires replacing paper logs and Automatic On-Board Recording Device (AOBRD) with automated
ELD technology by December 17th, 2019 - a “hard deadline.”

The “soft deadline” was December 17, 2017 and, overall, compliance was high, but there were still some
stragglers.

“Many carriers were early adopters and strong proponents of ELDs, touting the safety benefits and
installing devices long before the mandate took effect,” explains Lamm. “The biggest challenge we had
was on December 17th when drivers were literally learning how to use this technology that morning!”

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Lamm hopes that won't happen again.

“This industry has come a long way since ELDs went mainstream,” responds Joey Hartley, a former
Pentagon computer analyst and current CTO at Puryear Tank Lines. “You had a lot of people, in my
perspective, slow to adopt. They really pushed the deadline - but time is running short.”

That late adoption created a capacity crunch for ELDs and installation, with some suppliers' locations
running out of devices and software glitches taking longer to solve as companies tried to onboard
thousands of users at once. He hopes the 2019 AOBRD deadline will run much smoother for the industry.

“I do worry about those problems recurring, but I don't think it will be as bad,” says Hartley. “I think
providers - us included - learned a lot.”

And based on the experience of Puryear drivers, law enforcement officers have shown some leniency the
past 19 months because they, too, are still learning. “It was a big change for all of us - and it's taken time
for company drivers to get used to ELDs.”

It's hard to determine how much of the current freight capacity crunch is from the ELD mandate and how
much is from a stronger economy. Those two factors have combined to make this one of the strongest
trucking environments on record. Some fleet managers have said that while a few older drivers may have
left the industry rather than install an ELD, the younger generation doesn't mind the electronic logs.

While some drivers have continued to rail against ELDs and the lack of flexibility they provide, Lamm,
who provides BlueArrow telematic services to Puryear, acknowledges what much of the industry has
learned from this experience. “The end result is the same, the rules just changed,” Lamm says, noting that
the ability of drivers to manually “adjust” their paper logs disappeared.

A side benefit for fleet managers learning to utilize ELDs is they are discovering the latest telematic
solutions, work-flow applications, routing, accident avoidance technologies, vehicle maintenance tools -
that can save a company time, money, and frustration. “They are creating even more opportunities to
increase safety, efficiency, productivity and profits for their company and the trucking industry,” Lamm
concludes.

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Contact Information:
BlueArrow Telematics
Stuart Lamm
(866) 935-6610
Contact via Email
www.bluearrowtelematics.com
Experts are available for interviews when you need them.

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