With less than six months to go until the final deadline for the installation of electronic logging devices (ELDs), one of five small carriers has yet to make the switch from automatic onboarding recording device (AOBRDs), according to a new weekly FreightWaves and EROAD survey released today.
The telephone survey, which was conducted by CarrierLists, surveyed 253 small fleets (one to 50 trucks) from June 10th to the 21st of this year.
Of the fleets waiting until the fourth quarter to switch over to ELDs, 29 percent are planning to do so in October, 37 percent are planning to wait until November and the final 26 percent will wait until the final buzzer in December.
The mandatory deadline for all carriers using AOBRDs to being logging driver hours with ELDs is December 16th, 2019.
“We saw this in 2017 with the first ELD mandate. Many carriers waited to the last minute and found unexpected problems,” said Norm Ellis, president of EROAD North America, a leading supplier of ELDs and fleet technology. “If you want to stay compliant and make this easy for your drivers and people in the office, I urge you to start soon, research and select the best ELD for your specific needs and give your team time to get accustomed to the different rules and reports.”
AOBRDs were grandfathered in when ELDs became mandatory in December 2017. During the changeover to ELDs, carriers had a transition period between the “soft” deadline in December in 2017 and the “hard” deadline in April 2018.
No such transition period is expected for AOBRDs. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) stated this matter of factly on its Facebook page earlier in June:
“Still running with an AOBRD? By DECEMBER 16, 2019, all motor carriers presently using an Automatic OnBoard Recording Device, must switch over to an Electronic Logging Device registered with FMCSA. See the list of ELDs self-certified by the manufacturer at: https://eld.fmcsa.dot.gov/List If the device you are considering is NOT on the list, it’s NOT a ELD.”
Updated results from the FreightWaves and EROAD weekly AOBRD survey will be published every Tuesday until the December 2019 deadline. Future polling done by CarrierLists will concentrate on fleets operating from five to 250 trucks. As the survey progresses, weekly tracking charts with compliance by fleet size, trailer types and operating regions will be published in addition to compliance rates.