ELDs have been the most polarizing subject in the freight markets over the past few years. The large enterprise carriers have wanted them to ensure that every carrier followed the same set of rules. Smaller owner-operators and voice freight brokers felt as if ELDs were government encroachment into their lives. The fear of big-brother monitoring every move is more emotional than reality, but the economic impacts are real.
One of the things that we have been watching intently is whether or not ELDs impact behavior. First with the carriers and then with shippers and brokers. The impact on shippers and brokers will show up in two data-sets: the TRI (tender rejection index) and in rates (spot and contract). We know from our rate sources (DAT, Cass, and public carrier reports) that there has been a dramatic inflation environment in contract rates. Until the last two weeks, the spot market was stabilizing as shippers were benefiting from better capacity planning.
But one of the things that we have been curious about is how carriers are reacting to the mandate. Are we seeing a change in driver behavior? Nearly 60 days into the hard mandate, we can see that is the case. By looking at what we call the “HOS Daily Driving Utilization Index” or HOS11, we look at ELD data and determine how much of driver’s 11 hours are dedicated to actually putting miles on a truck. We gather millions of HOS data points every single day from a couple hundred thousand ELD devices, anonymize them, and publish them on our SONAR dashboard.
Last year, prior to the ELD soft-mandate, we saw that drivers were averaging around 6.52 hours per day of driving time. The ELD soft-mandate went into effect on December 16, but with it being so close to the holidays, it is hard to get an accurate read on the impact until mid-January. We saw we describe as the “Post Holiday Normalization” take place on January 14. You can see that the total driving hours went back to around 6.52 hours per day. This stayed consistent until Valentine’s day, when we started to see drivers start to modify their behavior and increase hours dedicated to driving. We believe this is a reflection of drivers starting to think about the hard mandate on April first and change on what freight they selected and how they managed their hours.
Moving forward into the hard mandate in April, we see that there is a distinct change in driver behavior. Throughout April, drivers started to push further towards 7 hours of daily driving time, at least three days a week. Every Tuesday-Thursday, drivers are exceeding 6.8 hrs of daily driving time and going tapping out at 7 hours per day. We estimate that each hour is worth approximately $112 (based on a 7 hour clock), therefore drivers are recovering approximately $54 of additional earnings per day from proper HOS management. For an industry with 860,000 for-hire trucks, this equates to $231 million dollars per week or $12 billion dollars annually of additional value generated by ELD devices to the industry as a whole.
ERIC CHAPMAN
Talk about over selling the heck out of your eld. If everybody still only as 70 hours to work how to you make more by ensuring I cannot go 10 minutes over my time ??? So in other words CNN as a news slot opening for you .
Todd Shultz
This is completely inaccurate in the normal day. Its not a perfect world. And all the factors that this guy goes up against , is well to say the least a freaking challenge. It may be so in a large fleet , If there on drop and hook, or a bulk situation. But not the stuff I do or have been doing for the last 20 something years. Shippers and receivers very rarely work out or really give a crap about it. It’s costing the driver’s money and home time. Not to mention the impact on our country’s economy and the environment. Waisting fuel and time idling. When you are a few miles from home or you’re terminal. What a waste. People like you, don’t take care of drivers. You would rather limit our home time and make us waste or money sitting in some over priced truck stop or a parking lot without facilities.
Tommy Adams
Bullshit!!!!!!!!
Bobby
Ya’ll are full of it. This mandate has cost me money and has put a lot of us drivers at risk of being involved in an accident because of the way drivers are racing against that FMCSA CLOCK.
Now you need to start reporting the truth about this mandate.
Bill Walters
What an absolute crock of shit if I ever heard one !!
Nothing more than pure propaganda !
Lopsided news, fake news, biased news, etc……
The ELD did nothing for any driver other than to cause more fatigue and undue added stress to an already demanding job.
Instead of being able to take a relaxing, restful several hour break somewhere during the day and then continuing to drive to finish the 11 hour driving shift, now we are forced to continue, except for the 30 minute break after 8 hours on duty, to complete the 11 hours within 14 hours.
The passage of the ELD mandates were fought for by the massive trucking conglomerates (no need to mention any names, we all know who they were) as they knew that many smaller carriers would not be able to bear the financial burden of implementation thusly causing those smaller carriers to go out of business and provide more loads for the larger carriers.
With seemingly bottomless pockets, these large carriers effectively lobbied hard enough to get the legislation passed.
I have driven for over 40 years now, I’ve put in my time though I still have, hopefully, many years left, but I am not going to go along with this terrible wrong that is being perpetrated against the American trucking community by so many ultra-greedy companies. I have gone with a local company doing in-town delivery now and I’m home every night.
Do you not think that the ELD suppliers were not in cahoots with the trucking companies ?
Do you think that the shippers and receivers were in favor of the ELD’s ?
TJ Saye
That the biggest crock of moose keck I’ve heard all year.
Jeff owens
How do you figure $54 a day anyway? A company driver getting even $0.50 a mile, an extra half hour booking it at 70mph is still only 35 bucks a day. But I’m sure most are seeing way less.
Bill Peterson
Here here Ted. I agree totally with you. There is only one corporation that is making any money on this and that is the government.