Low-cost compliance

Tech vendors offer new solutions for e-logs, CSA 2010

The well of reasons for not using electronic onboard recorders for paperless driver logs is running dry. In the past, fleet executives and owners cited hardware and software costs, the dynamics of driver schedules or the fear of a mass driver exodus. Today, the fleets still using paper to manage drivers’ record-of-duty status are becoming the minority – and for good reason.

Paper logs inherently are labor-intensive and error-prone. And fleets that use paper carry the additional burden of retaining documents such as receipts from weigh scales, tolls, ports of entry and deliveries to verify the times, dates and locations of vehicles and drivers.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration also considers data from systems that use GPS for vehicle location to be supporting documents. In June, FMCSA revamped its policy to relieve motor carriers that use onboard tracking systems from most of the document requirements – provided that these systems have a few basic features, including being synchronized integrally with the vehicle and communicating position location at a rate of at least one time per hour, as well as certain reporting capabilities. FMCSA expects that carriers that have these systems already are using the information in their HOS oversight activities. Using this data after the fact to verify the accuracy of drivers’ paper logs represents an additional cost of compliance.

Furthermore, carriers will have no choice but to be more proactive in how they use data to manage safety and compliance when FMCSA switches to its new Safety Measurement System (SMS) as part of its Comprehensive Safety Analysis 2010 initiative. All violations will be counted against a motor carrier’s safety score, not just the violations that lead to out-of-service orders. Five of the top 10 most frequently cited violations in 2009 were HOS-related, with “driver log form and manner” and “driver record of duty status not current” being the most frequent.

Fleets still using paper logs are becoming the minority.

Considering these factors, fleets that already have onboard communications systems easily can justify the incremental cost to implement an EOBR solution for paperless driver logs. Fleets that lack a computing platform now have several low-cost options.