Roadside inspection times have doubled in Oregon since the ELD mandate has been in place, increasing administrative costs and dragging down driver productivity, according to state officials.
In comments filed in response to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s proposal on ways to improve current regulations governing ELDs, Carla Phelps, the Oregon Department of Transportation’s motor carrier enforcement manager, asserted that roadside inspection times have doubled from roughly 30 minutes to more than an hour since full ELD compliance went into effect in 2019.
“The leading cause of this increase lies in the variety of ELDs on the market and the time it takes for inspectors to determine the basic functionality, unique intricacies, and download processes specific to each device presented” at roadside inspections, Phelps stated in her comments.
“Driver familiarity or inexperience with the models installed on their vehicles also affects the time it takes to successfully transfer HOS records. Once all these hurdles are overcome, inspectors must then closely inspect the results for falsifications in various forms and often require very well-trained inspectors to uncover.”
And because Oregon’s truck drivers spend twice as much time going through the roadside inspection process with ELDs, according to Phelps, “truck downtime” costs doubled for drivers and their carriers as well.
Oregon DOT calculated downtime costs of $60 an hour for drivers, combined with $62 an hour for added inspector costs (in terms of salaries), for an estimated cost of $122 an hour per 60-minute inspection. In the 2022 fiscal year ending on Sept. 30, Oregon completed 18,400 inspections. That puts Oregon’s roadside inspection costs at $2.2 million, a doubling of the cost prior to the ELD mandate.
Phelps also noted in her comments that not only do the longer inspection times increase costs, it decreases the number of inspections that can be performed, which raises safety issues. “Larger numbers of uninspected trucks and drivers are operating free of any compliance scrutiny.”
In its proposal, FMCSA sought comments on establishing a formal certification process for ELDs. Such a process, whether conducted directly by FMCSA or through a third party, would alleviate the cost and driver delay issues, according to Phelps. “If a dynamic certification process is implemented to validate ELDs and their providers, inspection times should begin to drop back down to previous levels,” she maintained.
“A time saving of just 15 minutes per inspection means a production increase of 25%. In Oregon’s case, an additional 4,600 drivers could be inspected annually. Oregon is currently maintaining a [driver out of service] rate of 19%. If inspection times drop, continued maintenance of this rate will translate into an additional 874 non-compliant and potentially high risk drivers being removed from the roads/yr. (at 2022 rates).”
CVSA questions usefulness of third-party certification
Unlike Canada, which requires ELDs to be third-party certified by an accredited organization, the estimated 400 to 500 ELD brands available in the U.S. are allowed to be self-certified by the manufacturer.
But the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance (CVSA), which represents state DOTs and highway patrols that conduct roadside inspections, is not convinced that third-party certification would improve the cost and delay issues that Oregon or other states are experiencing.
“If inspectors are finding drivers with a malfunctioning device, whether or not the device is certified is not going to change the time frame that it takes inspectors to do inspections at roadside,” Kerri Wirachowsky, CVSA’s director of inspection programs, told FreightWaves.
“If drivers are unplugging their ELDs and plugging in another one and attempting to do unidentified driving, or if they’re just unplugging it so they can do other things, then any difficulties currently being experienced at roadside will not change whether there’s a certification process or not.”
Wirachowsky said CVSA plans to file formal comments responding to FMCSA’s proposal shortly.
Jimmy Brown
The person that came up with the ELD bullcrap had never driven a semi. Actually the idiots that are making all these rules probably hasn’t driven a semi either. When you got idiots trying to make rules on something that they don’t know is making them look like that idiot we got for a president. There are drivers that are driving ridiculous because they are racing against their ELD clock. That is why there are more wrecks happening on the road. The mega companies are all for this because it will eventually put the smaller companies and o/o out of commission. It all about money and control from our wonderful p.o.s government!!
Bill Cooper
People may be surprised how easy ELD’s are to manipulate. My neighbor’s son who is a MIT dropout is making major bank assisting trucking companies with this 4th Amendment encroachment.
Kyle
Paperlogs… Or digital paper logs if it makes ya happy, problems solved!
Max DelValle
The main thing in Eld issues its the inspector training. I see inspection writing violations that are not there, example hours of service violation when it was a simple mistake from driver not adding a co-driver , to thier electronic Log. More and more inspection are putting down violations of required part paper logs eld instruction when all ELd have these electronically eld site for inspectors. All inspector should know this. FMCSA needa to remove frivolous Hos violation as not mounted from hour of service violation. As for Oregon and Washing only two nit in pre-assembled system like rest of world… Should upgrade to this system.
Glen Carter
Best not go to oregon.
Anonymous
I’m wondering that if the trucking companies themselves and the authorities who license the drivers require the trucks to have on boarded ELDs instead of interchangeable ones, specifically ones that will be hard to interchange, that the drivers will be less likely to try and do unmonitored driving? And I’m doing so, that might get rid of the concern of non-compliant or high risk drivers.
John R Aden
Respectfully, the author of this article apparently assumed all readers know the definition of ELD. However, not all of us citizens are truckers and/or in the commercial transportation industry.
Karl Steadman
The most basic simple fix to the problem, throw the eld out and go back to paper logs. Problem solved