Effective Dec. 17, 2019, all motor carriers and drivers subject to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) electronic logging devices (ELD) final rule will be required to use an ELD. This deadline also pertains to grandfathered automatic onboard recording devices (AOBRDs), which will no longer be allowed under the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations to provide records of duty status as a substitute to a required ELD. Motor carriers utilizing an AOBRD must have a fully operational ELD installed by Dec. 17, 2019.
FMCSA has indicated there will be no extensions or exceptions to the Dec. 17, 2019 compliance date. In addition, the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance (CVSA) has indicated that inspectors will begin fully enforcing the ELD rule on Dec. 17, 2019; there will be no “soft enforcement” grace period.
If a commercial motor vehicle driver is required to have an ELD and the vehicle is not equipped with a registered compliant ELD, the driver is considered to have no record of duty status; that also applies to a driver still using an automatic onboard recording device after the AOBRD to ELD transition deadline of Dec. 17, 2019. According to the North American Standard Out-of-Service Criteria, a property-carrying driver who does not have a record of duty status in his or her possession when one is required will be declared out of service for 10 hours and a passenger-carrying driver without a record of duty status when one is required will be placed out of service for eight hours.
The ELD final rule does not change any of the underlying hours-of-service regulations. For more information regarding ELDs, the ELD final rule, hours-of-service, etc., visit FMCSA’s website.
In Canada, Transport Canada has marked June 2021 for the compliance date for the use of third party certified ELDs.