Trucking changing significantly on April 1

Trucking changing significantly on April 1

Dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century for safety. "Critics of the rule argue it’s going to increase the cost of any good that is transported on a truck, or basically all goods everywhere, from cars to oranges to iPhones, while supporters say it promotes safety and dependability in the trucking industry. “It basically requires us to show any and all movement of the truck and when the driver is actually driving and working and on duty and off duty,” said Tim Hutchings, director of safety and compliance with Crane Transport. “With the ELD mandate, it’s doing that process automatically.” Drivers can be on duty for 14 hours each day, but only 11 of those hours can be spent driving. These are hard caps, and if drivers are caught short on a delivery or on the way home they must stop driving or face consequences from their employers, regulators or law enforcement. “If he drove five hours to get somewhere and he set for five hours to get somewhere, he’s used 10 hours of his day and he’s only got four hours to drive for the rest of the day,” Hutchings said. Often the issue isn’t with manufacturers or brokers (those businesses that warehouse and prepare products for transport), which have a strong financial interest in getting their products on the road as quickly as possible, but with receivers. At a port, retailer or other destination, a driver can wait for hours before his cargo is taken from the truck. “The receiver may hold him up longer than expected, so now he’s out of time … and from a legal standpoint he can’t drive anymore. Let’s say he’s in the middle of nowhere Nebraska and our operations team’s found him a back-haul, well he can’t even go pick it up because he’s out of time,” Hutchings said. “So now the truck has to wait until he’s had a 10-hour break and pick it up the next day.”"