ATA welcomes U.S. ELD mandate

by Truck News

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The American Trucking Associations (ATA) welcomed the long-awaited arrival of a law that requires truckers in the U.S. to record their hours-of-service electronically using an electronic logging device (ELD).

The rule went into effect Dec. 18.

“Electronic logging devices have been legislated, promulgated and litigated – with Congress voting three times in the past five years in favor of this requirement and a federal court rejecting a challenge to the rule. The time has finally come to retire decades-old, burdensome paper logs that consume countless hours and are susceptible to fraud and put the safety of all motorists first. The benefits of this rule exceed the costs by more than $1 billion, making it a rule the ATA can firmly support and easily adopt,” said ATA president and CEO Chris Spear. “Today marks the start of a new era of safety and efficiency for our industry and we thank the champions in the Department of Transportation and Congress who have gotten us to this point.”

The rule was first proposed in 2007, and was finalized in 2010.

“With the support of law enforcement groups and trucking industry groups like ATA that are concerned with the welfare of the motoring public, this requirement is now in the rearview mirror and we can turn our attention to other important safety matters surrounding the hours-of-service rules,” said ATA executive vice-president for advocacy, Bill Sullivan. “Having good data from the use of ELDs will make it easier for ATA to make the case for technical corrections to the hours-of-service rules in areas like detention time, split sleeper berth and more. Simply put, with this requirement in place we can now move forward to a safer, better future for our industry.”


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  • Well Canada transporters will have to abide by the rules if they want to do business with the great USA, so ELD will be and coming back to Canada it will be just a switch onto the Canada rules for 13 hours of driving this item is really a mixed up rule.
    Winter is present and new year at our doorstep let hope the economy will be good and have this drone trucks on the road very brilliant idea.

  • More burdensome regulations! I dont need a eld to tell me how to do my job! The hos are the issue- we should be able to drive up to 14 hours in a 24 hour period and be in the sleeper berth 8 to 10 hours…our choice! All the rest is about making money off the driver! Let the clowns in FMSCA that make the rules spend 1 month in a semi with a driver and then legislate! For now Spears and DeLorenzo should be tried for murder for making our job more dangerous on the road- delays at shippers, traffic and now the eld! Is this how you make America great by cutting our productivity and making our life more hard.