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At first glance, it doesn’t appear that ELDs have resulted
in a reduction of highway fatalities at all. But while the DOT
is working on that evaluation, David Heller, TCA’s senior vice
president of safety and government affairs, has a different
take.
Heller believes they’re asking the wrong question.
“When you look at the ELD in a nutshell, it’s a tool,” he explained.
“It measures compliance with the HOS regulations.
It is those regulations, the (hours spent actively driving),
that are designed to save lives — not the ELD in itself.”
If the government agencies
and the trucking industry
want to save lives on
the highway through use of
ELDs, they should be looking
at HOS regulations —
and those regulations, Heller
says, are inefficient.
“We’re not any getting anywhere
close to what that 11
hours of drive time actually
is,” he said. “We’re averaging
somewhere in the neighborhood
of six-and-a-half hours
of drive time. That’s so insane.
Why aren’t we having the
conversation of making those
regulations more flexible?”
Every carrier knows where
those hours are going: Detention
time, traffic congestion,
weather, inspections
and other things take valuable
driving time from each driver’s day. While each of these
could be addressed, Heller thinks one change to the HOS
regulations would help drivers cope with all of them.
“I would work on flexibility regarding the HOS and increasing
the splits, making that 10-hour rest break either a six/four
or five/five split so the drivers have more flexibility of how to
address their day as that day presents itself,” he said.
Such a change would require modifying both the 11-hour
driving rule and the 14-hour daily work period. These modifications
could provide the driver with more ability to, for example,
spend time resting while avoiding a rush hour period in
a metro area or a traffic jam caused by an accident up ahead.
Planning what time a driving period ends has a benefit, too.
“It’s tricky to find truck parking these days,” Heller said.
Splitting the rest period might allow drivers to arrive at their
selected rest spot before the spaces are all filled, or to delay
arrival until a time when drivers are leaving those spaces.”
To be sure, splitting the rest period is allowed — but with
mandates of two periods of at least seven and three hours.
Heller says six/four, or even five/five, would be a great place
to start. Unfortunately, efforts to make HOS regulations
more flexible aren’t a priority right now for regulators.
“I will tell you, there’s no lobbying efforts in regard to
this right now,” Heller said. “The agency is starting to
partake in a detention time study, which will probably see
the results of that study sometime in 2025, I believe.”
The results of that detention time study could prompt a
proposed rule change, but drivers and carriers must still
operate under the current rules until that happens. And the
study isn’t likely to shed any new light on the topic.
“If it’s anything like the previous three or four studies,
then at that point you know, certainly, detention is a very real
and prevalent issue in our industry. We have to do something
about it,” he remarked.
As an example, Australia does things a little differently. The
country mandates sevenhour
“non-working” periods
without specifying whether
If it’s anything like
the previous three or
four studies, then at that point
you know, certainly, detention
is a very real and prevalent
issue in our industry. We have
to do something about it.”
— David Heller
Senior Vice President of Safety and Government
Affairs for the Truckload Carriers Association
they are “sleeper berth”
or “off duty,” and no more
than 17 hours between nonwork
periods. Rather than a
seven-day or eight-day rule,
Australia allows 168 hours
within any 14-day period
and mandates two periods
of 24 hours of non-work
time. There are other regulations,
including some differences
between drivers on
Australia’s highway system
and those operating in the
Outback, but the drivers
generally have much more
flexibility in scheduling than
their U.S. counterparts.
“You can’t stop and have
a 10-hour break in 110 degrees
(in the Outback). It just doesn’t work,” explained Dean
Croke, principal freight analyst for DAT Freight & Analytics,
who drove for years in Australia before moving to the U.S.
“So, what they do is they allow a lot of flexibility. They take
the focus off the daily limit, and they give you a two-week period
of hours to work,” Croke said. “Some days you work more;
some days you work less, so it’s a very flexible HOS system.”
Here in the U.S., most carriers and many drivers agree
that the use of ELDs has greatly reduced many of the problems
that plagued the paper log system. The task of collecting
and auditing daily records is much easier, and falsification
is more difficult with ELDs.
“The ELD is a necessary tool based on where we once
were, and it certainly highlights what the drivers are doing
with their day,” Heller said. “But the tool, in and of itself, is
not designed to save lives. It’s the HOS regulations that are
designed to do that.”
While there are currently no efforts to overhaul HOS regulations
in the U.S., Heller believes the issue will be addressed
in the future.
“Nothing moves quickly in government — it never did, and
it never will,” Heller said. “Could there be something in our
future? Certainly, I think you have to acknowledge that flexibility
would benefit the drivers as a whole.”
TCA JULY/AUGUST 2023 www.Truckload.org | Truckload Authority 19