THE pleas for more freedom and less regulations by small trucking companies have been denied by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) that seeks to make the spy in the cab a universal feature of American trucking.
A group representing trucking and other companies with 50 employees or less has been denied an exemption from the federal electronic logging device (ELD) mandate.
Making the plea was the Small Business in Transportation Coalition (SBTC), which was supported by 95 per cent of the 2,000 of those commenting, wished to be exempted from the from the federal electronic logging device (ELD) mandate.
But the FMCSA asserted that SBTC's application failed to provide evidence that safety would not be compromised under the exemption.
SBTC, which claims to have a membership of over 12,000 individuals and groups, did not 'explain how you would ensure that you could achieve a level of safety that is equivalent to, or greater than, the level of safety that would be obtained by complying with the regulation,' according to the FMCSA's decision.
In its application, SBTC asserted that ELDs, which were required to be installed and in use starting on April 1, 2018, are tools used to determine compliance with existing hours-of-service regulations, and that the ELD mandate itself is not a safety regulation per se.
Because smaller trucking companies would continue to track their hours of service through paper logs, and that this method has been sufficient since the 1930s, SBTC argued, 'we believe the level of safety is already assured by the pre-existing Hours of Service rule as opposed to this ELD enforcement mechanism rule.'
Representing bigger companies, the American Trucking Associations (ATA) disagreed with SBTC's assertion that the ELD mandate did not itself constitute a safety regulation, because granting an exemption would allow fleets with 50 or fewer employees to use paper logs to record their on-duty time.
'This would allow for the potential of falsification of records of duty status (RODS) while leaving no controls in place for enforcement,' ATA argued.
WORLD SHIPPING
A group representing trucking and other companies with 50 employees or less has been denied an exemption from the federal electronic logging device (ELD) mandate.
Making the plea was the Small Business in Transportation Coalition (SBTC), which was supported by 95 per cent of the 2,000 of those commenting, wished to be exempted from the from the federal electronic logging device (ELD) mandate.
But the FMCSA asserted that SBTC's application failed to provide evidence that safety would not be compromised under the exemption.
SBTC, which claims to have a membership of over 12,000 individuals and groups, did not 'explain how you would ensure that you could achieve a level of safety that is equivalent to, or greater than, the level of safety that would be obtained by complying with the regulation,' according to the FMCSA's decision.
In its application, SBTC asserted that ELDs, which were required to be installed and in use starting on April 1, 2018, are tools used to determine compliance with existing hours-of-service regulations, and that the ELD mandate itself is not a safety regulation per se.
Because smaller trucking companies would continue to track their hours of service through paper logs, and that this method has been sufficient since the 1930s, SBTC argued, 'we believe the level of safety is already assured by the pre-existing Hours of Service rule as opposed to this ELD enforcement mechanism rule.'
Representing bigger companies, the American Trucking Associations (ATA) disagreed with SBTC's assertion that the ELD mandate did not itself constitute a safety regulation, because granting an exemption would allow fleets with 50 or fewer employees to use paper logs to record their on-duty time.
'This would allow for the potential of falsification of records of duty status (RODS) while leaving no controls in place for enforcement,' ATA argued.
WORLD SHIPPING