Fleet Management News & Business Info | Commercial Carrier Journal
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/741858
THE WINDOW IS OPEN. AGENTS WANTED | 800-872-5999 PROVIDING OPPORTUNITIES. ELIMINATING OBSTACLES. Survey Winners! Deven Heidebrink Heidebrink Trucking Rigo Trevino GATS 2016 Carrier Survey/ 3rd Quarter Bloomberg Survery For more information contact Roxanne Bullard at roxanneb@truckstop.com Being registered via the FMCSA can generate some business. is business though is generally by those who are looking for a quick solution and not necessarily the right solution. To be registered on the FMCSA's ELD registry, all a company has to do is self-certify. In simpler terms, all a company has to do to be on the registry is register. e process to submit a complaint against a company who claims they are compliant but their device does not work properly is a lengthy one. en, FMCSA must vet their product. is vetting process can take time and all that is needed is one raw data set to prove compliance. If the company is deemed to not be in compliance, they will be pulled from the registry and could face perjury charges for lying on a federal document. Currently there are 10 devices that are registered as a compliant ELD through the FMCSA. None of these registered devices are among the biggest or most successful players in the market. e companies on the registry are companies, in many cases, that have had massive amounts of startup money invested into them and have very little market share or customer base. When you call these companies for information, they oen have only one sales person and one support person. is is not to say that if you were to choose one of these companies and you ended up having an issue with your logs or device that the issue would not be resolved in a timely manner but there is always that chance. e vast majority of the devices on the registry require some sort of contract that ranges from one to three years. Contracts, while oen reducing the upfront cost of equipment, can be cumbersome. From how these devices work with your trucks, dispatching, personal devices, locations, etc. every one of these questions needs to be asked. Do you want to buy devices for your people or do you want them to use their own devices to track their logs? Some companies require you to buy their tablet option and go with their cellular service provider. Is this, what could be a mandatory change, something that works for you and your business? It very easily could be but this is only something you can determine through diligent research. ere are companies out there who offer ELD like solutions (also known as AOBRDs) that claim to be compliant even though they are not registered. is represents a completely different issue. If a company can self-register as a compliant unit and their sales team is claiming they are compliant, why aren't they on the registry? Are they using it as a sales pitch or are they truly compliant? Again, this is something that can only be realized through research. What can you do to protect yourself against a bad ELD or ELD-like solution? Do your research on each product, make sure they have the rule sets that you need them to have, does the GPS tracking work the way you want it, is the price affordable and whatever other items are important to your company. ere are more than 25 different companies that are offering a solution. Check out as many of them as possible before you settle on a company. Jeremy is based in New Plymouth, ID, and is the Regulatory Affairs Analyst for uDrove. Vo l . 1 0 , N o . 6 TRUCKSTOP.COM 15