The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration recently revoked three electronic logging devices in a two-week span (One Plus ELD, ELD ONE and Nationwide ELD). Now, an ELD service provider is speaking up about what he feels has changed -- and possible signs your ELD could be next on the chopping block.
Mike Riegel, who owns Blue Ink Tech (provider of the BIT ELD), recently wrote this story outlining how the FMCSA goes about reviewing and revoking ELDs. Riegel believes the agency is currently "cracking down on ELD providers who sell products that don’t 100% align with the ELD mandate," and notes that any time a driver is transferring their hours data to an inspector, the inspector is checking that not just the driver, but the ELD itself, is compliant.
If the inspection does find issues with the ELD provider's data, that provider gets an email like the one below, received by Riegel.
Messages like this from the FMCSA go out to ELD providers citing issues in the technical parameters, and requesting fixes.Courtesy of Mike Riegel
It's important to note that Blue Ink Tech itself isn't at risk of falling out of compliance and having its ELD revoked. "When an ELD data transfer is found to have errors, the FMCSA technical team will highlight the errors and request a plan of action to fix the issues within 72 hours," Riegel wrote. "If there is no reply to the email, it is likely that more attempts will be made to get a plan of action, and if nothing comes back the provider will be revoked."
But if the ELD provider does get back with a plan of action, he added he feels "the FMCSA will be pretty lenient and allow the provider the time they need to take the corrective action."
Riegel provided context for the email above in response to Overdrive queries. It directly followed a roadside inspection of "one of our ELD customers," he said. "It looks like their system is getting more advanced at picking out items that do not align 100% with the mandate. Our issues were small, and about the length of notations for [records of duty status] and the resolution of the GPS data while on Personal Conveyance. I think this advancement of finding issues during roadside inspections could be why the FMCSA is able to crack down on more of the ELD providers that are not following the mandate."
