FMCSA, after requiring onboard recorders for violation-prone carriers, now seeks a mandate for all OTR operations.

Truckers can comment through April 4 on the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration proposal that all interstate commercial truck and bus carriers use electronic onboard recorders to track hours of service. If the mandate is approved, carriers would have three years to comply.

A U.S. Xpress driver calls up information on his dash-mounted EOBR, which the carrier plans to make available companywide.

Under FMCSA’s notice of proposed rulemaking, carriers would be relieved of the requirement to retain certain HOS documents, such as delivery and toll receipts, that are now used to verify logs. Approximately 500,000 carriers would be affected by the rule, FMCSA says.

Interstate carriers that use record of duty status log books would be required to use EOBRs. Short-haul interstate carriers that use timecards to document HOS would not be required to use electronic devices.

Last year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ordered FMCSA to issue a notice of proposed rulemaking on HOS supporting documents by yearend, later extending the deadline to Jan. 31. The order stemmed from a lawsuit the American Trucking Associations filed just over a year ago to compel FMCSA to move forward with a regulation as mandated by Congress in the mid-1990s.

By the time ATA filed its lawsuit, FMCSA had already announced it was planning to link new regulations on supporting documents to an expansion of the EOBR mandate. In April 2010, FMCSA issued a final rule requiring carriers with a history of serious log violations to install EOBRs. That rule takes effect in June 2012.

Carriers see EOBRs as an investment in achieving compliance. “We realize law enforcement looks at things like duty status and number of hours for drivers,” says Bob Viso, vice president of safety at U.S. Xpress Enterprises. The carrier has been testing an electronic log system and aims to have all 6,000 of its drivers on the system by the end of 2011. “The system will help drivers comply with those pieces.”