Getting on board

Some owner-operators fear that electronic onboard recorders cost too much and invade their privacy. As EOBR use spreads, others are embracing them after discovering improved productivity, safety and record-keeping.

PeopleNet’s onboard recorder uses cellular communications and offers features beyond electronic logging.

By Todd Dills

Prime driver Gene St. Germaine, of Candler, N.C., was among the first of the fleet’s drivers and leased owner-operators to transition late last year to electronic onboard recorders. He calls the technology a deterrent to being a “supertrucker” driving beyond legal and physical limitations, “just a bullet flying down the road waiting to hit something.”

While paper logs could be manipulated, “you can’t fudge this,” he says. The EOBR “tells you when you only have another hour before you go into DOT violation. Every fifteen minutes that go by, it keeps telling you, ‘You’ve got to shut down.’ That’s a great safety feature.”

St. Germaine is hardly alone in his opinion. Many large carriers have been using EOBRs for months, even years, and are getting positive reports from drivers and management. With that momentum, a new federal rule mandating their use for unsafe carriers, and new motivation for using EOBRs linked to the onset of the Comprehensive Safety Analysis 2010 program, it appears electronic logging will continue to spread much further.

Even though it will be 2012 before the newly issued EOBR rule from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration takes effect, thousands of EOBRs are in use. PeopleNet eLogs Product Manager Jim Angel says that eLogs since 2003 has been installed in upwards of 100,000 power units, mostly in private fleets. Qualcomm units are also in thousands of trucks.