I receive calls from time to time from owner-operators and small fleets with unsettling news that requires them to deal with a problem no one really wants to contend with. Two weeks ago, catching up with an owner on business progress, suddenly I hear his wife in the background exclaiming, “I can’t believe we got another overdue notice for this!”
The frustration was evident, of course, and these small fleet owners’ stress was quickly elevated by what was a distraction from so many other things needing attention on another hectic winter day spent trying to manage the small group of owner-operator contractors at the core of their business.
Trying to tread lightly, I only asked, “Are you OK?”
[Related: ‘Are you OK?’ The most important question to ask in emergency situations OTR]
The owner went on to explain that when the ELD mandate was beginning they were trying to decide on a service provider. If you were in trucking through late 2017 as a truck owner with authority, you know it was a confusing time. I observed at the time that the majority of owners who were newly required to purchase ELD services and devices -- from companies that were self-certifying their products as compliant -- wanted to simply settle for the lowest-cost system. There were literally hundreds of choices. Combine that with the stress created by having to learn a whole new way of working the hours of service, and the route to an ELD provider for a small fleet, business was probably not always navigated with consideration of all the road signs along the way, as it were.
The ramifications of decisions made more than four years ago were still nagging these owners, tasked with managing the office, receivables coming in, bill payments going out. The gentleman I was on the phone with, Bryon, told me they’d just received another notice from a collection agency to the tune of $21,000 for ELD services and equipment that they never were able to use. His small company did sign up with this particular ELD provider back in 2017, yet never received any ELD equipment for the trucks. After the initial sign-up, they waited. And waited. Forty-five days into the mandate itself, with the “soft enforcement” period nearing an end, they jumped on board with a different service provider and were off to the races.
Yet in the process of canceling the first service in early 2018, a ball was dropped on the service provider’s side. What followed: Three-plus years of overdue notices, of phone calls trying to resolve the billing issues. No one from the ELD provider could be reached to solve the problem. Collections processes were ultimately engaged, with all the potential credit rating effects that can entail.
