In the wake of the One20 company’s shuttering of it’s ELD offering — the F-ELD — there’s been no small amount of head-scratching going on among soon-to-be-former customers, particularly given the abrupt nature of the notice. The “End of Duty” screed on its website — “sometimes you take one on the nose” — told such customers very little, and a notice emailed to F-ELD users announced the coming June 18 end of support for the F-ELD, with little guidance as to where users required by regulation to run an ELD for hours might go next.
Other companies have offered discounts to F-ELD users and other arrangements in the wake of the shuttering, including Konexial’s My20 ELD and the Drive ELD. The latter, based in Iowa, actually utilizes more or less the same basic engine-connection hardware as One20’s F-ELD. Drive’s basic product comes with a $99 annual subscription the company is prepared to waive for the remainder of this year for F-ELD users, say company CEO Joan Severson and rep Bailey Hawn.
“One20 customers use the same hardware manufacturers that we do,” Severson says, one key difference being that One20 didn’t “update their firmware,” the software that underpins the functionality of the hardware, “for quite some time. The only thing we’d need [F-ELD users] to do is go to our website and create an account, purchase our ELD package and put in the ‘One20’ coupon code” to have the starting fee waived. Updating the firmware by pairing with the Drive ELD smartphone app then should enable F-ELD users to be able to keep their owned hardware functional with no further investment through the end of the year.
Severson adds, “That gives them another six months to find a solution if they don’t want to use us” for the long term. The deal contains no obligation to continue service beyond the end of the year.
Hawn says taking advantage of the offer is simple, as Severson described above: “For current One20 users – go to the Drive ELD website, and go through the buy-now process – enter ‘One20’ as a coupon code. We just want to make sure they’re checking out through the website so we have that on file to send information” and be able to help set them up.
Severson and Hawn both note that the company is not in the business of data selling, and all customer service is based in Iowa.
Adds Hawn, “No, we don’t think you need to take it on the nose.”
Konexial’s offer to One20 F-ELD users
The folks from the Konexial company are offering a $50 trade-in credit for One20 F-ELD users to transition to its own My20 ELD, which costs $129.99 for the 9-pin ECM plug-in hardware with a follow-on $15-per-month subscription fee ($25/month for the My20 Tower product, which adds some dispatch/fleet-management functionality).
“We want to do all we can to help the people who have been stranded by One20,” notes company CEO Ken Evans.
To obtain the $50 credit, owners of F-ELD units need to call 865-888-6920 to “obtain a trade-in code” and then “purchase using that code” directly from the My20 ELD website, the company says.
Adapter cables are available for OBDII and 6-pin ports to the ECM.
Konexial also operates the GoLoad matching service, an optional add-on to the ELD platform. Read more about it via the following link:
