How many people are affected by the One20 F-ELD’s shuttering?

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Updated Jun 19, 2018

Today is the day the former One20 company (now part of TruckThat Holdings) said it would cease support for its provocatively named F-ELD. Owner-op Jerry Allen, who purchased the device for its onetime cost through TBS Factoring, wrote in to express his thoughts on how the shuttering was handled.

“I don’t know where to start,” he said, “other than to say, I’m furious for what [One20] did to me.”

TBS themselves, Allen noted, “could not have been more apologetic” when Allen reached out after getting word of the F-ELD’s ceasing of operations. “I realized early on in my conversation that TBS merely represented them as a courtesy to their customers. But, in the end, One20 left me hanging out to dry.”

Allen noted he’d had problems with the F-ELD from the get-go, too, the service’s closure adding insult to injury. “From day one, it never worked properly, and when I called the help desk, I got a lecture instead of instructions on how to fix the problem.

“Now, overnight, they tell me they are going out of business and I’m up a creek.  I’m out $150 [for the device hardware], and lost $4,000 sitting at home waiting on a new unit from another provider to make me compliant” with the ELD mandate.

There are, however, plenty providers out there who run similar/the same ELD hardware as F-ELD or are offering trade-ins for F-ELD users, which I told Allen early this afternoon. If you’ve missed that news, there are a few links throughout this post on the variety of offers. Switchboard, notably, for Android users can enable a transition with no further charges. Other units allow drivers to keep their existing hardware with some software and firmware updates and/or delay any monthly subscription fees. One company offered a 100 percent discount on its hardware for F-ELD users, also a no-monthly-fee device for single-user accounts.

Senior Developer Joe Bass of the ELD ABW provider, too, notes his company reached out to One20 in the wake of its announcement of ceasing support for their ELD. As with some other providers offering deals to former One20 customers, ELD ABW, says Bass, operates with “the same hardware” for the engine plug-in device. Reps on the One20 support line, Bass has heard from several new customers, have subsequently been referring customers to ELD ABW.

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Cost for ELD ABW service for former F-ELD users amounts to $149 for the first year, and $15 monthly thereafter. Making the switch is fairly simply, requiring download and install of a couple pieces of software, in essence. Bass notes there’s a new section on the ELD.ABW.com website specifically for former F-ELD users. Find it here.

If you used the F-ELD, what path did you take when you heard about support ending? If you’re reading on a smartphone, tap the image to call and weigh in with a message on our podcast line with your story. If you’re on a desktop, call 530-408-6423. Make sure to tell us your name and state of residence.If you used the F-ELD, what path did you take when you heard about support ending? If you’re reading on a smartphone, tap the image to call and weigh in with a message on our podcast line with your story. If you’re on a desktop, call 530-408-6423. Make sure to tell us your name and state of residence.

As for owner-operator Allen, he wonders just how many others have been through similar with the device’s demise. Have you?

When my colleague Matt Cole spoke to Christian Schenk, head of the former One20 (now TruckThat Holdings) company, he noted the F-ELD app had been downloaded about 17,000 times.

The number of existing F-ELD users was somewhere south of that.

Allen added he didn’t “know what can be done, but I sure would like to let [One20] know what they caused and the outcome of their actions. It’s bad enough that an owner-operator with one truck has to go through this nonsense of having to use an ELD when paper logs worked fine for my 20 years of service. Now, I have to start over with another provider at my expense and loss of revenue. This is totally unacceptable, and I refuse to sit silently.”

Find several companies offering support for former F-ELD hardware and/or deals via this link.

A little “old-time rock’n’roll” in the Reader Rigs gallery:
How about this Pete for a trip down memory lane?

The 1964 Pete 281 is a project of Jaykob Stephens, detailed below.The 1964 Pete 281 is a project of Jaykob Stephens, detailed below.

It was posted to Overdrive‘s Reader Rigs Gallery by Jaykob Stephens as evidence of his first truck project. Stephens, who notes he started on it two years ago when  he turned 15, says it’s a “1964 Peterbilt 281 with its original 335 small-cam Cummins (compression release and all) and a 10-speed backed by a 4-speed auxiliary.”

The truck was purchased disassembled by Stephens’ grandfather in 1989. Stephens goes on:

He put it back together to work it in California and later Texas. He moved back to Tennessee in the mid-90s and stretched the truck out to 262 inches by adding a Pete air-ride cutoff. He used it to pull a Travis frameless dump trailer hauling lime for the local farmer’s co-op. He later parked it and put it out to pasture, literally! In 2016, after my 15th birthday, I began toying around with the idea of buying an old truck to play around with. After mentioning this idea to my grandfather, he had a much better idea. He gave me the old ’64 so that it could see the roads again. After dragging it from the weeds, I’ve done quite a bit of work to it while still maintaining its rat-rod look. It means a lot to me and my family. It’s the first needle-nose (and the last truck) that my grandfather ever owned, the first truck my father drove, the first truck I drove, and my first truck overall.

I plan on restoring it one of these days, but for now it’s just a toy.

One thing I forgot to mention: you’ll never see another little-window Pete like this. Not wanting to go along with the trends of “trash can” breathers and Luber-Finers, my grandfather moved the breather back behind the passenger side battery box and mounted a spin-on oil filter on the frame to take the place of the Luber-Finer.

Looking good, I do say. Keep in touch as work progresses on the unit in the future, Jaykob!

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