If you’re hoping for a delay in enforcement of the looming deadline to adopt an electronic logging device, don’t count on it, says Joe DeLorenzo, head of enforcement for the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.
Speaking last Thursday at the EROAD user conference in Portland, Oregon, DeLorenzo dismissed any chance that the agency will delay the Dec. 16 deadline for switching from automatic onboard recording devices to fully compliant ELDs. “It is not going to get extended past December,” he said.
Starting Dec. 16, any driver caught using an AOBRD or non-compliant ELD will be placed out of service, DeLorenzo said. The violation will be treated the same as failure to have a record of duty status, he said, which carries a ten-hour out-of-service penalty.
For many AOBRD devices in use, though far from all, converting to full ELD compliance simply requires changing a device’s mode from AOBRD to ELD.
DeLorenzo’s remarks echo that of Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance Director Collin Mooney, who earlier this month cast doubt on the likelihood that there’d be a phased-in enforcement period for the coming ELD deadline.
FMCSAand CVSA allowed a so-called “soft enforcement” period for ELD adoption in the first deadline, December 2017, in which most drivers and carriers were required to begin using at least an AOBRD-spec electronic log.
However, for the December 2019 deadline, “everyone has to be prepared,” said DeLorenzo.
