The FMCSA, also known as the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, is renewing as an exemption to let for certain provisions of ELDs, known as the electrionic logging devices.
In the past, the FMCSA has granted the exemption to let UPS and other motor drivers and carriers use portable ELDs manually record data that would require. Through the exemption, the requirements hadn’t applied towards the driver using a portable ELD. All unless the driver can be in the truck with the engine turned on. Additionally, the exemption allows for further flexibility towards the motor carriers and drivers that use portable ELDs for manual recording of data.
The FMCSA is just trying to make things even-handed for UPS drivers and other truckers alike.
One can easily notice how the exemption lets UPS and various motor carriers to change their ELDs for a driver to enter yard moves, without the need for the driver to re-input yard-move status for every tractor power-off.
For the request of exemption, UPS believes that the drivers are hourly drivers with portable ELDs while making for a large amount of work away from the vehicle. The company makes note that drivers use the ELD in order to “punch in” while still in the building. This is how they stay on the clock while being logged in after leaving the truck only until they re-approach the dispatch office.
Additionally, there’s an automatic track of logging events without non-practicality for drivers that use portable ELDs, according to UPS. All while the ELD isn’t synchronized to the engine’s ECM in the interim. All while the driver is outside the truck.
When it comes to the yard moves exemption, UPS believes that complying with the ELD mandate, in the way that it’s written is going to ask for feeder drivers to input manual changes of duty status for as many as twenty times within an hour due to the nature of such work.
It’s noted by the FMCSA that multiple power-off cycles for yard moves is seen as consistent with the current permission of the alternate special driving category in personal conveyance.
For the application of renewal, UPS makes it known that it has not discovered safety issues, all while under the operation exemption that continues to let the FMCSA monitor safety data.
Trucks truly need to be monitored very carefully in order for individuals to feel good about the FMCSA.
