Red's ELD journey

First off, a big thanks to @bullhaulerswife and the rest for creating a dedicated forum for the ELD topic! Great to have these important threads organized and in one place.

Second, what I'm about to share may or may not matter to one truck operators. So before jumping to conclusions, here is what I'm working with. Two trucks under our own authority. An '07 KW and a '99 Century. I also just bought a 3rd one, a '07 387 that will be getting some TLC in the shop before it goes to work.

I say journey, because there's so much misinformation and marketing bee ess to sift through. Every supplier has the solution, but somehow can never answer any good questions. It falls into two categories:

1. Nobody at the ELD company has ever held a CDL, or had to use a paper logbook. Nearly everyone in that new industry is clueless about the use cases, and has no idea what it's like to actually use the product and service that they sell. Brilliant!

2. Most have based their design straight off of 395 subpart B. If they bothered to hire a consultant, it's either a former safety person from a mega carrier, or someone who has driven a truck at some point in their life. Hardly the necessary knowledge base to add much value to a solution for small operations.

I'll follow up with more posts as time permits. It's been a process and I'm glad I got started earlier. I'm not putting this thread up to justify anything, or make myself feel better for the choices I'm making. My choices won't work for everyone. Just sharing what I've been through to cast some light on what someone else might expect. I've been accused of being too picky and demanding. Guilty as charged. If you're not that way, I won't hold it against you LOL.

The point of this thread is mainly for those who haven't even started the process. And it is a process. With some rare exceptions, nobody is going to tear one of these out of the package, plug it in, and go e-logging happily into the sunset.

 

I'll start with my selection criteria. Pretty simple actually. I read through a buyers guide posted by Todd Dills, a popular columnist for many of the trucking rags. This particular article was cross posted everywhere, so you may have seen it on Overdrive, Facebook, and so on.

I wanted the best value for the features I want. I'm not opposed to spending money to get that, just not all my money. Main features being 100% accurate logging capability, ability to print out a daily copy on the truck, and sufficient stored data to support IRP and IFTA. That is, not just do the quarterly filings, but withstand an audit.

When I read through the list, all I could say is wow look at all this crap. Every pricing scheme under the sun. Everything from bare bones to "limited" versions of what the big boys are using.

So here's yours truly's breakdown of how these stack up.

The biggest category are at the cheap end. No doubt reusing each other's technology and applications to some degree or another. They use a bluetooth dongle that attaches to the ecm diagnostic port and links to a display/application device like a tablet or cell phone. This describes about 90% of the different products on the market today.

At the other end are hard-wired systems with custom user interface display/device. They still connect to the ecm port, but with a wired connection. They also tend to have their own communications on board, instead of depending on the user's tablet or whatever wifi happens to be available.

Then there's a few outliers that are in between those two extremes.

I have to get to work so will have to continue this later.

 

So my first stab at selection was to look on the lower cost end of the spectrum, but go for brand name backing and feature-rich.

I happened to have a few hours to waste at the TA in Jeffersonville OH one morning, so I decided to give the Rand McNally product a $550 try. What it turned into was a time consuming $550 lesson on all the things an ELD solution should NOT be.

I'll sidetrack a moment, as I think this is important. Having anything less than perfect logbook records during an inspection is just a failure. Whether you use a pencil and paper, or the finest ELD solution ever, if there's mistakes you're in for a really negative inspection experience. Along with potential fines and/or OOS violations. So when you're looking around at ELD solutions, keep this in mind. Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. If it doesn't work 100% as it should, it's not worth 1¢ and you sure don't want to take your chances depending on less than perfect every time you roll thru a weigh station and might get invited to pull around.

So, that RM package wasn't "cheap" by any stretch. On the other hand, it was a bundle package of their 8" tablet GPS and the ELD-50 bluetooth dongle. So roughly a $150 ELD solution coupled with a $400+ top of the line GPS I really didn't need. I already have a Garmin 760 that I like well enough. So I rationalized the bulk of that initial cost with the "upgraded" GPS functionality. I like gadgets. I don't go buying everything in sight for the sake of it though. This just seemed like a good match of value and capability.

I just figured it ought to be better integrated than most, since both the tablet/GPS and ELD functionality are all uniformly RM products on RM exclusive hardware. I learned that's not actually the case. It just means their DriverConnect app is pre-installed on their tablet. And that's about it.

The portal reporting with IRP/IFTA capability is a subscription service. I don't remember the exact amount, but competitive with other similar offerings by other suppliers.

It was a hassle to set up. The time zone defaulted to the wrong one, and RM support failed to correct it following multiple attempts. The bluetooth connection remained problematic. It would record on duty driving at random. Sometimes when driving it would just record on duty not driving. Editing anything, specifically non driving time is a disaster in DriverConnect, and on the RM DriverConnect web portal. User documentation was clearly written by a technical writer who had never been in a truck or actually had to use the products.

The system just doesn't work, and RM support is full of promises and void of solutions for the ELD product faults. It's not mature enough for prime time. Barely enough to be considered a beta or pre-release. Certainly nothing I want to bet on during a random inspection, much less a more formal audit. The GPS and ELD dongle are now collecting dust on my desk at home. I haven't decided yet whether to sell them or not. The GPS is ok. I might use it in my pickup, but probably not. My cell phone has mapping good enough for that. I'm not sure if I would want to subject someone else to the ELD hassle. I'll probably not sell it just on that basis. A decision for another day.

So what did I take away from that, besides an empty wallet and lots of wasted time?

I think the biggest faults existed with the Android tablet based system and a less than consistent bluetooth appliance. My personal belief is that Android systems were never intended or designed for use in an application that's "always on." I suspect that much of the unpredictable behavior has to do with embedded power conservation features acting on things that should not be interrupted.

That said, I went back to the list of suppliers. This time I looked for systems that are not mega companies (Qualcomm, Peoplenet, and the like), requirement of a wired connection to the ecm port, and a preference for task specific hardware (not an Android tablet running an app).

That last requirement being another learning experience from the RM product. Having ELD GPS and numerous other features on one device looks great in an advertisement. However, in use it just sucks. You can't use them all at once. In my opinion, and ELD needs to stand alone. When you're pressing out the last miles of a closely timed trip, you don't need the distraction of either toggling back/forth between mapping and logbooks. It just didn't work at all for me. I don't think it's out of line to categorize any "bring your own device" ELD like this. Unless you use a dedicated tablet for just ELD.

I actually did attempt to do this. Instead of running DriverConnect on the RM tablet, I used my fairly well spec'd Sony Xperia tablet instead. That worked a bit more consistently, but ultimately suffered many of the same faults as the RM hardware. Just less often. It did resolve keeping ELD functions separate from mapping, routing, and whatever else is going on. So better, but still not good enough.

Maybe there's some of you millennials that are more deft with multi-tasking that would be more comfortable with this. More power to you. I don't need more drama in my life, especially doing this while driving.

I'll give a shout out to (and tag since he'll read it eventually) @Mark Kling who has been our resident RM technical guy here in many threads on TTR. He really tried to make this work, and I thank him for his efforts. Unfortunately, he's mainly a GPS guy and was only able to attempt to facilitate my needs with the ELD product team, not support them directly. A real stand up guy, who is limited by the failure of his peers and their apps that exist outside of the GPS mapping/routing universe.

Next post I'll get into my next choice. Hardware should be on my porch Wednesday. I'll go over the two suppliers I narrowed down to, and why I ordered the one that's on the way.

 

Before I get into the next try, I want to point out something not many will be aware of. Some of you have been reading up, and no doubt are familiar with the concepts of AOBR vs ELD.

They are a lot alike. In fact, the mega carriers and ATA, who brought this to everyone, are benefitting from the differences. That is, since they get an extra two years to fully comply with 395 subpart B. This is where you should act surprised.

A feature of AOBR that many company drivers fail to mention, while quoting regulations to all you logbook cheaters out there, is the ability to do some sort of limited truck move without interrupting a legal break. Either 8 hours on line 2 to set up an 8/2 split, or a normal 10 on lines 2 and 1. Probably the sort of thing covered in the "yard move" capability, except a yard move puts you on line 4 and restarts the break clock. Or if you use personal conveyance, that's technically not true in a lot of cases. Like when your truck isn't empty. Besides drawing attention in an inspection where your last 7 days has PC events flagged all over the place.

This is done via one of two methods in AOBR. Either a speed threshold to trigger line 3, that a carrier can set to anything. For example, the RM DriverConnect system permits a setting up to 20 mph. The other option, usually used by the big boys, is a mileage and time limit where the driver can reset to line 1 or 2 and the drive event vanishes, provided they do it before the timer and mileage limit expire.

Either way you look at it, this is probably the most prevalent method of "fudging" the timeline. Move from the staging area to a dock and vice versa. Even move to a different parking place in the truck stop for that matter.

If you haven't already done so, do yourself a favor and read the ELD subpart I linked to, word for word. On a fully compliant ELD system, which is what most of the suppliers are rolling out, that yard move capability cannot be circumvented. Max trigger speed for line 3 is 5 mph. There is no other exception than the legal "on duty not driving" yard move or personal conveyance methods.

Bottom line, if the truck moves, that move must be accounted for. Either by the driver under a suitable condition within HOS guidance, or as an unassigned drive event. The latter being a great big red flag and violation to an auditor.

My point here is not to encourage logbook or even ELD falsification, or make an issue of HOS or debate it (which is really what the problem is). More to point out that it helps if you understand exactly what a move to an ELD includes, down to the tiny details. Then when you do finally make a selection and begin using it, you already know what the new constraints will be and they won't be a surprise. Or worse, put you in an unexpected schedule bind during your learning curve.