Winds of Change: ELD Impact on the Transportation Capacity Market
After years of anticipation and several setbacks, the Electronic Logging Mandate will finally go into effect in December. This law will require all drivers operating outside of 100 air radiuses of their starting point to use an electronic logging device (ELD) to track their Hours of Service (HOS). Using the latest in industry technology, overall road safety is the end goal.
What are the current industry challenges?
A major challenge is ensuring the devices are implemented into more than three million trucks before the December deadline. For example, earlier this year, Truckstop.com surveyed 1,000 small trucking companies and 84% of the respondents have not yet adopted ELD.
Trucking companies, who are late in the process of implementing ELD to their fleet are currently scrambling to meet the mandate. Even for those who are currently using the ELDs, a 4-6 month transition period is common for driver training, resulting in loss of productivity while the fleet and driver adapt to this new technology.
Despite these challenges, all parties will benefit from ELD with increased road safety. Greater visibility will allow trucking companies to prove arrival time and departure times at facilities which typically hold up drivers. Long term, productivity also will be a net positive, due to an efficient, paperless system.
How does ELD affect shippers?                                       Â
- Shippers must ensure that lanes of traffic and delivery expectations are accommodating HOS rules. This means taking careful analysis NOW of the supply chain to eliminate choke points.
- Companies must pay close attention to traffic patterns, construction, and routing to better plan from point A to point B.
- It is certain that the limitations in HOS will cause rate increases in those lanes that cannot be efficiently completed within the drivers available hours.
Important questions to consider:
- Is your logistics provider ready to be 100% ELD compliant by December, 2017?
- How is your supply chain affected by the ELD mandate?
- Is your logistics provider able to offer creative and flexible solutions to help mitigate the effect of ELD on your shipments?
What is Gulf Windsâ plan?
Gulf Winds remains ahead of the curve. In 2016, Gulf Winds launched gwiMove. This state of the art technology was designed with the owner operator in mind, eliminating pain points in daily workflow, through technology. With ELD as part of the mobile solution, Gulf Winds owner operators continue to embrace new technologies.
Given Gulf Windsâ current fleet size of over 350 trucks, and industry leading 18% turnover, Gulf Winds is well positioned to meet the needs of its clients. Additional solutions such as over two million square feet of warehouse facilities, yard storage, ability to pre-pull, and over 1000 company owned chassis will continue to add value to clientsâ supply chains for decades to come.