National Motor Freight Traffic Association, Inc.® (NMFTA)® was very pleased to see the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) announce additional electronic logging device (ELD) revocations this week. We have had several meetings with FMCSA on our research into ELDs and how widespread and concerning the issue of white-labeled ELDs has become.
Our research has identified families of ELDs running the same underlying code. When one device is revoked, another can simply take its place. This raises serious concerns about whether revoking individual ELDs is enough to address the larger problem.
We encourage FMCSA to require new ELD registrants to disclose whether their devices use white-label technology. Existing registered providers should be required to do the same. While FMCSA has taken steps to crack down on new entrants, more needs to be done.
We have encouraged FMCSA to examine these ELD families more closely. There are far fewer unique ELD providers than the number of registered devices would suggest. Rather than addressing individual devices one at a time, FMCSA needs to take a more aggressive approach to identifying and revoking all noncompliant ELDs within the same family.
NMFTA has volunteered to share our data, research, and methodologies with FMCSA to support these efforts. Our focus remains on getting problematic devices off the road and ensuring motor carriers and professional drivers can rely on the technology they use.
The ELD mandate was intended to make our roads safer. However, when noncompliant devices continue to operate under different names, that objective is undermined.
Over the next several days, NMFTA will update its research findings to account for the newly revoked ELDs and incorporate additional data as it becomes available.
FMCSA’s latest actions are encouraging, but revoking individual ELDs is only part of the solution. We must address the broader issue of related devices operating under different names to make meaningful progress toward safer roads.
To contact the NMFTA cybersecurity team, email cyber@nmfta.org.
