Drag Illustrated Issue 125, September 2017 | Page 38

Dirt
Federal Electronic Logging
Device mandate will negatively
impact drag racers
By Forrest Lucas
Editor’s Note: Before founding Lucas Oil Prod-
ucts, Forrest Lucas was a truck driver, becoming
the first person in the United States to get a full
48-state license with the authority to haul in all
the lower 48 states after the deregulation of the
trucking industry in 1980. He moved his business
to California and developed better lubricants for
his trucks and as they say, the rest is history. He
remains heavily invested in the wellbeing of the
industry, and he is very concerned about what the
mandatory electronic logging devices will do to the
sport of drag racing and our country’s economy.
I
am writing this article because I
think the requirement of an Electronic
Logging Device (ELD) for almost all CLD
drivers is wrong. Sure, the big trucking
firms with thousands of trucks on the road want
to move to computerized record keeping. Let
38 | D r a g
I l l u s t r a t e d | DragIllustrated.com
them. But what may work for the big guys is
a looming disaster for the middle- and small-
sized firms.
For example, an ELD for race teams does not
make any practical sense at all. Yet, if the drivers
haul their cars more than 150 miles from their
home more than eight days a month, they have
to get an ELD. Truck logs were never intended
to be a safety measure and will be even less so
with ELDs. The original purpose of the driver
logs was to protect drivers from being forced to
work when their mental and physical well-being
called for a break. ELDs will not reduce highway
crashes due to distracted driving, impaired driv-
ing, or car drivers who do not know how to drive
around other vehicles. Drivers will have to adopt
unsafe practices such as driving when they really
need a break when the mandate is fully in effect.
The numbers are clear that less than one percent
of the highway deaths are caused currently by
large truck driver fatigue. But beating the ELD
clock will force drivers to drive whether they feel
like driving or need a break. The irony is that
the safety argument for ELDs is really not true.
More accurately, the ELDs should be seen as an
anti-safety device.
The government says, “Electronic logging de-
vice (ELD) means a device or technology that
automatically records a driver’s driving time and
facilitates the accurate recording of the driver’s
hours of service, and that meets the requirements
of subpart B of this part. ELD record means a
record of duty status, recorded on an ELD, that
reflects the data elements that an ELD must
capture.”
That information can be kept on a piece of
paper a whole lot cheaper than buying a piece
of fancy technology and paying monthly charges
so some computer can prepare and send reports
for a government agency that cannot manage its
own technology. That agency has been told by
the Government Accounting Office (GAO) that
its technology is lousy. Fleet Owner describes the
July 2017 GAO report on Federal Motor Carrier
Safety Administration’s (FMCSA) information
technology systems, its ability to effectively use
budgetary funds, and to meet users’ needs as
“scathing.”
Besides questioning the point of putting an
ELD on a truck when paper works, I don’t think
Issue 125
OP-ED: #DelayELD