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The country’s top trucking regulator will be among the officials scheduled to update House policymakers during a hearing May 22, several individuals with knowledge of the hearing told Transport Topics.

Carriers and shippers are adjusting to an environment where rising freight rates and a driver shortage are bumping up against an expected drop in capacity now that soft enforcement for truck drivers to record their on-duty status using ELDs has ended, compelling the industry to work hard to prevent disruption in the movement of goods.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has assigned severity weights to each of about a dozen electronic logging device-related violations that are being recorded on a driver’s or motor carrier’s safety profile score.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration will continue to meet with and host briefings geared toward livestock haulers who are discontent with the electronic logging device rule, according to Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao.

Photos from Level I inspections in Virginia two days after the ELD mandate soft-enforcement period ended.

A trucking company that hauls loads for a federal laboratory has requested an exemption from the electronic logging device rule, according to a document scheduled for publication in the Federal Register on April 4.

With the ELD Mandate deadline looming, fleets are understandably focused on ensuring they’re compliant. But many fleets are planning to minimally comply – for them, ELDs will always be a cost center. For fleets taking a long-term view, however, ELDs can mean profit.

Investor interest in trucking technology remains strong, as venture capital firms have recently put a total of $100 million into two companies that seek to upgrade the way data is used to ensure driver compliance, monitor vehicles and make fleet operations more efficient.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has issued revised guidance permitting motor carriers that were using automatic onboard recording device software prior to the effective date of the electronic logging device mandate to add trucks to their fleet without having to update those new trucks to electronic logging device software until mid-December 2019.