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Thursday, March 28, 2024

FMCSA Denies ELD Exemption to Small Trucking Companies

 

A group representing trucking companies with 50 employees or less has been denied an exemption from the ELD mandate.

The exemption was filed by the Small Business in Transportation Coalition (SBTC), received nearly 2,000 comments after it was posted and the majority of comments were positive.

Ultimately, the FMCSA stated that the SBTC’s application failed to provide evidence that safety would not be compromised under the exemption.

Specifically, the SBTC did not “explain how you would ensure that you could achieve a level of safety that is equivalent to, or greater than, the level of safety that would be obtained by complying with the regulation,” according to the FMCSA.

In its application, the Small Business in Transportation Coalition stated that ELDs are tools used to determine compliance with existing HOS regulations and that the mandate itself is not a safety regulation per se.

“Therefore, it is our position that this rule does not itself impact safety, and that the level of safety will not change based on whether or not our exemption application is approved. That would require a change to the [hours-of-service rules],” SBTC contended.