The following is a guest post by aspiring writer Alisha Christina. She can be reached via email at alishachristina1@outlook.com.
How the ELD Mandate Will Improve Fuel Efficiency
In August, R-Squared Energy reported that the U.S. set a new gasoline demand record. We stated that a key reason for this is the growth in population in the U.S. In this article we look at the impact of Hurricane Harvey on gas prices, the current consumption of oil in the U.S., and how a new ruling for commercial vehicles will improve fuel efficiency.
In an article by AOL Finance, it was reported that the consequences of Hurricane Harvey continue to worsen. Aside from displacing tens of thousands of people, gas prices are rising because oil refineries in Texas remain closed. As a result, gas prices have increased to a two-year high, and are expected to keep climbing throughout the U.S. According to the Energy Information Administration, the U.S. consumed a total of 7.21 billion barrels of petroleum products In 2016. That’s roughly a consumption of 19.7 million barrels per day.
The ELD Mandate
While the technology behind solar and wind energy needs more refinement in order to be used on a wider scale, there are quicker, more immediate solutions that some organizations are implementing to reduce the consumption of gas. One government directive is aimed at commercial fleet companies.
Trucking companies make up for more than 500,000 businesses in the U.S., and these companies utilize over 15.5 million trucks on the road. One new law that will come into effect this December is the Electronic Logging Device (ELD) Final Rule by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA).
The ELD Final Rule will change how fleet management is operated by requiring drivers to use an app or on board logging device that’s compliant to the FMCSA’s mandate. Fleetmatics revealed that ELDs will streamline the operating systems of fleet companies, from logging a driver’s hours of service to sending proactive alerts to both fleet managers and drivers if a trucking operation is about to commit a violation.
The ELD Final Rule will improve fuel efficiency because the drivers’ operations will be tracked automatically. Operators will be able to use the data received from an ELD to re-evaluate their routes and potentially find a more efficient route. This will help companies be economic in terms of the fuel they use.
ELD’s will also ensure that drivers work within the allotted amount of Hours of Service (Hos). The device will alert drivers when they are close to violating their HoS, and drivers who go beyond their working hours will be penalized. The FMCSA says that ELDs will save companies around $1.6 billion annually by enhancing fuel efficiency.
Whether or not the ELD Final Rule will be successful or not can only be determined once the law comes in full effect. Will the new mandate affecting millions of trucks operating in the U.S., it is hoped that the new regulation will streamline fleet operations, and significantly reduce commercial vehicle gas usage.
Written by Alisha Christina for rrapier.com.
This is a fed attempt to run ahead of the marching band to take credit. It’s a political ploy to make politicians and government agency look better.
I’ve read of this technology for years and talked to truckers whom routinely get tracked by home office. Yes, the truck path is optimised and dynamically changed per up to date plans. All the delivery truck utilize this technology at some cost effective point. No expensive federal mandate required. It’s a cost reduction. One needs to understand that federal remedies are inflexible, soon out of date, and costly to tax payer. Good remedies will naturally surface upon satisfactory results from cost savings and performance. These natural remedies will occur and reinvent upon demand. They cost taxpayer nothing and keep power away from bureaucrats that will only work to make things more expensive as they naturally increase their fiefdom and power. The old joke went something like “I’m from the federal government I’m here to help”.
We citizens have been trained to think were helpless until the police come to protect us. We’re helpless until the fire department can show up and get the cat down from the tree. Of course this will all be replayed on TV will gushing gee whiz are tax dollars make us safe. In reality all the emergency services barely make a dent in our safety. We can’t rely solely on such. Citizens have to know, train, and help each other. This is the force to safety, but hardly ever goes to TV and usually the concern is nipped in the bud before real damage can occur. In a true geographic emergency, their will be no professional tax paid help. You will be on your own and will need to seek neighborhood help.
It is a little ridiculous to think government paid insurance will lower health care cost. It never happens that way. Some one will pay and pay much more as compared to natural demand vs customer paid remedies. What is being discussed in the political realm is not health care, it’s insurance for bad health procedures. The government should focus on impacting good health and forces to keep medical costs down. This has a better return for citizens enjoying life.
keeping with the topic of the article, your first 2 paragraphs are spot on.
in commercial settings, efficiency saves LOTS of money. rout optimization software has been in common use for over 20 years now.
i know a woman who’s job is correcting routs that the software spits out for the drivers.
there are some short routs which are not the safest routs.
is this mandate now going to penalize companies who go off rout to keep to a safer path?
(example: software sometimes routes drivers through a famous road known as tail of the dragon. trucks get stuck on the sharp curves and cause accidents here regularly.)
RR, was this post offered to you along with any mention of a Nigerian Prince? The typographic errors, the lack of coherency (where did the first few paragraphs come from, and since when is a lone reference to an AOL Finance article up to the RR level of analysis?), and the way in which the entire post can be boiled down to the single line that says ” The FMCSA says that ELDs will save companies around $1.6 billion annually by enhancing fuel efficiency.” ? That isn’t analysis, but merely a long winded lead into a link by the noted scholarly “American Trucker” site. Then the comments are awfully trollesque (hopefully not mine…) and I just fear you have been duped.
Since I haven’t paid you for any of your content from all the articles dating back to the Oil Drum, you don’t owe me anything, but I certainly have always received higher quality content from things with your imprint.
Dave,
I am always pretty careful about guest posts. People offer them up all the time, but they usually want a link back or product placement. I never do those, so we went back and forth on what exactly she wanted.
Was I a little suspicious? Of course. I am always suspicious of people’s motives. But she has some other writing samples around the Internet and indicated that she really just wanted to hone her writing skills on energy. I was a new writer myself at one point, so after 14 emails back and forth, I agreed to put up her guest post.
I have made her aware that there are comments here, and I was interested to see if she engaged at all.
Anyway, I ultimately gave her the benefit of the doubt, but thanks for your feedback.
Cheers, Robert
Trollesque? lol
I think not. I’ve been a contributor for many years. Coal_burner post seems legit and interesting. The author probably just starting out her or his journalistic talents and RR gave her a venue. No conspiracy.
If a company hired quality drivers who knew how to read a map they would not a computer to tell them the routes to drive. Most big companies already have set routes from one city to another. Eld is not going to save any fuel if anything is going to cost more fuel due to trucks sitting more. What would save fuel is to due away with the 14hour rule.
” Aside from displacing tens of thousands of people, gas prices are rising because oil refineries in Texas remain closed. ” This is either a sentence fragment which should be properly subordinated to the previous sentence, or it’s a claim that gas prices are displacing tens of thousands of people. Aspiring writer indeed.
Truckers for decades have been obligated to falsify hours of service in order to both comply with employer demands and earn enough money to make the job worthwhile. Companies are rarely punished if caught, while drivers face huge fines for minor infractions of every sort.
Anyone who sees the ELD mandate as a solution is naive and lacks any real insight into the trucking industry.