This week in trucking: ELD tampering out-of-service extension, Indiana's 1,790 non-domiciled CDLs

Here are the headlines from this week in trucking as of April 2.

Listen to the news on this week's episode of The Fleet Lead podcast here or search for The Fleet Lead on your favorite podcast app.

Summaries of the stories are below:

Indiana removed nearly 1,800 non-domiciled CDLs

Indiana’s new state law removing non-domiciled commercial driver's licenses (CDLs) took effect on April 1. The Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles said that it removed “nearly all” non-domiciled CDLs, roughly 1,790 drivers, representing 2% of all commercial drivers in the state. It is unclear, though, exactly how those CDL numbers translate to motor carrier drivers. The state had passed the law in mid-March.

International and Ryder are using an autonomous truck for real freight

International Motors and Ryder System announced a new autonomous pilot on Texas highways. Ryder is using an International LT with factory-integrated autonomy upgrades, including a suite of sensors and the PlusAI autonomous driver. The pilot runs the LT along a 600-mile route between Ryder’s own locations as part of a longer route to a customer in the Midwest. The companies began their autonomous runs in November but only announced the pilot publicly this week.

Out-of-service orders will now treat ELD tampering differently

The Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance issued guidance on April 1 that adds a new out-of-service (OOS) condition for carriers that tamper with an electronic logging device (ELD). When an inspector finds that a record of duty status is false because of a tampered ELD, and it is so deeply falsified that the inspector cannot determine when the last rest was taken, the inspector will place the driver OOS for 10 consecutive hours. Those 10 hours can be longer than the OOS designation incurred by simpler false log violations.

EPA is removing DEF sensor requirements?

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said it is, quote, “removing the DEF [diesel exhaust fluid] sensor requirement for all diesel equipment.” Endquote. The agency issued guidance on March 26 outlining diesel equipment manufacturers’ aftertreatment sensor requirements—but the actual details of that guidance are less exciting than what EPA stated.

EPA’s March 26 guidance merely reiterated that it can certify equipment that uses nitrogen oxides sensors instead of urea quality sensors. EPA has been doing this certification a long time, and aftertreatment systems still need sensors, so this guidance isn’t as groundbreaking as the agency made it seem.

In fuel this week, diesel is up three cents

The national average on-highway diesel price grew three cents to $5.40 per gallon, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) weekly analysis released Tuesday. Since EIA’s update earlier this week, AAA's daily measure of diesel prices increased over 5 cents to $5.50.