It’s been a year since I've had to worry about the pains of release plans and capacity in a development plan, but man do I really feel bad for the fleet technology firms trying to keep up with the FMCSA!
The government threw a carrot out to the trucking industry these last two weeks by reinstating the old HOS rules of eliminating the breaks between 1 and 5 am. However, they waved a large stick at the ELD companies out there. These changes are not small, and they come with a lot of complexity, both in how drivers interact with software and how reporting is managed from one rule to the next. This recent win for the carriers is a major lump of Christmas coal to the tech guys. We should really do a better job as an industry figuring out what we collectively want, and then implementing it.
This won’t be the last hitch like this. We know the mandate will come with a new set of tricks for these guys to handle. So when you pick up the phone to beat a date out of your vendor, remember you lost out on cool new features, because the Government had an idea and cut them some slack. This is not as easy as it looks.
Change is constant and we know that, we also know that change hurts. What we need to realize is that change costs a lot of money – especially when it’s not planned.
Happy Holidays, coding ELD guys!
About the Author
Christian Schenk
President
Christian Schenk is the former president of CLS LLC, the premier technology consulting group for the transportation industry. With more than a decade of experience in telematics and fleet management, Schenk founded CLS LLC in 2013 to help transportation companies transition into the mobile era.