Adjusting to new changes in hours-of-service regulations is never easy for drivers and fleet operations, but here we go again. On Tuesday, Dec. 16, President Obama signed an appropriations bill that halted enforcement of the “new” 34-hour restart period enacted in July 2013.
CCJ reported on this legislation in detail, but the gist is this: drivers can revert back to the “old” restart, prior to July 2013, when drivers could refresh their hours more than once per week using a 34-hour break that did not have to include two consecutive 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. periods.
Now comes the hard part: putting it into practice. While many drivers are familiar with the previous method, they might need to ignore violations from electronic logging applications until developers update their software code. Three developers have already made this change.
On Wednesday morning, right after the announcement of the final signature, Innovative Software Engineering (ISE) updated its customers using its eFleet Suite’s Driver Logs application. Its largest customer is Southeastern Freight Lines (SEFL) which runs eFleet Suite on its PeopleNet mobile system. Also on Dec. 17, Keeptruckin updated the 34-hour restart rule in its electronic logging application. BigRoad announced its application was updated on Friday, Dec. 19.
Omnitracs and PeopleNet have also completed updates for their systems.
“Back in early 2013, we went through a thorough process and field tested with SEFL both the deployment of the new July 2013 rules as well as reversing them, just in case. This has proven fruitful and we were able to take advantage of it,” said Hass Machlab, chief executive of ISE.
Keeptruckin and BigRoad offer applications that run on the Android and Apple platforms. ISE plans to release an Android version in early 2015.
