While learning routes, terminology, and standards, new truck drivers have a lot on their plates. It would be easy to overlook something as quiet and unassuming as an electronic logging device, or ELD, but this unique tool will be crucial on every route you run. Here’s a brief guide to ELDs to help you use this tool properly and to your benefit.
What Is an ELD?
Electronic logging devices are additions to commercial semi-trucks used to collect data on drive time, hours of service, engine health, and much more. They can automatically track, record, and report a driver’s miles driven per day, number of hours behind the wheel, and route taken to the destination. Many ELDs communicate with fleet management to report statistics and improve their route data. Drivers can access their data through a mobile app to verify their hours of service and know when it’s time to stop for the day.
How Do They Benefit Truck Drivers?
Improved Safety
ELDs have many helpful safety tools, both for the driver’s immediate benefit and for fleet management to use to improve safety in driving instruction and regulation. By using accelerometers, gyroscopes, and GPS technology, an ELD tracks driving habits and provides valuable data about what habits lead to the safest outcomes and which are most dangerous. It can tell you if you’re turning too sharply or accelerating unsafely down a slope, and it can send this data to the fleet to be incorporated into training regimens.
Because it monitors a driver’s hours of service, an ELD also helps enforce the legal limits on how long someone can drive in one day. This drastically cuts the risk of overworking and sleep deprivation and prioritizes the driver’s health and safety by setting a clear boundary on the workday,
Simplified Recordkeeping
These devices also make your job easier by streamlining the recordkeeping process. They track miles traveled, hours of service, and total driving time, meaning you have less to record in your logbook.
Efficient Routing
The GPS capabilities of an ELD allow fleet management to monitor your status in real-time and push out instructions on the fly. They can use this information to look ahead on your route, detect slowdowns and traffic jams, and redirect you accordingly. This can be done simultaneously for many trucks, majorly increasing the efficiency and adaptability of a company’s routes while making your job easier and less stressful.
If you’re interested in a rewarding career on the road, enroll at Hamrick School in Medina, OH. For almost 35 years, this fully licensed and accredited trucking school has equipped new drivers with all the knowledge and experience they need to make a living in the booming trucking freight industry. Learn more about their CDL training programs online, and call (330) 239-2229 for more information.
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