Ensuring the safety of our roads is essential, especially when it involves heavy commercial vehicles like trucks and buses. Alarmingly, up to 20% of accidents involving these vehicles are due to driver fatigue—highlighting the danger of overworking drivers. In response to this, commercial vehicle tracking has seen significant advancements, with technologies like Automatic On-Board Recording Devices (AOBRDs) and Electronic Logging Devices (ELDs) at the forefront. These systems aim to improve road safety and simplify compliance with Hours of Service (HOS) regulations and ELD Mandates.
This blog will explore the intricacies of commercial vehicle tracking and the distinctions between AOBRDs vs ELDs to uncover the most effective and compliant solutions in the industry.
What is an AOBRD?
An AOBRD is a hardware device that connects directly to a vehicle’s engine to record the driver’s hours of service. While it functions similarly to an electronic logging device, it offers fewer capabilities than contemporary ELD solutions. Initially accepted under ELD Mandates, AOBRDs were used legally until transition deadlines—2019 in the United States and 2022 in Canada. Since they are no longer compliant in either country, trucking companies are now legally required to adopt more sophisticated ELD systems for commercial vehicle tracking.
What is an ELD?
An ELD, often referred to as an e-log, is a newer technology that automates driving time recording for commercial motor vehicles. Designed to ensure compliance with HOS regulations, ELDs help to reduce driver fatigue, enhance administrative efficiency, and promote safer road conditions. These devices, which can range from specialized hardware to certified smartphone applications, connect to the vehicle’s engine to accurately track location, engine hours, movement, and miles driven. By capturing critical operational details like idle time, vehicle diagnostics, and safety events, ELDs also offer insights into fleet performance, making them an indispensable tool in modern commercial vehicle tracking.
6 Key Differences Between AOBRD vs ELD
Understanding the distinct functionalities of AOBRD vs ELD systems is crucial for compliance and operational efficiency in commercial vehicle tracking. While both devices serve to enhance road safety and log drivers’ hours, their capabilities significantly differ. The differences include:
1. Data Capture Precision
While both devices record essential information like miles driven and engine hours, ELDs surpass AOBRDs by recording extensive vehicle and driver data, including on/off status, driver identity, and engine diagnostics, enabling a comprehensive overview of vehicle operation and driver activities. This precision provides a more accurate and detailed picture of vehicle usage and driver work hours, crucial for ensuring safety and regulatory compliance.
2. Automatic Status Changes
While some AOBRDs have the ability to automatically capture and record changes in driving status, most do not. ELDs, on the other hand, automatically document vital details like engine status, vehicle movement, miles driven, and engine operating hours, significantly reducing manual entry errors. This automation supports more accurate compliance with HOS regulations, allowing for easier verification during inspections.
3. Data Transfer Methods
ELDs facilitate efficient data transmission through telematics and local methods, like Bluetooth and USB, simplifying the process during DOT inspections. In contrast, AOBRDs primarily rely on older technologies or printouts, leading to less efficient data sharing and potential delays during compliance checks.
4. Edits and Annotations
ELD Mandates enforce strict standards for recording edits, requiring detailed annotations and edit history records accessible to inspectors to ensure data integrity and accountability. AOBRDs allow edits without stringent requirements for annotations, while ELDs require detailed notes of any changes, ensuring accurate and transparent record-keeping.
5. Support for Personal Conveyance and Yard Moves
ELDs are designed with features to record statuses like personal conveyance and yard moves, which provide clarity and flexibility in logging driver activities. AOBRDs lack these specific categorizations, leading to potential inaccuracies in duty status reporting.
6. Auto-Recording When Ignition is On
By design, ELDs start recording when the vehicle’s speed surpasses five miles per hour and stop when idle for three seconds, promoting accurate drive-time tracking. AOBRDs, however, lack this automatic functionality, necessitating manual setup and potentially leading to gaps in drive time documentation.
The shift from AOBRDs to ELDs marks a significant progression in commercial vehicle tracking, with a larger focus on improved accuracy, enhanced safety, and streamlined regulatory compliance. In addition to physical ELDs, software applications can further support trucking companies in making the most of these advancements to drive efficiency across their fleets.
4 Steps You can Take to Migrate from AOBRD to ELD
Ensuring the AOBRD to ELD transition is a smooth one is imperative to keeping your fleet operations consistent and federally compliant. ELDs may be difficult for some fleet owners and operators to get accustomed to at first; however, your participation in the transportation industry has most certainly presented you with greater challenges in the past.
1. Educate Drivers
Drivers are on the front lines of the ELD process, so you’ll need to devote plenty of time to make sure they understand all the new fields, alerts, reports, and changes to log editing. We recommend you train all drivers at the same time. Then, follow up with a refresher training to remind them of their responsibilities and procedures after your ELD implementation. Thoroughly educating drivers will help them enter information quickly and correctly, saving time and cutting down on driver calls to the back-office.
2. Train Others
Everybody’s affected by the ELD mandate, including your back-office and maintenance staff. Your back-office staff uses Hours of Service (HOS) daily, so prepare to go through all the facets of the process with them. Their primary job may be to manage paperwork and keep systems running, but they also support driver needs. Be sure to present any new or updated policies and procedures they may have as a result of the ELD mandate. It’s also essential to train maintenance teams on the new rules governing out-of-service vehicles and the filing of extension requests.
3. Update Company, Driver, and Vehicle Records
The ELD mandate requires additional information about your assets, over and above what’s needed under current AOBRD rules. You can manually update each driver and vehicle or use a bulk importer to update them all at once.
4. Enable the ELD
This is it – the moment of truth. If you want to trial ELD with a portion of your fleet, you can enable ELD for a depot or a few vehicles. Or, if your teams are prepared, you can enable your entire fleet in one session.
Maximize Fleet Efficiency with Omnitracs Hours of Service
Discover the Omnitracs Hours of Service application, designed to streamline compliance and enhance fleet management by simplifying HOS adherence across the U.S. and Canada, even during border crossings. This state-of-the-art app helps prevent costly HOS violations with customizable alerts and enables seamless coordination between drivers and dispatch for improved operational workflows and safety standards.
Don’t wait to elevate your fleet’s performance. Contact the Omnitracs specialists today to schedule a demo. Learn how integrating the Hours of Service application can transform your fleet management, ensure seamless compliance, and optimize your operational efficiency.