The ELD Mandate and you

The ELD Mandate is a law requiring all over the road semi drivers to have Electronic Logging Devices (ELD) in their trucks. The device keeps track of the driver's road time and regulates how many continuous hours of driving they can perform and when they must take breaks from the road. This is nothing new for the drivers, except that the logs are now electronic - and they can't be fudged. The law went into effect in 2015 but the actual deadline for compliance was December 2017, so this shipping season is the first that we are noticing the effects of it since now every driver has to play by the same rules.

How does this affect you?  Well, it may mean that if you are getting a direct-shipped load of plants delivered it will arrive when the driver's hours allow him to be there. In the past we always liked to have delivery as early as possible in the morning when all of your crews were there to unload, however it now could be any time during the day. It just depends on how the driver's logs work out. To help avoid any problems that this might cause, we still will require the driver to call you 24 hours in advance and also to keep you informed if anything changes.

Another issue is the question of how soon will plants arrive at the nursery? Loads that would load on one day and deliver the next can now take two days to get here depending on the available hours of the driver. So please be patient with us. We will call you when the plants actually land so you don’t have people waiting around for material that won’t show till the next day. Remember that the ELD Mandate affects every hauler on the road today and we all will have to adjust to this new reality.