Canadian ELD: Our certified solution for HOS compliance

Keeping up with the rules of the road can be a challenge, especially for drivers who regularly cross state and national borders. From tracking hours of service (HOS) and rest breaks to filling out vehicle inspections and activity logs, maintaining compliance with state laws and regulatory mandates takes a lot of work. Fortunately, the emergence of electronic logging devices (ELD) has made it easier to manage and monitor drivers’ hours of service and vehicle inspection reports while ensuring drivers stay on the right side of the law.

In 2019, Canada’s Minister of Transport, the Honourable Marc Garneau, P.C., M.P., shared the Transport Canada 2019-2020 Departmental Plan, which included plans for ‘a harmonized national technical standard for electronic logging devices which are used to record driving hours on commercial vehicles.’ Since then, additional legislation concerning the ELD mandate has been circulated by Transport Canada, along with deadlines for implementation and enforcement.

Our solution for the Canadian ELD mandate

To ensure our neighbors to the north always remain in compliance with provincial and federal regulations, we created a solution for the Canadian ELD mandate. In January, Platform Science became one of the first vendors of certified Canadian ELDs. ‘With the Canadian mandate going into effect this June, we are excited to offer a comprehensive ELD solution to help our fleets and drivers maintain hours of service compliance on both sides of the border,’ says Jesse Ferguson, our Product Manager, and compliance expert.

Our Canadian ELD certification is a major step toward safer roads throughout North America and a new opportunity to help fleets and drivers stay safe on both sides of the border. Jesse sat down with us to answer some questions about our new Canadian ELD solution, recent certification, and what fleets need to know before the upcoming mandate.

Who has to use the Canadian ELD? Basically, any fleet with dedicated Canadian drivers or U.S.-based drivers who cross the border must use the product. In fact, one of our partners is already using the Canadian ELD product.

What’s the difference between the current U.S. ELD and its Canadian counterpart? Technically speaking, the Canadian ELD is the exact same ELD as the U.S. version. However, there’s one significant difference: The ‘Canadian Rules’ screen, where drivers choose which ruleset to follow. With the updated ELD, drivers can easily switch to Canadian rulesets from the existing U.S. product. They can also perform an off-duty time deferral from this screen, which is the only screen that is 100% Canadian. The rest of the app is seamless with the current U.S. experience.

Can back-office administrators use this tool to easily access compliance information? The same suite of reports and tools are available for both Canada and the U.S. For example, UDT Management works exactly the same no matter where the driver is located. In fact, as we expanded the product to support Canada we also made enhancements along the way. A great example is our ‘Log Transfer History’ report: We expanded the capabilities with more visibility into roadside inspections, creating new printed logs and output files on the fly for any date range, and bulk log creation options.

Will there be penalties for not using an approved ELD? Yes. As of June 12th, 2022, fleets will start receiving penalties for not using an approved ELD in Canada. To ensure their compliance well ahead of the deadline, fleets need to begin evaluating potential telematics vendors as soon as possible (if they haven’t already started).

What are the benefits of using an ELD? In addition to avoiding legal trouble for not complying with provincial and federal regulations, there are some major benefits associated with using an ELD. According to Transport Canada, ELDs help drivers and fleets:

• Lower industry-related administrative costs
• Comply with regulatory requirements in the U.S.
• Reduce fatigue-related crashes, injuries, and deaths
• Minimize enforcement costs for provinces and territories
• Make competition fairer for federally regulated motor carriers

Regardless of which side of the border they’re on, drivers can be confident they’re complying with the rules of the road when they have an ELD on board. To learn more about our ELD solutions, check out our Compliance and PS HOS pages, or reach out to our Sales team if you have any questions.