They will not be going easy on drivers, starting December 17.

This week, the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance (CVSA) announced that there will be no grace period for drivers making the transition from grandfathered devices to approved Electronic Logging Devices (ELDs).

On December 2, the CVSA issued a statement on the looming ELD compliance deadline and warned that “hard enforcement” would begin immediately on December 17, 2019:

Starting Dec. 17, 2019, all motor carriers and drivers subject to the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) electronic logging devices (ELD) final rule must use an ELD. This deadline also pertains to grandfathered automatic onboard recording devices (AOBRDs), which will no longer be allowed under the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations to provide records of duty status as a substitute to a required ELD. Motor carriers utilizing an AOBRD must have a fully operational ELD installed by Dec. 17, 2019. According to FMCSA, there will be no extensions or exceptions made to the Dec. 17, 2019, ELD rule deadline. In addition, the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance (CVSA) stated that inspectors will begin fully enforcing the ELD rule on Dec. 17, 2019; there will be no “soft enforcement” grace period.

The CVSA says that as of December 17, any driver caught without an FMCSA approved device will be considered to have no record of duty status and will be declared out of service for a 10 hour period.

After the ELD Mandate went into effect in December of 2017, there was a “soft enforcement” period during which drivers were not placed out of service if they did not have an approved ELD device. “Hard enforcement” with out of service orders began in April 2018.