Many smaller carriers will wait until the last minute to implement. Some will lease on with larger carriers, and some will exit the business voluntarily. Some will underestimate the financial impact of “running legal” and will go out of business six months to a year after they install electronic logging devices. So the disruption will continue for at least a year beyond the Dec. 18, 2017, deadline.
Total for-hire truckload capacity will effectively shrink between 5% and 10%, which should raise rates and could put more trucks on the highways. Beyond the operational impact, the companies that use the ELD information effectively in planning will have an advantage, since a driver’s hours of service will be the definition of real capacity.
