The Canadian Trucking Alliance (CTA) is calling on provincial transport ministers to apply the electronic logging device (ELD) mandate to provincially-regulated carriers.

The Alliance wants the recently announced federal rule – requiring third-party certified devices to be used – to be adopted by each province. As it currently stands, the ELD mandate would only apply to federally-regulated carriers.

“The non-compliant hours-of-service behavior shown by the carrier and driver involved in Humboldt tragedy (federally-regulated) is easily imitated by a minority of provincially-regulated carriers. Non-compliant behavior that leads to road safety risks knows no boundaries and certainly does not distinguish between provincially and federally regulated carriers when it comes to hours of service regulations,” the CTA wrote in a letter sent to each provincial transport minister. “In our view, the events and timeframes in the days prior to the Humboldt collision would have been much more transparent under an ELD regime.  We must end the opportunities for this egregious and unsafe behavior regardless of whether the trucking company crosses provincial/territorial boundaries or offers services within a jurisdiction.”

CTA president Stephen Laskowski called paper logbooks an “outdated, time-consuming, unsafe” system.