ELD related survey shows length-of-haul desirability trends

From Overdrive.

The Columbus, Ohio-headquartered Zipline Logistics freight brokerage has been in business about a decade, working mostly with food and beverage brands and suppliers of ingredients and materials as shipper customers. Zipline recently surveyed its carrier network, comprised of both small and comparatively large fleets, about the turn to electronic logging devices made of course dramatic by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s ELD mandate.

Survey results, based on responses from more than 100 carriers, show something of a shift in thinking depending on the size of the carrier when it comes to the desirability of longer or shorter hauls. A principal difference in responses of fleets of 30 or fewer trucks and those with more than 30 trucks shows a mirror image centered on what have been called the “dangerous lanes” for solo drivers utilizing ELDs — those runs that are able to be completed by a solo driver reliably in a single day within the hours of service limitations.

In Zipline’s survey, it asked respondents to indicate certain lengths of haul as either more or less desirable since the turn to ELDs for hours of service tracking. Smaller fleets, where Zipline believes solo drivers are something of a norm in its carrier base, in large part indicated runs of shorter length were now more desirable to maximize productivity.

See the full story from Overdrive online.