The Opportunity in ELD-Connected Driver Communications

Today I am excited to announce Vendorflow 's first integration with Samsara is now live in the Samsara App Marketplace.

Our fleet customers have expressed a clear demand for ELD and Fleet Management System integration that has defined a range of opportunities that we will be delivering with top ELD providers throughout 2025.

For the purposes of this article, I will use "ELD" as shorthand for Fleet Management Systems & their associated ELD devices.

How does ELD relate to Driver Communications?

For countless trucking fleets today, driver communications remains an improvised, disorganized, Wild West. Fleets today employ a mix of solutions like Google Voice, Microsoft Teams, Trucker Apps, & Social Messaging apps with little clear consensus for the "best practice" approach.

Fleets today engage in tradeoffs (consciously or not) between safety (e.g. distracted driving), operational productivity, and driver adoption.

ELD integration can be the key to bring order to the chaotic status quo. The ELD provides critical context such as:

• Where is the truck?
• Is the truck currently moving or stopped? In park? Engine off?
• Is the driver on/off duty? Resting? Running low on hours?
• When is their next break?
• Have safety events transpired? (hard-braking, speeding, etc.)
• Has a geofence been pierced?

Thanks to this context, integration with a Unified Communications solution like Vendorflow affords a multitude of opportunities to promote safety, compliance, driver satisfaction, and productivity.

1. The Safety Opportunity

An "open secret" in the trucking industry is that many dispatch teams text drivers in the field. Why? Because it's the fastest way to get a response and is almost guaranteed to be read by the driver. A safety tension becomes clear when considering distracted driving implications associated with messaging a driver on the road.

With ELD integration, a fleet manager can set rules to mitigate this risk such as:

• When truck is rolling, queue text for delivery when truck is stopped or in park.

Further, a safety manager can correlate incidents of a driver messaging dispatch while the truck is rolling and intervene accordingly.

Fleets have reported risks associated with dispatch sending unnecessary messages to long-haul drivers when they should be sleeping. ELD integration can establish rules such as:

• When driver is in rest mode, queue messages for delivery when driver is back on-duty.

Safety managers have requested to send templated messages to drivers based on safety incidents, such as:

• When [safety incident] is observed, auto-queue message to driver so driver is informed as to next steps and/or provided with appropriate training materials.

2. The Compliance Opportunity

Fleet managers may experience labor compliance challenges such as ensuring drivers are taking proper rest breaks and adhering to Hours of Service (HOS) rules. Managers can set rules such as:

• For drivers who have a history of lunch violations, send reminder X minutes before break to remind them to take break.
• For drivers who are running low on hours, alert dispatch and auto-communicate with driver to advise on a plan to take break.

3. The Driver Satisfaction Opportunity

We have observed two themes on the topic of driver satisfaction in communication. To generalize, drivers don't want to communicate over cumbersome special apps or email, they prefer familiar low-friction channels like SMS and WhatsApp. They also do not wish to be needlessly bothered during rest time, and especially sleep time.

Managers can leverage Vendorflow + ELD integration to:

• Give dispatch an easy way to schedule messages away from rest hours to be delivered when the driver is back on duty.
• Respect driver channel preferences, so if one driver prefers to receive ELD messages but another driver prefers SMS, dispatch can effortlessly reach drivers via either channel, with all conversation records unified in one auditable thread regardless of channel.

4. The Productivity Opportunity

In the status quo, dispatch has to go manually check a driver's location and HOS before communicating with a driver. Our first Samsara integration enables operations & dispatch to view within the Vendorflow interface their driver's recent location, duty status, and HOS at-a-glance, thus saving effort and clicks.

ELD integration with comms can save the operations team a great deal of effort and promote an organized operation. Consider rules such as:

• When driver pierces geofence, update the Vendorflow message feed so dispatch is informed. Further rules can be set to trigger reminders to the driver to follow Standard Operating Procedure for a given facility.
• When driver communicates key information e.g. "I arrived," apply AI and Natural Language Processing to update downstream systems such as ELD or TMS.

“Vendorflow's integration with Samsara has helped streamline our dispatch operations by answering questions before they are even asked,?saving our team valuable time. We're excited?for future integrations, especially in areas like safety and compliance, where proactive communication can reduce risk and improve efficiency. The ability to enhance driver satisfaction through increased productivity with real-time updates has the potential to transform our driver’s view on?of the safety equipment we use." - Shaun Leone , President at Sunburst Truck Lines Inc .

We are excited to pursue this journey of promoting safety, compliance, driver satisfaction, and productivity via ELD integration and welcome input from industry stakeholders on how we can further advance driver communications together. Thank you Madison Walford & Daniel Reynolds at Samsara for making it so seamless to get into the Samsara App Marketplace!

To learn more, follow our Linkedin page Vendorflow , email us at info@vendorflow.co, or find us at www.vendorflow.co. We are happy to engage in a free consultation as we are always eager to learn about how fleet and logistics teams communicate with their drivers and frontline workers.