Over 25,000 truckers so far are asking for the President to Direct the Secretary to SUSPEND ELDs... not REPEAL. We are asking CONGRESS to REPEAL.

After nearly a full week of amazing unity in the trucking industry brought about by the ELD Suspension Petition published on Friday, October 25th, the naysayers finally came out of the wood work and started to get negative.

The President can't make ELDs go away, they say. So don't bother signing the petition. And by the way, we don't like James Lamb, the guy who started the Petition. Some of the nonsense that followed was so egregious that Todd Spencer at OOIDA was served with a CEASE & DESIST demand by one of my attorneys yesterday to stop what appears to be an OOIDA smear campaign to sadly sabotage our efforts. It appears everyone else is getting together on this, except OOIDA. Perhaps they are upset that --after 45 years in business, their ELD petition garnered just 4,000 comments in a month, while this petition --sparked by their new competitor SBTC --has acquired 25,000 supporters in just a week. That's because the industry has made it your petition. And the truth is, we could not have done this by ourselves alone. You did this, Drivers.

While I --and countless other truckers and leaders of trucker groups like @theTonyJustice of Trucker Nation and Greg Anderson of Black Smoke Matters (too many to name here but all so much appreciated) who immediately stepped up-- spent the week plugging the petition, including appearing on Blog Talk Radio programs and joining in truckers' spontaneous Facebook Live broadcasts, and some in trucking media like Transportation Nation and CDLlife.com helped spread the word, others began to try to stop its progress. Maybe that is because we have done in one week what others have never been able to do: tap truckers grass root-style and get them to quickly respond to our call to action.

Make no mistake. We are asking the President to suspend --not repeal --ELDs. We are separately asking Congress to repeal here in this letter. Not everyone is grasping that distinction. Some get it but are still trying to muddy the waters nonetheless. In our letter to Wicker and DeFazio, we have brought up FMCSA's failure to make publicly available required data on malfunctions for at least 8 months into implementation, a national security threat of hacking into telematic devices and a lack of certification by FMCSA as required by MAP-21 to ensure encryption protocols are in place for these devices that have flooded the market, and now the latest 2019 data from both independent academic researchers and the USDOT itself that show the highest large truck occupant fatality rates in 2018 in 30 years, the first full year of the ELD mandate in effect.

Despite what OOIDA is telling people, the Secretary does in fact have the power to declare this an emergency and immediately suspend the rule under its Exemption and Waiver authority granted to it by Congress. The death of more that two occupants of large trucks every single day certainly constitutes an emergency, as does a potential terrorist hacking threat.

In fact, we would argue the law even requires them to do so:

§31136. United States Government regulations

(a) Minimum Safety Standards.—Subject to section 30103(a) of this title, the Secretary of Transportation shall prescribe regulations on commercial motor vehicle safety. The regulations shall prescribe minimum safety standards for commercial motor vehicles. At a minimum, the regulations shall ensure that—

(1) commercial motor vehicles are maintained, equipped, loaded, and operated safely;

(2) the responsibilities imposed on operators of commercial motor vehicles do not impair their ability to operate the vehicles safely;

While we have scored 25,000 after one week, we are dangerously close to just missing the 100,000 in 30 days mark. We need that many by the November 24th deadline to spring the White House into action. So, we now need to step up our game. We have three weeks left.

This Petition is not about the messengers. It's about the message. So, ignore those who are jealous they didn't think of this first, upset their competitor did, and this is so successful. Just Sign and Share and help us Promote the Petition. This is what is right for the industry.

We are all in this together, OOIDA. With or without you. We do hope you will swallow your pride, put your egos aside, change your mind, and do the right thing for truckers.