Continuing confusion persists with owner/operators following the introduction of the December 18, 2017 hours of service mandate issued by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) in the US.

Leading automotive logistics specialist, Car Delivery Network (CDN), an award-winning software developer with unrivalled track record in providing cloud-based solutions for the automotive industry, has also developed the highly-praised FMCSA approved FleetConnect Electronic Logging Device (ELD) solution to help remedy this industry need.

FleetConnect is part of the company’s connected truck strategy and has been developed in line with the ‘Single Pane of Glass’ (SPOG) approach where all record keeping, monitoring, and crucial trip data is integrated via iPhone and/or Android to a SPOG dashboard and held in the cloud, once installed drivers are fully compliant.

Michael Buss, Account Sales Manager for CDN, admits much confusion is attributed to a lack of customer support. “Owner/operators struggle to fully comprehend which platform best fits their business needs and find themselves in a lurch, not knowing how to utilize what they bought,” he says. “Whether a mass-marketed pricey ELD provider or the bottom of the tier providers with a ‘bare bones’ approach, it all comes down to customer support.”

Upfront costs for FleetConnect are much less than the larger systems, but offer so much more in terms of value-for-money. Mr. Buss says: “As owner/operators replace paper records with ELDs, they require an agile support network to solve any dilemmas in a timely manner, which is not the case with most ELD companies.”

This is where CDN is gaining traction, as they place consumers’ need for support as a primary focus. Mr. Buss adds: “Just because our product is on the road doesn’t mean our business is done should there be any issues. Typically, FleetConnect queries are answered either same day, or within 48 hours, compared to the 5-7 day response time currently being experienced by many in the marketplace.”

Investing in FleetConnect supports the need to go paperless with a future-proof ELD solution. FleetConnect is able to link to CDN’s wide array of cloud based services and can update itself over-the-air. This means the owner/operator will not be required to make expensive or inconvenient hardware changes in order to access additional functionality.

Mr. Buss states: “Undoubtedly, our customer’s businesses will greatly profit by utilizing CDN’s future-proof technology as we continue to integrate value-added benefits.”