Why Truckers Using These 12 Logging Devices Now Risk Being Pulled Off the Road

Truckers still running one of 12 electronic logging devices that federal regulators revoked in May now risk being pulled off the road entirely. A 60-day grace period that let drivers keep using the flagged devices without penalty expired July 20, and safety officials nationwide are now authorized to treat any commercial vehicle still running one of the banned devices as operating with no logging device at all, a violation that carries an automatic out-of-service order.

What FMCSA Actually Did

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration removed 12 electronic logging devices from its list of registered ELDs on May 20, placing them on the agency’s Revoked Devices list. FMCSA said the devices failed to meet the minimum technical requirements spelled out in Title 49 of the Code of Federal Regulations, the rulebook that governs how ELDs must record and transmit a driver’s hours-of-service data.

The 12 revoked devices span 10 different providers: MAUMAU LLC’s 888 ELD, Dragon ELD, Action ELD, Mondo ELD HOS from Mondotracking Solutions, two devices from First ELD LLC (First ELD and First ELD V2.0), two from Power ELD LLC (MTL ELD and USPower ELD), Sam Freight ELD, DSG Tracking’s DSGELOGS, Cobra Connect’s Cobra ELD, and GT USA Elogs from GT ELD.

“Safety is not optional, and neither is compliance,” FMCSA Administrator Derek D. Barrs said in the agency’s announcement. “FMCSA is serious about removing unsafe and unreliable electronic logging devices from the market and holding manufacturers accountable to federal safety standards. These standards are in place to help protect everyone traveling on American roads.”

The 60-Day Window That Just Closed

FMCSA built in a grace period after the May 20 revocation, giving motor carriers 60 days, until July 20, to swap out any revoked device for one on the agency’s Registered Devices list. In that window, the agency asked safety officials to hold off on citing drivers for the two violations that normally apply to ELD problems: 395.8(a)(1), no record of duty status, and 395.22(a), failing to use a registered ELD. Instead, officers were told to request paper logs, logging software, or use the flagged device’s display as a backup way to review a driver’s hours.

That leniency period ended July 20. From that date forward, any carrier still running one of the 12 revoked devices is treated as operating without an ELD at all, according to FMCSA’s guidance. Safety officials encountering a driver using one of the flagged devices are now instructed to cite 395.8(a)(1) directly and place the driver out of service under the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance’s out-of-service criteria, the same standard used for drivers caught with no logging device whatsoever.

Why ELDs Exist in the First Place

Electronic logging devices became mandatory for most commercial drivers in December 2017, replacing the paper logbooks truckers had used for decades to track how many hours they’d been driving. An ELD connects to a truck’s engine and automatically records driving time, engine hours, vehicle movement and location, creating a digital record that’s far harder to falsify than a handwritten log. The rule exists to enforce hours-of-service limits, the federal caps on how long a commercial driver can be behind the wheel before taking a mandatory rest break, limits tied directly to fatigue-related crash risk on highways.

The entire system depends on the device itself being trustworthy, which is why FMCSA maintains strict technical standards for what counts as a registered ELD and audits providers to make sure their hardware and software keep meeting them. A device that gets revoked isn’t necessarily broken in an obvious way to the driver using it. It has typically failed a technical compliance check tied to how it records, stores or transmits data, meaning a truck can be running a revoked ELD for weeks without the driver noticing anything different day to day.

What an Out-of-Service Order Means for a Driver

An out-of-service order under CVSA criteria stops a driver from continuing their run until the violation is corrected, which typically means the truck sits until a compliant logging solution is in place or the driver’s hours can be verified another way. For an owner-operator or a small carrier, that can mean a missed delivery window and lost revenue for the day, on top of the citation itself. For larger fleets, it can mean scrambling to identify every truck still running a flagged device before a roadside inspection catches it first.

The timing adds pressure on carriers that weren’t paying close attention. The enforcement deadline landed just two days after the end of Operation Safe Driver Week, the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance’s annual enforcement blitz that ran July 12 through 18 this year and put extra patrols on the road specifically watching for high-risk driving behavior among truckers and passenger vehicles alike. Fleets that already faced heavier scrutiny that week now face a second compliance deadline immediately behind it.

Part of a Longer Pattern of ELD Revocations

The May 20 action wasn’t an isolated event. FMCSA has removed 79 devices from its registered ELD list from January 2025 through this spring for failing to meet federal technical standards, a pace that reflects tighter agency scrutiny of the third-party companies that build and sell logging hardware and software to the trucking industry. The agency has continued revoking additional devices in the weeks that followed, according to industry trade coverage, meaning carriers who checked their compliance status once in May could already be behind if their provider has been flagged again more recently.

FMCSA has left the door open for any of the 12 providers to return to the registered list if they fix the deficiencies that got their devices pulled in the first place. If that happens, the agency said it will restore the device and notify the industry. None of the 12 had been reinstated as of the July 20 enforcement deadline.

What Carriers and Drivers Should Do Now

Motor carriers can check whether their device remains on FMCSA’s Registered Devices list at eld.fmcsa.dot.gov/List. Anyone still running one of the 12 revoked devices named above needs to discontinue its use immediately and either switch to a compliant ELD or fall back on paper logs while a replacement is arranged. The informal leniency period for citations has already ended.

Fleet safety managers should treat this as a recurring check rather than a one-time task. FMCSA has pulled devices from the registered list often enough over the past year and a half that carriers relying on lesser-known ELD providers have a real incentive to verify their device’s status on a regular schedule rather than assuming today’s compliant device stays that way indefinitely.

Owner-operators shopping for a replacement device should look for providers with an established track record and a public compliance history rather than choosing based on price alone. Several of the 12 revoked providers were smaller companies with limited market presence. FMCSA’s registered devices list identifies the manufacturer and model for every currently compliant option, giving carriers an easy way to compare choices before committing to a new subscription or hardware purchase.

Independent owner-operators who run older or budget ELD hardware are the group most exposed to this kind of disruption. Larger fleets typically standardize on a handful of established providers and can push a fleet-wide update faster when a device gets flagged, while a solo driver relying on a single inexpensive device from a small provider has fewer backup options if that provider ends up on the revoked list. That gap is why safety advocates recommend checking the registered devices list before signing a multi-year contract with any ELD company, not just after a problem surfaces.

Sources:

• FMCSA, “FMCSA Removes 12 Devices from List of Registered Electronic Logging Devices,” May 20, 2026
• Land Line Media, “CVSA safety blitz targets risky driving”
• CDLLife, “FMCSA revokes two more ELDs, bringing number of removed devices to 67 since January 2025”