Leading Fleets, Vol. 9, 2016

18 LEADING FLEETS VOL 9 2016 LEADING THOUGHTS Most interstate carriers fulfill their obligations for vehicle registration through the International Registration Plan IRP and for fuel use reporting through the International Fuel Tax Agreement IFTA These two multistate agreements are extremely beneficial Todays trucking industry could hardly function without them However IRP and IFTA impose a record keeping burden on carriers since the calculations require knowing where a vehicle went and how many miles it traveled in each jurisdiction For many years a carrier has had to create and maintain distance records by means of individual paper trip sheets prepared by the driver The disadvantages of this kind of record are many trip sheets may be missing critical details they may be turned in late or not at all and they are often inaccurate Besides that trip records are voluminous easily misplaced and expensive to store But until recently there wasnt any good alternative Many carriers used dispatch records instead but states commonly consider these insufficiently accurate since they dont account for a drivers deviations from route The advent of global positioning systems GPS has at last provided a way to alleviate the IRP and IFTA record keeping burden Although carriers have adopted GPS only gradually the issuance in December 2015 by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration FMCSA of its final rule on electronic logging devices ELDs has given this trend an enormous boost Under the rule as of Dec 18 2017 any driver required to comply with the federal hours of service HOS rules must keep logs by means of a device that among other things periodically records the vehicles location though GPS Effectively the ELD rule means that nearly every vehicle subject to IRP and IFTA reporting requirements will a little less than two years from now be equipped with GPS So can carriers use GPS to fulfill their IRP and IFTA record keeping requirements and get rid of all that paper The answer is a qualified yes But carriers must be cautious They need to make sure that after the change the records are both appropriate and sufficient for distance reporting under the two agreements and available when an IRP or IFTA auditor comes to call Ready for an Audit Fortunately both IRP and IFTA have recently been amended to give guidance on what GPS records are acceptable to back up what carriers report In essentially identical language the agreements provide that carrier records that contain the following elements are acceptable for audit and may not be penalized the original GPS data for the vehicle to which the records pertain the date and time of each GPS reading at intervals sufficient to validate the total distance traveled in each jurisdiction the location of each GPS reading GPS data can help you and your drivers save time and money when reporting your IFTA quarterly and mileage tax returns as well as you distance for IRP licensing Can Motor Carriers Use GPS Data for IRP IFTA Reporting