Currently, our drivers are switching their rulesets between "No Ruleset (8 days)" and "USA Property 70-hour/8-day" rulesets. This switching is meant to account for when drivers are operating non-regulated vehicles (under 10,001 lbs) versus regulated vehicles. However, even when they switch between these rulesets, only on duty and drive time is still recorded under the "No Ruleset" category, which creates issues with the accurate recording of regulated driving time for Hours of Service (HOS) compliance.

Just to clarify, drive time does not need to be recorded for non-regulated vehicles (those under 10,001 lbs), but on-duty/off-duty times must still be tracked. For example, if a driver is in an F-250 (a non-regulated vehicle) without a trailer attached, logged into Geotab, their driving time is still recorded even though it doesn't need to be. When the driver hooks up a trailer and switches to the "70-hour/8-day" ruleset, their drive time should begin recording correctly, but the software is combining the non-regulated vehicle drive time with the regulated one, leading to inaccurate data. This discrepancy could result in potential violations if the driver is stopped by a regulatory authority, as it might show an incorrect total driving time that could trigger penalties or cause the driver to be put out of service.

The only other solution we've considered is for drivers not to log into Geotab when driving unregulated vehicles. However, we'd like to avoid this because we want to maintain full visibility over who is driving which vehicle, track dangerous driving behaviors, monitor total drive time across the company, and integrate with other third-party systems that rely on this driver data.

I was hoping to find a solution that might look at a vehicles group (which our non-regulated vehicles are all in a separate group from our regulated vehicles) and use this to determine or keep drive time from hitting a driver's logs. This would also change if a trailer was attached to a vehicle, and could maybe switch a driver automatically to the proper ruleset based on predetermined settings. I may be talking about something that has to be an integration on our part, so I am curious something like this may be possible through the geotab api or creating a rule in geotab itself?

NOTE: This is not legal advice. For questions regarding the legality of any of the following, please reach out to your local FMCSA Field Office or Service Center.

Hey, @CYend-1686​!

Let me first summarize this to make sure I have things right:

It sounds like you have vehicles that are non-CMVs that drivers use, but sometimes they are attached to trailers and need to have logs generated when they go over the CMV limit. Drivers also use vehicles that are always categorized as CMVs.

Is this correct?

If so, here are my thoughts on the easiest way to log this:

• Turn the HOS setting Off for any vehicles that won't ever be CMVs.
  • Drivers need to be taught to log into these vehicles and mark themselves as ON in the Geotab Drive app.
• For vehicles that are occasionally CMVs, pick either method:
  • Have drivers log these hours and have your admins use the Ignore feature, annotating the logs to indicate that the vehicle was not a CMV at the time. (Personally, I think this is the best choice for clarity, but I'm not 100% sure how this would look, as I believe the driver would need to have an ON log for the duration of this time, and Ignored usually shows up as OFF-duty time.)
  • Have drivers log themselves ON duty but not attached to a vehicle, and have your admins annotate these unclaimed logs to indicate which driver was in the vehicle. (This gets a lot sketchier, in my opinion.)
• For vehicles that are always CMVs, just log as usual.

I do wonder about the switching up the driver's ruleset all the time, as this isn't something I have seen regularly. My guess is that the driver should always have the actual ruleset assigned, and the annotations/ON logs properly managed instead of switching from one to another; I'd recommend asking a DOT officer or someone for their advice on this.

Anyway, those are just some thoughts I have on it in case they help. If you'd like to discuss further, feel free to reach out to me directly (joy@telematics411.com). :)

Best,

Joy B

Thanks for you reply Joy, I appreciate the response.

I guess what I am asking is if Geotab offers a "Mixed-Use" mode for vehicles? I am not aware of this feature in Geotab currently, but it is possible I have overlooked it or am not familiar with where it might be. However, several other ELD companies do offer this option. I have their helpdesk links below:

1. Samsara: https://kb.samsara.com/hc/en-us/articles/360039493592-Regulated-and-Unregulated-Vehicles-non-CMV
2. Motive: https://helpcenter.gomotive.com/hc/en-us/articles/8153796407837-What-is-an-Unregulated-Non-CMV-mode

If Geotab offers something similar to this, or if there is a workaround that someone has found to offer this kind of "Regulation Mode", I would love to know how to implement it. This would help our employees/driver keep their logs accurate, keep us out of potential trouble with DOT, and allow our Operation Managers to track who is driving in which vehicle/make sure drivers are following company driving policies.

Any help is appreciated and thank you!

Hey, @CYend-1686​!

My apologies for the delay on this; I'm just a volunteer who does this for fun and wasn't monitoring it as closely as I should have been to ensure you got an answer.

@EishiFUN​, can you please find out if Geotab is working on a feature like this? Any updates or thoughts on it would be great.

Best,

Joy B