Transcript 0:00 [on-hold music] Talk to me. Information, news and entertainment on demand. WUSradio.com. 0:10 [upbeat music] Welcome to The Peggy Smedley Show, the voice of IoT in our connected world, with your host, Peggy Smedley. [upbeat music] Hello, listeners, and welcome back to The Peggy Smedley Show. 0:26 I'm your host, Peggy Smedley. 0:27 My first guest today started out as a pitcher for the Oakland A's, became a financial analyst with Pinnacle Bank, and has now been in charge of product implementation and support for the transportation industry since two thousand and five. 0:41 Please welcome Kurt Nankey, Senior Vice President of Zonar Systems. Kurt, welcome to the show. Hey, Peggy. Thanks for having me. Hey, it-- we are thrilled to have you on the show today. 0:53 So, you know, there has been a lot happening in this space, and when we think about what's going on in the Internet of things, that M2 market, it's changing fast and sometimes we can't even keep up. 1:03 But I'd love to hear what you think has been going on, 'cause you've been covering it and being in, in the thick of it all. Where do you see this whole market happening this year? 1:12 We're just in the beginning of it, you know, in January. Well, what's your thoughts? What do you see? Uh, I definitely see the market adopting technology. 1:20 As a matter of fact, I just got back from the CES show out in Vegas, uh, earlier in, i-in the month, and mobility was the hot button, e-especially around the automotive side of things. Uh, every vehicle is, is connected. 1:35 Uh, the autonomous vehicle is on its way, and I truly think both mobility, um, uh, the Internet of things and the autonomous vehicle, uh, are, are gonna be here before anybody, uh, really knows and, and/or can ex-expect it to, to, to come. 1:52 And, and when we talk about that, it's going to be here, I mean, probably faster in some ways than we think and slower than others. But w-- there's a lot we have to do in order to make all these things. 2:03 You know, when we think about our, our autonomous vehicle just for us as consumers, how we manage things as fleets, um, there's a lot of things that we have to deal with, with mandates and regulations. 2:14 How's that all gonna come into play to make that all kind of mesh well together? You know, that's a good question. I think market forces are gonna drive demand. 2:24 I mean, I, I'm sure everybody's aware of, of the driver shortage, and then of course now, uh, the ELD mandate coming into play in which they're gonna be a little bit more strict and, and, uh, uh, regulate the hours of service or available hours each, uh, c- uh, driver can operate their, their, their Class 8 trucks or even their, their medium-sized vehicles that exceed certain, um, air mile radiuses for operation. 2:49 A-and frankly, these market forces are what's gonna kind of drive demand, um, a-and, and kind of expedite the, the, the, the go-to-market strategy and/or requirement around everything autonomous and, and everything electronic and, and everything mobile. 3:03 So now, Kurt, when you talk about the e-- for our listeners who might not know, the ELD that you talk about is the electronic logging device, that mandate, um, and it's a rule that requires adoption and use of compliance for ELDs within, I think, the next two years from the date of the final rule that was published. 3:19 Is that correct? Do I have that right? Well, as a matter of fact, the ELD mandate goes into effect at the end of this year. 3:27 So, um, at a high level, you are required to have an electronic logging device on any vehicles, um, that previously you were using paper to, to log your, your driver hours. 3:40 So you have till December thirty-first of this year to adopt an electronic logging device. Um, there's two different r-- uh, electronic logging rules or regulations in play right now. 3:52 One is called the AOBRD, um, and that's an electronic logging re-- uh, regulation or requirement that's been in place actually for a couple decades, um, imposed and supported by the FMCSA. 4:04 And then the new ELD mandate actually has been in legislation and proposed for years and, uh, uh, they finally, uh, put kind of the, the, the, the start date into play, and it looks like it's going into effect and, and everything we can tell, um, in terms of, uh, what we're seeing up in Washington and even with the, the, the new administration, this thing is gonna go live, um, January one of twenty eighteen. 4:27 So there's about an eleven-month period here where if you have any vehicles that are hours of service regulated and/or in which you're currently using your paper log system to, to monitor available driver hours, 4:41 um, you must have that in an electronic format by the end of the year. So, so let's talk about that because that's a big deal. 4:48 You know, when you think about a lot of different fleets out there, there's an awful lot of them, and you-- from a host of verticals. 4:55 So what should a fleet, company that has a, a fleet think about and look for an ELD provider? 5:02 Because I think that's a big deal because, you know, you're going from paper and there's a lot of people, that's a big transition going to paper to electronic. So what do they need to look for? 5:11 They need some help, I think. Absolutely. Absolutely. 5:15 I think, um, you know, there's-- The federal government is doing a very good job of, of kind of educating the masses on, uh, the differences between paper and ELD or the electronic system. 5:25 They've also created this grace period where you can adopt what they call an AOBRD, which is, uh, more or less what a lot of the, especially the long haul truckers have been using for the last ten, fifteen years, um, as a stopgap because, you know, the AOBRD rule set, um, is, is, you know, it's a couple paragraphs. 5:43 And again, it's been adopted for a couple decades and especially in the long haul side of things. 5:48 Um, the ELD mandate is a couple hundred pages, uh, of requirementsUm, so I think, you know, one thing you wanna do is really educate yourself on the mandate. 5:59 Um, the FMCSA has created a lot of avenues and/or ways in which, uh, uh, you can get up to speed on what that mandate is. 6:06 And I think you really wanna look at, uh, partnering with somebody that can give you a crawl, walk, run, um, adoption plan into this mandate. 6:14 Um, so, you know, my word of advice would be adopt the AOBRD mandate immediately. Again, that's a two-paragraph, you know, requirement that's been in use for years. Uh, all the roadside inspectors know how to use it. 6:27 And that gives you actually a two-year grace period by the end of twenty nineteen before you have to make the full transition to ELD. 6:34 Um, so if you're out there looking, um, and educating yourself on, on the market trend, definitely educate yourself on both, both the AOBRD and the ELD mandate. 6:44 But my recommendation would be, you know, crawl, walk, run into this transition, um, and get something in play right away that's a minimum AOBRD, uh, compliant, and that'll at least get you till the end of twenty nineteen before you fully have to transition your best practices and, and, and, um, your drivers, your workforce, your safety administration, everybody that's involved and needs to take ownership in the ELD mandate. 7:07 Uh, it, it's, it's a two-year project, I tell you. 7:11 Are we talking about-- Just so I'm understanding this, are we talking about standalone o-offerings with ELDs or something that integrates into larger connected operations? 7:22 Because I think that's something most people are gonna wanna ultimately know because, I mean, ultimately, we would hope that that's gonna be that you can integrate these things and get the information you need ultimately with a whole host of other-- That's the idea with the Internet of things. 7:35 Will we be able to do that? Yeah. I think you're, you're gonna be able to use both options, right? 7:40 I mean, uh, especially in the construction space, a lot of, uh, IoT and telecom-- uh, telematic service providers, they have very unique products that are specific to, for example, ready-mix vehicles and the-- a-and cycle times and the dispatch of your yellow iron and equipment. 7:56 Um, and they're not necessarily really specific to the ELD or the hours of service and some of the long-haul requirements that have been, um, in place for years. 8:05 So you're going to probably have to look at somebody, um, in a standalone format, um, at minimum to make sure you're compliant. Uh, so you might have to operate two telematic systems or two service providers. 8:18 But there's also a host of other TSPs, telematic service providers out there, um, that do it all. 8:24 So, um, there's a good chance that you, you could be using if in this space somebody that has an hours of service offering. 8:31 Um, so i-if you already are connected, you do have a, a telematic provider on your fleet, I think it's a m-- you need to definitely reach out and ask them what they're doing for the ELD mandate and if they have a viable product. 8:43 What I've seen is a lot of the, the, the construction-specific telematics providers have at least partnered with somebody. 8:50 So if they don't have their own ELD product or, or, or AOBRD product, they've at least, uh, created, uh, some partnerships with, with companies like myself, Zonar, um, as well as some other TSPs out in the marketplace to, uh, at least bring a standalone ELD offering to the table to, to check that compliance box on, um, you know, the number of the, the vehicles that could be affected. 9:14 You know, the-- We see that, uh, the construction space especially is going to be impacted more than any other space because this is new ground for them. 9:23 You know, uh, the over-the-road space, the long-haul space, you know, this is something they've been doing for years. It doesn't really affect them. 9:29 They, um, you know, they actually see it as kind of leveling the playing field because a lot of the big haulers have been doing it for a long time, and some of the smaller haulers haven't. 9:37 Um, but the vocational and the construction space, this could be a significant impact because this is something they really haven't had to manage in the past. 9:45 Um, and obviously the regulations coming down from the FMCSA are gonna force them to, uh, uh, give it the attention it deserves. 9:53 And, Kurt, this is the very reason why I think many of the construction companies have been talking to us about wanting a common standard. 10:00 When you just-- I just had goosebumps when you said they might need to work with two different telematic service providers until they can be able to integrate this. 10:09 That's an expensive de-- endeavor, and construction companies can't afford to do that when margins are, are, are one and two percent. I mean, that's just crazy. 10:18 So we really have to find a way to help these in-- these construction companies find ways that they can integrate in a way to have a common way to work and get the information they need so that they're honoring, you know, government regulations. 10:31 And it's good to hear that you're talking about what needs to be done because I can tell you, you're gonna have a bunch of construction companies very unhappy if they have to spend a whole lot money and, and just meeting regulations and not putting it to their bottom line so they can continue to grow their companies. 10:45 But I appreciate you telling us. Where can our listeners go to get more information about what you guys are doing to try to help them here? Yeah. Please visit our website, zonarsystems.com. That's Z-O-N-A-R systems.com. 10:59 And we actually have a, if you navigate our site, a compliance, uh, page fully dedicated to the ELD mandate. It'll give you all the specifics you need. 11:07 Um, we also have numerous, uh, uh, web videos, web postings, documentation, and dialogue on our website that really helps educate everybody on the ELD mandate. 11:17 And not only what Zonar is doing, but what we're doing in the marketplace to help, uh, get everybody up to speed. All right, Kurt. Thank you. We're out of time. 11:25 We appreciate you being with us, and we hope to have you back on soon. Hey, thank you, Peggy. Have a great day. You too. All right, listeners, we're out of time. 11:34 Stick around, we've got more to come right here on the Peggy Smedley Show, the voice of IoT. And remember, with great technology comes great responsibility. 11:46 [outro music]Education. Industry experts. Back to the basics. 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