Transportation Department Pulls 133 Illegal Electronic Logging Devices in Largest FMCSA Revocation Ever
The U.S. Department of Transportation announced in Washington on November 12 that the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) has pulled 133 illegal Electronic Logging Devices (ELDs) from the agency's Registered Devices List. The department called it the largest ELD revocation in FMCSA history.
The department said the devices were used by fraudsters to cheat safety rules, bypass mandated rest periods and undercut trucker wages, and that the use of such illegal logging devices can be directly sourced to deadly crashes across America.
Three anonymized examples in the release showed the scale of the abuse: one company's device allowed carriers to call a support line to manually wipe out driving time and fabricate rest periods while actively driving; another was caught uploading fake logs during an active roadside inspection to cover up an overworked driver; and a third company's logs showed drivers traveling at mathematically impossible speeds of up to 130 miles per hour to compress driving time. The department said the cases were anonymized to avoid compromising ongoing investigations.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy said that under President Trump's leadership the department is cracking down on rampant fraud on America's roads, and that the latest crackdown, which required hundreds of man hours and extensive forensic investigations, will prevent criminals from cooking the books, sabotaging trucker wages and endangering the driving public.
Of the 133 devices removed, 121 were revoked by the agency and 12 were voluntary self-revocations that failed to meet the administration's standards of readiness. FMCSA Administrator Derek D. Barrs said motor carriers must have confidence that every device on FMCSA's public registry is compliant, secure and actively supported, and that FMCSA will not tolerate devices that compromise the integrity of the ELD system.
The department also listed enforcement totals since President Trump issued an executive order in April 2025 to restore integrity to the trucking industry: 34,000 drivers who could not speak basic English or read road signs have been placed out of service, nearly 10,000 driving schools have been shut down, and more than 31,000 illegally issued licenses to unvetted foreign drivers have been revoked.
Motor carriers have up to 60 days to replace the revoked ELDs with a compliant ELD. The department said that after 60 days, carriers who continue to use the revoked devices will be considered as operating without an ELD, and that safety officials who encounter a driver using the revoked devices on or after November 24, 2026, should cite 395.8(a)(1) and place the driver out of service under the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance criteria. If an ELD provider corrects all identified deficiencies, FMCSA will place the device back on the registered list and inform the industry.
Source: U.S. Department of Transportation
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
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