The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) has turned down another attempt to bring back paper logs. In a notice published in the Federal Register on September 30, the agency denied the Federation of Professional Truckers’ (FOPT) request to let drivers record hours of service on paper instead of an electronic logging device (ELD), as Overdrive reported.
The ELD mandate remains fully in force. For most fleets, the bigger compliance risk is a device that drops off FMCSA’s registered list. Is the device in your trucks still on the list?
FOPT, a driver group launched in September 2025, asked for an exemption that would let its members and any other participating driver keep paper records of duty status. To address safety concerns, FOPT proposed driver education, random carrier audits, and removing drivers who broke the rules.
The request drew 901 public comments. Opponents included the Truck Safety Coalition and other safety groups, the American Trucking Associations (ATA), and the Buchanan Law Firm, which cited an FMCSA report showing that roadside inspections with at least one hours-of-service violation fell from 274,441 in 2018 to 191,797 in 2020.
Congress requires ELDs. The 2012 highway bill, Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act (MAP-21), directed FMCSA to require ELDs in vehicles operating in interstate commerce. The agency said it “cannot grant a blanket exemption for any driver or carrier that wishes to be exempt.”
No evidence it would be as safe. An exemption has to achieve a level of safety equal to or greater than the rule it replaces. FMCSA found FOPT didn’t show that paper logs would.
The safeguards didn’t cover everyone. FOPT’s safeguards relied on educating its members and on audits by participating carriers, but the exemption would have been open to any driver who wanted it. FMCSA said FOPT didn’t explain how those safeguards would work for an unknown population of drivers.
FMCSA has rejected requests like this before. In 2019, it denied the Small Business in Transportation Coalition’s request to exempt carriers with 50 or fewer employees, even though more than 95% of roughly 1,900 comments supported it. In 2024, it turned down an owner-operator who asked for a one-year exemption because he couldn’t afford a device.
The earlier decisions show the same thing. Public support alone isn’t enough to override the ELD requirement. A broad change to that requirement would require an act of Congress.
The ELD rule already has several narrow exceptions. Drivers who operate under the short-haul exception and use timecards don’t need an ELD. Neither do drivers who need records of duty status no more than 8 days in any 30-day period, driveaway-towaway operations where the vehicle being driven is the commodity being delivered, or vehicles with engines older than model year 2000.
If none of those exceptions apply and you’re subject to the ELD rule, you need an ELD. The full rules are on FMCSA’s ELD site.
ELD providers test their own devices against FMCSA’s technical specifications, then register them with FMCSA. The agency’s list says so directly: “The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration does not endorse any electronic logging devices.”
Registration can also be taken away. FMCSA revoked 12 devices in May, 10 more in July, and 5 more in August. Carriers using a revoked device get 60 days to replace it. After that, drivers are treated as operating without an ELD and can be placed out of service at roadside.
Here’s how to check yours:
FMCSA has also published details of two hours-of-service pilot programs planned for 2027. Each is expected to involve 256 drivers and test more flexible sleeper-berth or 14-hour driving-window rules for participants. Neither program changes the ELD requirement.
ELDs have been required since December 2017. Full compliance followed in December 2019, when grandfathered automatic onboard recording devices (AOBRDs) were phased out. The latest denial doesn’t change that. Paper logs aren’t coming back.
Checking the FMCSA-registered list takes only a few minutes and can help fleets catch a registration problem before it becomes a roadside compliance problem. For FMCSA documents, compliance checklists, and ELD FAQs, visit our ELD Resource Center.
Evaluating a new ELD? Field Warrior® ELD is FMCSA-registered and runs natively on Android phones and tablets. You can confirm its registration directly on the FMCSA list by searching for “Field Warrior ELD (BYOD),” model FW-BYOD.
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