There are more than 3.5 million truck drivers across the country, and all of them will now have to change their routines they’ve been using for decades before.

The Federal Motor  Carrier Safety Administration is demanding electronic logs be synced to tractor trailers. Patrick Kane of Lansberry Trucking says these devices had to be installed in all of their trucks at the beginning of the month.

“We have to not only protect our drivers but protect our company as a whole. And this is one way to further ensure that our drivers are being compliant,” The Director of Safety & Compliance said.

The devices monitor truck drivers hours and miles, demanding them to take breaks every eight hours, and not allowing them to exceed an 11 hour driving day.

“The electronic logs do all the math for them. It gives them their counter clocks so they can see exactly how much time they have left int their work day,” Kane said. 

Prior to the mandate, drivers filed their own paper logs, taking away the chance for employees to falsify paperwork.

“Some of the guys carried two log books, the right one, the correct one, and the one you made a profit on,” Trucking Instructor Doug McClellan said.

McClellan is a truck instructor at the Clearfield County Career and Technology Center. He says fatigue is a point he stresses to his students after seeing many crashes caused by tired truck drivers.

 “It was finance. You know if I could get that load in there at a certain time, either incentive bonuses or wages. It was bad,” McClellan said.

Failure to comply will result in fines of about $500 per day.