Our Approach
Our Purpose
ELD Review is dedicated to helping fleets and drivers understand the complicated world of Electronic Logging Devices. There are many ELD vendors all selling their own products, so we need a central resource to learn about ELDs and evaluate all of the many options out there.
This is a community site, created by and for members of the commercial transportation industry. Whether you’re a fleet owner, a safety manager, or an independent driver, we want this site to bring you all the information you need to make smart decisions about ELDs.
Our Story
How We Review
As a community site, most of our content comes from you: our fellow pros in the trucking and transportation industry. Anyone with experience using a particular ELD is encouraged to add their own review and rating (at the bottom of each product page). The primary review for each ELD is written and rated using comments and feedback from experienced users of that product. While these opinions are their own, we hope the insight of expert users will be valuable to everyone evaluating ELD products.
So if you have used an ELD, go to our Reviews page, find it, and write your own review with your own star rating. We’d love to know what you think! If you feel you have extensive experience with a given ELD system and would like to contribute to its primary review, we welcome your input! Contact Us to share your thoughts.
How we calculate ELD prices
ELD Pricing can be tricky. There are a lot of variables. To try to give our readers the most realistic comparison, we do a few things:
1) We price based on a single unit. Obviously prices vary by volume, and the larger your fleet the more discount you can expect. But as a baseline, we try to report pricing based on just one vehicle.
2) We do not include the cost of a BYOD display. Bring Your Own Device options look much cheaper at first, because the ELD vendor does not sell you the display device. You are expected to provide your own tablet or smart phone. For drivers that use their own, this cost can be $0.
3) We price based on middle-ground options. Many ELD products have a wide variety of a la carte options. You can supply your own display device, or buy one from them. You can add features like Navigation, or not. The list goes on and on. All these options make pricing complicated. When reporting the approximate price in our reviews, we try to pick a middle-ground solution that we think would be appealing to the average ELD buyer. For really complicated pricing structures, we will try to describe more detail in the review itself.
4) We use 2-year total cost. Some ELDs are more expensive up front, but have low monthly service costs. Others cost nothing up front, but are more expensive month-to-month. To help compare between these different pricing styles, you need to look at the total cost over time. We use 3 years to provide a balance between up front cost and long term monthly costs. Many ELD vendors ask for a 2-3 year contract, so this is a sensible number to use when evaluating the true cost of a product.
So while we try to provide our readers with a good approximate reference point for the cost of various ELD systems, it is certainly not an exact science. As you begin to look seriously at different solutions, it will be important to talk specifically with the company’s sales department and get an official quote for your fleet. Check out the “Cost” section in our How to choose an ELD guide for more detailed information on ELD pricing.