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This story appears in the Nov. 15 print edition of Transport Topics.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration said it has ordered JBS Carriers of Greeley, Colo., to install electronic onboard recorders on its roughly 700-truck fleet.

The agency said the settlement was part of a rarely used enforcement tool and is not part of the agency’s coming EOBR regulation.

“This is a separate and independent enforcement case. This is not part of the EOBR rulemaking,” agency spokeswoman Candice Tolliver told Transport Topics.

FMCSA said Nov. 4 it ordered JBS Carriers to install EOBRs on its more than 700 trucks or pay a fine of more than $81,000.

The carrier, a subsidiary of Brazil-based meat processor JBS S.A., was found to have three drivers with either a suspended, revoked or canceled commercial license.

The company also was charged with 102 counts of falsifying hours-of-service logs.

A spokesman for JBS said the company was surprised and disappointed FMCSA announced the agreement the way it did.

“I saw that press release and it made it look like they had coerced us into doing this, and that’s just not the case,” Chandler Keys told TT.

Keys said that JBS S.A. began expanding its trucking presence in the United States in 2007, most recently with the purchase of Pilgrim’s Pride, and as part of that expansion there were some issues with rules compliance the company wanted to address.

“Whenever you’re growing as we are, you’re going to have hiccups, and this was a hiccup,” he said.

New management at JBS, Keys said, went to FMCSA to address the company’s compliance issues, and was looking at EOBRs even before the settlement with the agency.

Keys said JBS Carriers planned to install the equipment “in anticipation of them being mandatory” under the rules process currently under way.

In addition, Keys told TT the company paid a greatly reduced fine of roughly $16,000 not mentioned by the FMCSA announcement.

In announcing the settlement, DOT officials hailed the step as an improvement for safety.

“Safety is our highest priority,” Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said in a statement. “We will not tolerate commercial carriers that put people at risk by placing unsafe, unlicensed drivers behind the wheel and evading hours-of-service rules.”

FMCSA Administrator Anne Ferro said the agency “will continue to use every resource at its disposal to pursue carriers that jeopardize road safety by failing to adhere to federal safety regulations.”

Ferro told TT last month that the agency would be publishing a new, more expansive EOBR rule than the one it finalized in April and would do it before the end of 2010.

The current rule, which takes effect in 2014, would require fleets with a 10% violation rate or more to install EOBRs.

However, regulators and legislators, including Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) have been pushing for a broader, perhaps total mandate for the technology.

The November DOT report on significant rulemakings estimated the new EOBR proposal would go to the White House for review later this month.