Every commercial truck equipped with an electronic logging device (ELD) generates a continuous record of vehicle movement. When the wheels turn above the threshold speed of 5 mph and there is no driver authenticated in the system, the device still records the movement. The movement is logged under a dedicated system account called the Unidentified Driver profile. That record captures timestamps, GPS coordinates, distance traveled, and engine data, just as it would for a logged-in driver. This is “unassigned driving time.”
What Is Unassigned Driving Time?
Unassigned driving time exists because the ELD mandate requires the device to track vehicle motion regardless of who is behind the wheel. This data category serves as one of the most revealing and most scrutinized records in any FMCSA audit or crash investigation.
Under 49 C.F.R. § 395.32(c), a motor carrier must either (1) annotate the record and explain why the time is unassigned or (2) assign the time to the appropriate driver.1 The motor carrier must retain unidentified driving records for at least six months from the date of receipt as part of its hours-of-service ELD records and make them available to authorized safety officials.2 And this obligation is not passive. Carriers are required to actively review unassigned time and account for it. A carrier that allows unassigned driving records to accumulate without explanation is more than disorganized; it is in violation of federal recordkeeping requirements on top of whatever driving the unassigned time actually reflects.
Distinguishing Legitimate Causes
Unassigned driving time is not automatic evidence of wrongdoing. There are routine, non-fraudulent reasons a truck may move without a logged-in driver. The most common explanations are yard moves or shop relocations.
These can occur when:
In these moments, the operator of the commercial motor vehicle may not be a CDL driver with an ELD account.
Federal regulations accommodate such movement. Drivers can log certain yard movements under a special driving category that keeps time off their regular duty record, provided the vehicle stays within an authorized facility and does not operate on public roads.3 When movement occurs and no one is logged in, the carrier is responsible for annotating the record, noting the time, location, identity of the individual who moved the vehicle, and brief explanation.
When carriers investigate unassigned driving events, they should determine:
The answers to those questions determine whether the event is harmless or whether it warrants further investigation. If it is unclear who was driving the vehicle, carriers will need to contact the drivers involved for more information.
However, investigations rarely happen in real time. Many carriers review unassigned time sporadically or not at all, which means that weeks of unexamined events can accumulate, including significant blocks of unaccounted for over-the-road driving.
Unassigned Time Is the Most Common Falsification Method
The ELD mandate was designed to make log falsification harder. It largely succeeded in eliminating the most brazen paper-era frauds, such as the double logbook. But it did not eliminate falsification. In essence, it changed its form.
Failing to log in prior to driving, or logging out and continuing to drive, are the most common falsification methods used by drivers to create breaks that did not occur, or to operate past a limit when using electronic logs.
It’s fairly simple for a driver to create these gaps in driving time with ELDs. A driver who is approaching the end of their available hours or has already exhausted them can simply log out of the ELD and continue driving. The device records the movement under the Unidentified Driver profile. Most ELDs prompt a driver to review the unassigned driving time by either claiming or rejecting the driving time when a driver logs back into the ELD. Drivers can simply reject the driving time. The carrier accepts that rejection without investigating further, if the carrier even reviews the driving logs at all. The miles driven over the legal limit are effectively disassociated from the driver’s hours-of-service record.
Sometimes failure to claim unidentified driving time is an honest mistake. Oftentimes, however, drivers do so to conceal hours-of-service violations. Brandon Wiseman, president of Trucksafe Consulting, has pointed to FMCSA figures showing that log falsification ranked as the fourth most frequently cited driver violation in roadside inspections between 2019 and 2023, making up close to five percent of the violations found in that stretch, and that it climbed to the second most frequently cited violation in DOT compliance audits over the same years, with investigators turning up on the order of 21,000 false-log violations.4 Even so, these numbers only capture the violations regulators actually caught. How much unassigned driving time goes undetected is much harder to pin down.
What the Data Shows
When unassigned driving time appears in ELD records, it contains enough information to reconstruct what likely happened. The Unidentified Driver profile log includes the same data fields as a regular driver log: start and end times, GPS coordinates, distance traveled, and intermediate location points captured at regular intervals.
By mapping those coordinates against the vehicle’s prior and subsequent logged duty status, it is possible to identify where the truck was when it started moving unlogged, where it went, and where it stopped. If the driver’s last logged location before the unassigned event was a truck stop in Oklahoma, and the unassigned profile shows 350 miles of movement over the following five hours ending at a delivery facility in Texas, the picture is not ambiguous.
Compliance consultants who track how FMCSA conducts these reviews describe investigators working through a consistent checklist: cross-referencing login and logout activity against any adjacent unassigned driving time, confirming that a driver’s login location lines up with where that driver last logged out, and comparing odometer readings at the start and end of any period logged as non-driving status.5 If odometer readings increased during a period the driver claims to have been off duty, something is false.
Supporting documents provide independent corroboration. A pattern of edits without annotations or that conveniently eliminate hours-of-service violations are treated as falsification during compliance audits. Investigators reviewing ELD data can see the current records as well as the previous records before changes were made and who made each change to the records.6 That requirement is significant: an investigator looking at ELD data does not just see what the record says now. They see what it said before any changes were made, and who made each change.
Independent corroboration of the unlogged route can include:
Carrier’s Obligations & Direct Liability
The six-month retention requirement for unassigned driving records is not just a recordkeeping rule. It creates a paper trail of what the carrier knew and when. Every time the carrier’s system flagged unassigned driving time, the carrier had an obligation to investigate it. If the investigation happened and the carrier accepted the driver’s rejection of the time without documented basis, the carrier’s decision is now part of the record. If the investigation never happened at all, the accumulation of unreviewed events is itself evidence of a compliance failure.
When more than 30 minutes of driving time for an unidentified driver is recorded in a 24-hour period, an “unidentified driving records data diagnostic event” occurs.7 When the diagnostic event is triggered, the ELD data diagnostic indicator is turned on across all drivers logged into that ELD for the current day and following seven days.8 The event also notifies the carrier that unidentified driving time is accumulating. Carriers operating compliant ELD systems receive this notification in real time through the ELD’s back-office portal. The event is not an automatic violation, rather, it is a compliance warning requiring the carrier to investigate and either assign the time to the appropriate driver or annotate the record explaining why the time is unassigned. Failure to respond to repeated diagnostic events is evidence that the carrier’s compliance review process is not functioning.
Inspectors can cite unassigned driving time as false logs, and carriers face fines of up to $15,846 per falsification violation under 49 C.F.R. Part 386, Appendix B.9 In civil litigation, the significance of unreviewed unassigned driving time goes beyond the per-event penalty. A pattern of accumulated, unreviewed, unexplained unassigned driving time across a carrier’s fleet is evidence that the carrier’s compliance program was not functioning properly because the carrier either did not know what its drivers were doing, or alternatively, knew and chose not to look.
What to Seek in Discovery
Unassigned driving time records are not always included in the basic ELD log export that carriers produce in response to default discovery requests. They exist as a separate data category under the Unidentified Driver profile. Attorneys must remember to specifically request the Unidentified Driver records to ensure they are preserved and produced during litigation.
A discovery request in any case involving potential hours-of-service violations or log falsification should demand the complete ELD data file in native format, including all records associated with the Unidentified Driver profile for the vehicle during the relevant period, and the full edit history for all driver records. The native file will preserve the source data and the audit trail, while a PDF printout or summary report will not.
The carrier’s internal unassigned driving time reports should also be requested separately. Most ELD back-office systems generate these automatically. They show when the carrier was put on notice of each unassigned event, what review if any was conducted, and what disposition was assigned to the event. If the carrier has produced those reports during an FMCSA audit, those audit materials should be requested as well.
Federal regulations require carriers to retain a backup copy of ELD records on a device separate from where the original data is stored, also for six months.10 That backup copy is an independent source of the original data and should be requested alongside the primary records. If the primary records have been altered, the backup may preserve the original. If the backup is also missing or altered, that gap becomes evidence.
Destruction, alteration, or failure to preserve unassigned driving records can amount to spoliation. Spoliation should be addressed early in the litigation process. A preservation letter sent within the first 48 hours after a crash, specifically naming ELD data including Unidentified Driver profile records, puts the carrier on notice that those records are subject to litigation hold. Any subsequent deletion within the six-month retention window, or any failure to preserve records that existed at the time of the letter, can support a spoliation motion or inference instruction.
Sources
- [1] 49 C.F.R. § 395.32(c), eCFR, current as of July 2026.
- [2] Id.
- [3] 49 C.F.R. § 395.28, eCFR, current as of July 2026.
- [4] Deborah Lockridge, "How to Get Control of Driver Log Falsification," Trucking Info / Heavy Duty Trucking, February 21, 2024 (quoting Brandon Wiseman, President, Trucksafe Consulting).
- [5] J.J. Keller Compliance Network, "FMCSA Auditing Secrets Revealed: ELD Falsification".
- [6] 49 C.F.R. Part 395, Subpart B, Appendix A (Functional Specifications for All Electronic Logging Devices), eCFR, current as of July 2026.
- [7] 49 C.F.R. Part 395, Subpart B, Appendix A § 4.6.1.6, eCFR, current as of July 2026.
- [8] Id.
- [9] Appendix B to Part 386, eCFR, current as of July 2026.
- [10] 49 C.F.R. § 395.22(j), eCFR, current as of July 2026.