Completely empty, headed to residence, on PC

There is no time limit.. are you an owner-operator and you were actually going home or were you going to drop a trailer at a truck yard or bring your truck to the company's yard. If you're bringing an empty trailer back to the yard it's not personal conveyance. If it's your trailer and you're going home with it then it's personal conveyance. But if it's a company trailer and even if you're taking it home, if home is near the next load and it benefits the company to have that trailer with you at home then it's not personal conveyance either

 

You are incorrect. Might want to read the info @ZVar and @GYPSY65 posted.

 

A trip is from the time you leave home, to the time you get back. If I leave Texas with a load to PA, then run the NE for two weeks, and then catch a load back to San Antonio, I can't PC from San Antonio to my house ten miles away, because it's continuation of the trip.

Point being, you can't flip her over to PC just because you're going home.

Now I would love for this to not be the case. So if someone can post a reg, or FMCSA guidance on where I'm wrong, that would be awesome.

 

Not necessarily so. PC from your terminal is one of the specific examples of PC.

I used to do this, but technically it is not allowed. I'd drop a container at UP Global 1, near downtown Chicago. I lived at the north end of Chicago, about 10 miles away. Instead of going to our yard in McCook, about 20 miles the other way and grabbing my car, I'd bobtail home, and log it off duty. If I had dropped the container in McCook, then bobtailed home, that would fine.

 

Yes. Because you were going home from work. If you were going home from receiver it'd be wrong.

 

This is the specific part I'm talking about:

 

For the past ten years I have dropped my trailer at the receiver and bobtailed on PC 2-3 hours home. Do it every week and a half. Usually spend 3-4 days at home. When leaving the house it's all logged on duty. Only thing DOT has questioned is that I was not marking my reason for using PC clearly enough on my logs.
I figure there is nothing more personal than going home. Don't know if it's legal or not but I'm gonna do it again first thing in the morning.

 

There is no FMCSA time limit or distance limit for PC. If you have been told that you can "go 2 hours" or "50 miles" or similar statement then this is a company policy, not FMCSA.

The "gray area" in the PC regulation occurs with the statement "released from all carrier duties." This can CONFLICT with a second part of the regulation that talks about the "continuation of a trip" or "last leg of a trip." In other words, if I am "released from all carrier duties" when I drop off a load in Texas, can I then take 2 weeks vacation right from there and use my ARI super condo rig like an RV to go gallivanting around the country on PC? The "released from all carrier duties" says YES I can.

However, if you dropped the load and are returning to your home from the receiver then the regulation says you CANNOT use PC until you have reached home because home is still technically the "end of trip." But aren't you "released from all carrier duties" once you have dropped the load at the receiver if the carrier does not require you to come back to a terminal?

If you deliver the freight at the receiver and then drive to your carrier or a drop yard, that is NOT PC. But, after you have dropped your paperwork at your carrier or you drop the trailer at the yard and bobtail home, then that IS PC because you were "released from all carrier duties" when you left the terminal or drop yard.

Another one that is not often mentioned is taking your truck to a shop while on 34-hour reset. Like, if you are going to get a set of steers put on while on home time you don't want to blow up your reset on Saturday because you drove the truck 15 minutes to the tire guy. But technically you ARE supposed to go on duty and blow up your 34-hour in this case.

As with ALL citations that you receive you can fight them and win in many cases. However, many do not fight them because of the loss of work and hassle being the lesser evil.

 

My company doesn't want to pay the drivers going home from their last unload so I just park my car at their terminal so they have to pay me going home.

Sometimes they deadhead drivers 500+ miles home unpaid. Those drivers should use PC going home. I would and why not if they are being put on vacation by the company. I'm sure that the company wouldn't like it but if you aren't getting paid you clearly are not on duty because they also claim that they pay the drivers for all of the work we do, haha.

 

Except the FMCSA doesn't care about compensation as related to on duty. Look, I'm not saying that I agree with FMCSA on the issue of pc and going home, but they never asked me.

Question 10: How does compensation relate to on-duty time?

Guidance: The fact that a driver is paid for a period of time does not always establish that the driver was on-duty for the purposes of part 395 during that period of time. A driver may be relieved of duty under certain conditions and still be paid.