What counts as On Duty Time? Passive income questions?

There's thousands of YouTuber truckers talking about investing and trading in stocks, real estate and crypto. Are any of these people logging On Duty for any of that? I doubt it.

 

If you ever come across such cases (court cases, lawsuits, news stories, etc etc) where stocks, real estate and business investments were used against a driver for not logging On Duty time in HOS, can you please post them here?

I've never come across such cases. But I could be wrong.

 

I agree 100% with your first sentence.

In theory I agree that you could get in trouble for not logging On Duty Time with stocks and real estate, but in practice are there any real world examples of this happening?

It seems similar to how owner operators never log On Duty Time for booking their loads, dealing with brokers, going to the store to buy office supplies for their business, etc etc.

Be honest, how many of you owner ops are logging On Duty for what I just described above?

In theory a jury, judge or insurance could find an owner operator guilty because they haven't logged enough "reasonable" On Duty Time for booking loads, organizing paperwork, making phone calls, etc etc.

But in reality, are there any real world examples of this?

Because owner operators making phone calls with brokers or customers or his drivers are clearly recorded data entries, just like selling stocks are. And yet I've never heard of any cases where an owner operator driver got into trouble for not logging On Duty Time during phone calls with brokers, his drivers, customers, etc etc.

And to me, the owner operators not logging On Duty Time in the examples above is way more of a clear and cut log book violation, than passive or semi passive income streams like stocks and real estate are.

 

That's what I always thought too. It never crossed my mind before that something passive or semi passive income streams, like stocks or real estate, would ever have to be counted as "On Duty Time."

But it was Ridgeline's quote, which I'll put in italics below again, that really got me thinking as to what these HOS rules mean in regards to secondary income sources that I've mentioned in this thread:

So just a legal issue, if you are working this "second" job and you are in violation of HOS, the hours worked goes against your clock. This means if you get into an accident, and it goes to court, the ambulance chasing POS lawyer will find your second income, and use it against you plus the company.

You can't hide this stuff.

I don't think anybody wants to hide that they're trading stocks or investing in real estate/businesses. I mean, everybody who does is presumably reporting all this to the IRS at the end of the year.

It's more so that the HOS rules as to what should count as On Duty Time are incredibly vague when it comes passive and semi passive income streams, so that truck drivers are confused as to whether or not they're breaking the law in the first place. I mean if you're filing all your taxes every year, the IRS obviously knows that you're a truck driver and have these other investments. It's not like truckers are trying to hide anything.

It's an interesting topic because it seems to me that the HOS rules and regulations, despite the updates to them over the years, still feel like they are made in the pre smart phone age in regards to this topic.

 

Since you wanted to be disrespectful to me, I'll mention again (as I did in the OP) that it wasn't even myself who was suggesting that you need to log On Duty as time worked when doing things like trading stocks. So I'm not sure why you're directing this very rude post towards myself.

I thought it was an interesting topic to look into and maybe they have a point, maybe they don't. But I was especially curious as to whether an actual precedent in the court of law or by insurance companies had actually been set on this topic, where drivers were found guilty of something because they didn't claim time worked (so On Duty) for secondary income streams.

Do not be disrespectful and cursing at me.

 

There's a reason I didn't reply to your initial post in this thread.......