E-logs and Reality

Always carry the plastic laminate with you telling the Dot officer how to do his job. That way he can,t fine you for him not being able to do his job.

 

Why did he even stop? I could understand being 3 hrs away from the house and the company having a fit. But even the 3 mins falls under the 7 min threshold for just flagging something. Even then, as long as a driver is not over the 14, no one is going to have a cow if they go over the 11 by a few minutes. Some of these people are going to have to learn to use a little brain power or look stupid out here. Remember, there is a "safe haven" exclusion to the regs.... you are allowed extra time to find a safe place to park. But y'all keep up this literal type of thinking. It'll take the heat off all of us that know what we are doing.

Even this is an easy deal though. Just stop, do a post trip, go off duty, then drive on home off duty. I have done it a few times being on elogs. No problem from anyone and it is LEGAL. For those that argue that this can't be done under a load, I have several locations that I can drop a trailer and bobtail to the house. If the trailer is empty, it goes with me.

 

i hate E-logs- i dont ever want to do them again- i been couple miles from a truckstop or a shipper or reciever and the alarm goes off that tells me to stop that my day has ended- or no hours to leave a shipper or reciever and they dont allow overnite parking- they can stick their computer up their XXX hole and reboot it- i have been threatened to be fired for too many violations- when in reality i only moved the truck out the gate of the shipper or reciever into the street to finish my 10 break- "stop threatening me and do it "is what i told the safety people

 

Got done with my run one evening, It was an OK run using up most of my day. Boss gave me orders for the next day. I had to be in Williston ND to load. Went home and did my ten, made a lunch etc so I did not have to stop. Got to the shop and had to switch trailers. The trailer had been sitting for awhile so I decided to drag out the tire gauge etc and crawl under to check the brakes etc since I was not the last person to pull it. By the time I had finished hooking up, PTIing everything and topping off the tanks, I had burned up about 45 minutes. I tookt he shortest route to Williston from Minto ND. I only stopped once to get ride of some coffee which was flagged. I got to the yard in Williston and they had the equipment set at snail speed so it took an hour for me to load the truck. I burned back to Grand Forks ND stopping in Rugby ND to add a little fuel and a pee, about 15 minutes, so I could make it back. They cut my tanks a few years ago to add the pusher axle so my range is not what it used to be. Anyway I got to just east of Larimore ND and looked at my watch. MY 11 was gone, done finished. OH well I was only about 20 minutes from Grand Forks and the load HAD to be delivered no matter what. Load of Potatoes for a JR Simplot. I carried on into Grand Forks. Got scaled in and drove in the raw receiving building to unload. We unload our own trucks since the company does not know how to run our live bottom trailers. Anyway the hopper was pretty full so I had to run my trailers belt slow to unload. Took about 45 minutes to unload then add the few minutes for scaling in and scaling out. Total time at the plant was 1 hour according to the time stamp on my scale ticket.

Now I had a 33 mile drive back to Minto ND. About 30 ish minutes. Got the truck parked and did my post trip and paper work for the end of my day which took about 15 minutes.

So I drove just under 12 hours total, 2 hours for loading and unloading, about 1.25 hours total for PTI and fuel (including the stop in Rugby ND). Total milage for the day was just under 710 miles. Truck is governed out to 68 mph with my foot on the floor, with some wear on the tires it does about 66 mph on GPS. I drove it with my foot on the floor all day and even broke some speedlimits in some towns etc.

This is one of our regular runs during the year. They have a pretty large spud warehouse on by Williston so it takes a couple weeks minimum ,loading every hour, 24/7 to empty it.

Another run takes us out to Tioga ND and a few miles south going back to Grand Forks ND which ends up being close to the same milage and time.

There is really no way of preplaning these trips since JR Simplot can't stay on a schedule and they change it often. We can't really leave the day before because they might cancel the load and they will not pay us a no load if we leave that early. That would mean a whole days worth of driving for no pay. So no driving out and taking a 10 hour before we load.

 

I guess each his own. I have never shown so much time on PTI's or loading/unloading since I have been on EOBR. I give each of them no more than 15 minutes. There is no requirement to be on duty the entire time on customer property. Just for the unload/load part, and if I can go to the can, get some junk out of the vending machine, smoke and joke with other drivers, while the loading and unloading is going on, then I am technically off duty and have no responsibility for the load at that point. And I am not worried that some black helicopter is flying around checking on exactly what I am doing. I have taken full 10 breaks at a customer property. Real breaks, not just some scam because it took them 10 hrs to unload. There is no requirement to log every stinking minute at a customer as on duty. Bill of lading may show and in and out time, or start and done time, but it does not say what you were doing. The fact that your truck is where it is supposed to be at that time is documented. I may have been taking a leisurely walk around the property while the loading/unloading was going on. Not logging that.

But again.... each his own.

And Rat, there is nothing illegal about driving while OFF DUTY after a person gets empty to leave and go to a truckstop or any other safe place to complete a break. I do it all the time and it is allowed in the regulations. Got stopped one day when I did this and the LE wanted to check my logs. Questioned why I was off duty. I explained, no load in trailer, not doing anything for the company, just driving to go get a bite to eat. No harm, no foul, no citation. Your issue had to be with the carrier, because the regs allow this.

 

ND DOT, Minnesota DOT and our safety department, consider us under load unless bobtail. Meaning I am still required to log on duty time anytime I am driving the truck with the trailer attached.

Also according to ND DOT, MN DOT and our safety department, if we go off duty in Grand Forks then we have to return to Grand Forks before we can go back on duty. Meaning I can not go off duty in Grand Forks then drive back to Minto ND 33 miles away to park the truck then start my next day going on duty in Minto ND. going back to Grand Forks ND would be out of my way for starting out my next day. It would add another 30 ish miles to my driving day.

As for the logging of PTIs etc. DO what you want, just like I do. Very easy for me to do what I want on paper logs and still appease the DOT and my safety department.

Oh by the way, my log book looked perfect for that day even though my 14 hour clock had actually run out and so did my 11 hour driving clock.

Which both would have been setting off alarms if I had E logs on eobr since they would have started in the morning when I started the truck and started moving it around switching trailers etc. Remember that the only way to stop your 14 is to take a break of more then 8 hours or 10 consecutive depending on if you are splitting or not.

As of now, the trucking side of our company is not mandated to have Elogs or on board recorders even though we do travel outside the sate lines and outside the country lines since we go into Manitoba alot.

Call it greed or what ever but if we are mandated to go full electronic then there will be a lot of runs that we will not be able to do which means less money in my pocket.

 

I run ND and MN a lot. I relish them saying that when in my truck, and I am not under a load, that I have to log driving. I am at that stage of my life where I would welcome the fight. The FMCSA regulations are clear. There is no ambiguity.

 

Get in an accident and perhaps hurt somebody while running empty and claiming "off duty" to the truck stop and past your 70 or 14 and see if a jury or cop will see it that way. You are driving a vehicle under another carrier's authority, insurance, and liability wether it is loaded or empty. You stand a better chance of claiming "personal conveyance" if in the middle of a restart away from your home address.

 

STexan, it's in the regulations. You're allowed to.

Now the Grand Forks/Minot situation is different. If you KNOW you have to go to a certain point every day, regularly, etc you are advancing your truck to where you're going to reload.

If you are not on a regular run, where you are not dispatched for the next load, are not advancing yourself to reposition your truck in a better area, are not loaded (at all, no claims, potatoes stuck to the floor that you're getting washed out, etc), are not going to another place for business purposes (to file paperwork, get a washout, get repairs, etc), are going to the next available place for what you are doing (i.e., driving to the first place you can park, first place you can eat, first hotel you can sleep at, etc). You can't just drive just to drive because you want to go 60mi down the road.

Returning to point-of-origin is only necessary if you're under dispatch. Because if you can move your truck legally off-duty, there's no way a load would let you continue from that point without going back. Because either you have a loaded trailer behind you, or you're place of pick-up is not where you off-duty drove from.

The regs do state pulling a trailer is allowed as long as it is empty and you are not advancing to your pick-up. If you are a daycab, you must log on-duty. There is no off-duty driving in a daycab. No 'returning to terminal'. Your day is your day. When you're out of hours, you must be stopped. Mostly because you're on-duty from the moment you approach the truck to do your pre-trip. And your clock runs until you've completed your post-trip and have left the vehicle for your accommodations.

 

It really doesn't matter what a cop thinks. The regulation is quite clear on this. Does anyone here actually ever read that little green FMCSA reg book?

And no. I am NOT driving under their authority or insurance when I am unladen and not doing something for the carrier. That is what I pay insurance for. I never said in any posting that you could do this when under a load for the carrier, unless you drop the trailer and bobtail. That is what unladen or bobtail insurance is for. I have put upwards of over 90 miles at one time bobtail and there was no conflict even using Elogs. Carrier did not question. By the regs, when I am not under dispatch of the carrier, or I am not pulling their tailer or load, my truck is nothing more than a personal vehicle and is not a part of interstate commerce and there is no requirement to log driving. And a reset, break, or anything else has nothing to do with it. I am effectively on a break during that time as I am off duty.

And if the carrier did restrict me from doing this, even though the regulations allow it, all I have to do is make a call to my son, an IRS field agent, who would be more than happy to investigate the carrier as to whether their O/O are true contractors or should be classified as employees. One of the criteria for this is I must have unrestricted use of my equipment when not doing something for the carrier under their authority. FedEx got in trouble for this with the IRS to the tune of several hundred thousand dollars. When my carrier first went to elogs, they verbally put out that they were going to restrict personal conveyance. After a short discussion of the regulations and putting my son on the phone, that all went away.

But if all this makes you feel uncomfortable, then by all means follow your paranoia. I have been log checked roadside while doing this and all was legal and I went on my way.