Volunteering require HOS?

Yes. Hours worked in a commercial vehicle must carry a log book record of all employers. You are a volunteer but unpaid. You are still in a commercial vehicle. Which is probably properly registered, stickered and so forth for the highway.

This is uncommon, but DOT requires a work record of hours at any employer for wages including your trucking work within your 70 hour limit in 8 days.

Theoratically you could say that you are not working for wages and as such rolling large for free. But it is still a commercial vehicle.

The only workaround I can see if is your volunteer owner of that organization has that 18 wheeler exempt as a private vehicle. and marked as such. Hauling strictly private things that belongs to owner in any way he gains possession of it. (Not for sale etc Not for ordinary trucking wages etc)

But carry a logbook record on paper your last 8 days just to be covered. Without one you will be ticketed and probably OOS. If you are driving what turns out to be a full blooded working commercial vehicle.

 

Compensation only matters for a non motor carrier.
If it's a cmv, then even if the company is a non-profit, it's still a motor carrier and all the cmv laws come into play.

 

Take a look at the vehicle. What is on it revelant to private vehicle will allow you to run it. Just carry the last 8 days as a defense. I don't know what the truck is hauling, who for, where to and how much. (that's probably private...) but in my mind it's something associated with food pantries and such.

BE careful another thought occurred to me. The approaching hurricane. If you are being asked to run a truck down there post storm, your truck will need a cardboard sign on door "FEMA use, exempt from HOS etc" and you can drive it until you pass out and keep driving after.

We had some of those after tornado came through and people made CMV's available to cart the wreckage to landfills etc. under FEMA.

That I think should lead me to think the first question asked of you is what are you doing with a CMV without being paid?

 

Needing a CDL and driving a CMV are two different things. If you are driving a vehicle with a GVWR of 10,001 lbs or more you are driving a CMV and working for a motor carrier.
If it's 10,000 lbs or less it's not a CMV.
If it's 26,001 lbs it requires a CDL.

 

Call your State's Commercial Vehicle Enforcement Board and ask for a teaching question before you go out and commit a violation they don't want you to do.

Tell them what you just told us. They will think and then tell you what to take.

 

On second thought, hop in and drive collecting food as directed. It should be purely your free time, your free use of the skills and the owner of that food out fit should enjoy that the truck is going around serving him, you and all the community when the stuff is packed and bagged and out with the hungries.

Im involved in minding a pantry myself from time to time. Herding crowds on one hand and trying to unsnarl conflicts on the other.

 

I have three drivers who drive for Red Cross pro bono on a regular basis, they have to limit their hours in their trucks in order to work for the Red Cross.