HOS new rules

I agree that the inflexible 14 hour clock provided an untouchable shield from a ruthless dispatch who now can "expect" from you to run the extra 5 hours they stole from you at the pck up.
Pros and cons.

 

Also, you look back at all those loads you passed on because of an inflexible 14 hour rule and you knew you couldn't make it work. Now you can. And a dozen of your competitors are looking at that same load and now they can too. So now do you see how loosening UK these rules and allowing flexibility is detrimental to profitability? John J Rockefeller believed competition was a sin. And he was right.

 

I don't welcome any changes increasing competition either. Hell, I'd love to be the only one on paper while everyone else is leashed to ELD.
Lol
However, in this case I am the one on a leash so I welcome the change.

 

This is interesting to me because as a company driver you never have a clue about such things going on behind the scenes. It makes sense: assuming a static supply of drivers and loads (without overcomplicating things by getting into load characteristics, which surely also come into play), a loosening of hours restrictions can only cause an increase in the average number of drivers that are eligible to haul the average load, which, while not exactly the same thing as increasing the total supply of drivers on the road, still lowers rates due to there being more drivers competing on average for the average load.

At first I didn't get it, but after thinking it through, I see it now. I'm not always glad to be a company driver, but things like this tend to make me glad!

 

I assumed their hate towards the change based on their advocacy of the ELD mandate in the first place. This change undermines the very main reason of the ELDs which was about nothing else but limitation of capacity of smaller fleets or individuals. Many of us were longing for the old days of paper logs flexibility and now it is restored to a substantial degree. Individual owner operators and small fleets became more competitive among each other but ALSO vs megas, and that is never a good thing on their agenda.

A driver coercion is only some issue it may potentially invoke.
But someone said here already that running while tired is illegal.
Well now you can test the real validity of the argument.
But I don't think they will utilize it (coerce drivers) to the extent that it will become a nationwide problem. Most of the loads are not structured that way anyhow e.g. pick up and delivery 750 miles apart within 24 hours time frame is rather rare.
Besides...
That's not my problem. I am not a company driver and the only person who can ever coerce me is myself and my own stupidity.

Generally speaking, the change should be only about safety - not business opportunities it presents for some or destroys for others - but obviously it has already created some mixed opinions.

For me, it definitely helps in my individual safety aspects and better load planning while remaining HOS compliant. Paraphrasing, it was nice to be once on paper but not so nice to be called a cheater.

 

Thank you for noticing this. Here's what I think happened: After reading a few news articles about the new rule, when I finally decided to do some Googling to look up the FMCSA's actual wording of it, what I stumbled on reminded me of topics discussed in a great book I read nearly 20 years ago entitled "Drug War Addiction" by Sheriff Bill Masters of Colorado. Their justification for the new rule resembles the complete works of Shakespeare rewritten a hundred times over.

So what evidently happened was, while they were miring themselves in estimating things like the exact increase in the number of ant deaths on our nation's highways the new rule would create, they forgot to consider how the new rule affects the outcome of a split break versus the outcome of an ordinary 10-hour break.

 

OK TallJoe, without having read any of the replies it may have generated, here's what I can tell you about your logging example. Your 14-hour violation from midnight to 00:45 is still a violation under the new rule. Here's why: the 14-hour clock that neither the 3+ break nor the 7+ break counts against under the new rule, begins when you ended the 3+ break, NOT when you first began driving earlier in the day. That's just how split logging works---always did, still does.

As far as I can tell, there are no new scenarios in which the legality of driving ever depends on some future break you may or may not take. As was the case before, and continues to be, you're either currently legal to drive or not, period, at any given minute during the day.

 

"Sleeper Berth Provision
Modifies the sleeper berth exception to allow a driver to meet the 10-hour minimum off-duty requirement by spending at least 7 hours of that period in the berth combined with a minimum off-duty period of at least 2 hours spent inside or outside the berth, provided the two periods total at least 10 hours. When used together as specified, neither qualify period counts against the 14-hour driving window."

I am not sure if I am able to follow your logic. It sounds like you are overcomplicating it...perhaps you got entangled by FMCSA wordage from some other clause than the one I just cited.
Where is the clause which makes you say that my example is not HOS compliant?

If you're referring to my example on paper then it is obvious to me that my 14 hour shift started exactly at 10 am and then after taking 3 hour off duty break from 3:30 pm to 6:30 pm was consequently extended by 3 hours until 1:00 am the next day.

My second example (post# 77) is a real life case which I did and while there was a violation shown on ELD, the violation had a status of "alleged" and it was nullified after the second qualifying break was completed: post# 78.


Below, you will find a tool presented on the FMCSA site with already prewritten examples showing sleeper berth provision violations and no violations, also you can enter your own hypothetical examples and see how the provision works. My examples are passing the test.
ELD - Educational Tool for Hours of Service

 

I actually tried it this week by going on duty for a minute between 2 hrs off and 8 in the sleeper and it worked on my elog. Still doesn’t make sense but at least I know it works now.