Paper logbook questions

First, the larger of the 2 breaks, 7-8 hours MUST BE sleeper berth, not off duty.

Second, a break of at least 2 hours stops the clock, but only if it it completes with a sleeper berth of at least 7 hours your 10 hours. Ie, if you stop for, then another 2, the second will count against the 14 hour.

You log PC as off duty. Your carrier my require a notation, but the FMCSA does not require it.

 

im mean if your on paper then why not show a 10. i mean you got what we all want and your trying to log it on paper like a computer. i would give anything for paper logs, paper trip sheets and idle bump again.

 

So, in this situation you are spending two periods in the sleeper birth which are more than 2 hours but less than 7 hours.

The way Keep Truckin ELD has this programmatically resolved is that it allows only one of the two periods, whichever is longer, to be the one that extends 14 hour clock (or stops it- as some prefer to call it), if they both are equal then it takes the latest one. In you example, the break at the receiver would be the one that would eventually extend the 14 hour clock - provided it is longer than the 1st one. If the break is less than 7 hours but long enough to go over the original 14 hour clock, then only the portion of it that does not exceed the original 14 hour clock can be used for the extension. Before the second: 7+hour sleeper birth break is completed, it would show that you are in a presumed violation.

That's my experience with different scenarios I had with Keep Truckin and the latest rules. That's not to say that they are the oracle of HOS....It still wants me to complete the sleeper birth break of at least 7 hours in the sleeper, even though I am going home for at least 10 hours of duty. For example, if I extend my 14 hour clock for 3 hours and then arriver home, I can't just log off duty for it not to red flag it. I need to log 7 hours in the sleeper and then go off duty.

I would not be surprised, if there were some drivers, who would allow themselves to combine the both breaks in your shipper and receiver example for stopping/extending the 14 hour clock. Even I, at some complex situation which I posted at another thread,
New split sleeper berth provision. What's the formula for 14 hour shift?,
saw that happen in Keep Truckin....but I suspect that it was an uncounted programming case. With these new rules there are a lot of possibilities and variations and they, obviously, could not account for all of them yet. I did try to find something on that on the FMCSA site but could not. But I am assuming that it would too far reaching a conclusion allowing to combine all the separate breaks that are more than 2 hours and less than 7.

This new HOS stuff, with room of different interpretations and possibilities, created something like a new science...lol

 

1st boss told me, "you can get it real close with a pencil". I can't believe, in this day and age, how something that is nothing but total BS, is still acceptable. I don't think I ever actually paper logged how I really drove.

 

I napped more often and avoided congestion if possible on paper because I’d do splits even though company hated it because other drivers would mess up constantly. My logs always passed audits . Now on elog they took out our split so instead of driving 100 km/hr 62 mph I drive 110 km/hr 68 mph so that when I hit the known back ups I don’t run out of drive time. Only other choice is give up a extra half day of home time to get a jump on trip to allow for the congestion from construction , campers and heavy volume of traffic in summer .

 

I used to get dinged for my logs. At my current carrier I haven't had a log kicked back in the 4 years I've been here. I split all the time.

 

With these latest split rules, there is really not that many reasons to cheat. Especially 14 hours clock. IMO, the way it works now, they might just as well get rid of completely and that would not change much. The 14 hour rule was the one that was always pain in a butt and also controversial in terms how it was helping with being rested, quite the opposite IMO. Now it does not bother me as much.

 

You have to understand where the 14 hour rule came from to know why it’s there. I forget the years, but back in the early 2000’s you had groups like Public Citizen, PATT, and others that were all funded by the railroad lobbies who were pressuring the government for hours of service reform to get fatigued drivers off the road. Any time the government brought new regs forward they were met with a lawsuit. The advocacy groups wanted things their way, if I recall they were pushing for 8 hours of driving a day. The 14 hour rule was a compromise. The advocacy groups had all their data about fatigue and accidents from changing your sleep schedule all the time. In theory with the 14 hour rule you’d be on duty the same 14 hours every day and be off the same 10 hours. And that’s why it came into being.

Keep in mind that in the middle of all this you also had groups fighting for and against the 11th hour of driving and the 34 hour restart. The early 2000’s were a gong show as far as HOS were concerned.

 

That's interesting. I'll always remain skeptical how different interest groups arrive at their conclusions of determining how the fatigue works and impose their ever changing limits. I don't believe that the changes that came into effect in 2004 when the 14 hour shift was introduced, improved any aspect of driving less fatigued. The pre 2004 rules might as well have remained the same until now and they were much simpler. The only good thing from that reform was 34 hour reset which they still messed up for a few years to finely go back to the previous version.
Besides, back then without ELDs in place they were fighting windmills.

As a reminder the pre 2004 rules were:
1. 70 hours on duty limit in 8 days.
2. 10 hours driving time followed by 8 hour off duty or sleeper.
3. any sleeper split combination is possible as long as one of the breaks is at least 2 hours and both must add up to 8 hours.
4. Maximum of 15 hours on duty lime per every 24 hour period.

No 34 hour reset - you had to use recapping after 8 days.
No 14 hour clock.

 

Public Citizen v. FMCSA (I) - Public Citizen