Motive Driver e-logs. The new wild west?

yep, that’s correct.

 

I have experienced this Motive (Keep Truckin') phenomenon twice now while performing the split sleeper break. It added the two breaks together and extended my 14hr clock by 6½ hours once and almost 8.0 hours a few days later.

 

The question is if that is all right to go by what this ELD shows. A zealous DOT official will go by what he sees on his screen after downloading the output file. The output or inspection file does not have any violation indicators to show whether or not there are any violations and a cop or his program needs to determine that on their own. The fact that Motive did not flag it and made it seem all legit may not concern him at all.
I tried to do some digging on this on FMCSA site and follow their case examples but could not find anything about not being allowed to add two qualifying shorter (less than 7 hours) break periods together and extending the 14 hour shift by that much. On the other hand, it does not feel right and in the end it would be in the hands of a DOT person to call it right or wrong.

 

Just want to add something that was brought up this morning here, if you are inspected with a device not hooked up to the truck, a shrewd officer will ask proof that your company provided the instructions if the eld malfunctions and want to see the means of manually recording hos.

if you don’t have it, both the driver and company can get dinged pretty hard for the violation.

so keep your log book.

 

I agree that it does not feel right even though the ELD is counting the two separate rest breaks together and extending the 14 hour clock. A seasoned DOT veteran will probably see that and consider it a falsification of the logs and place the driver out of service so I'm not taking the chance. When mine does this I make a note in my logs that the rest break I took first is the one that is counting for my sleeper berth split.

 

Thank you for the post, I forgot the instructions part, I keep new log books in the eld breakdown package.

 

They are as legal as a paper log. Not everyone falls under the ELD mandate. If you are mostly driving under the short haul exception and only have to log 8 times or less for the previous 30 days, you do not have to have an ELD. I used Keep Truckin' instead of paper logs for a year or more before getting their ELD. You can still use it for that and I think it is still free when not used with an ELD.

 

I did it for a while, our business is on the line now . Rated conditional after an audit.
Son started driving for me and got a couple out of service due to logs not up to to date which triggered an audit.

We upgraded trucks (2) to 2001 & 2007 and just used Motive free app.
FMCSA now giving us 60 days to comply with 30 days of compliant eld use with BOL'S and fuel receipts.

Just about folding!

They denied the 8 day in 30 exemption!!