home time law

After I quit Tri-State Motor Transit in 1969, their Teamster drivers went on strike in 1970 over the home-time issue. Tri-State was hauling munitions coast-to-coast with union drivers on company equipment and non-union drivers on leased equipment. The union wanted "third dispatch, and home" which would require the company to pay the driver hourly until he arrived home if his fourth load did not take him home. A non-union driver was killed in that strike.

In 1969, my wife (at the time) found another job for me after Tri-State kept me out three weeks. We had a one-year-old son. The bad thing about irregular route trucking is that the driver never knows when he will be home.

 

A lot of companies will not let you have you off time when you are under a load. Your driver may be thinking, as long as he was under a load, he had the responsability for the truck and freight, and his off time should start after his delivery. Just my two cents
Safe miles,

Larry

 

Yeah, hire this guy right here, he wants to get F'd in the A for hometime! Get your driver home, and leave him alone, and he is right, "hometime" while still under dispatch is not hometime.

 

Maybe I should make a point a little clearer. One time one of my dispatchers said "since you got home on this day, that's a hometime day" I informed him, that he is not correct, and to prove my point, I asked him why he always took three day weekends, since he went home on Friday, that counts as a day off for him, and wee should dock his wages as such.

I never got griefed about time off again.

 

Granted BUT....he could have said stay under the load and dont take the truck home period. And if the driver agrees to it being 'hometime' then whats the problem. While the driver "thinks" there should be a law about hometime, there aint.

 

there really isnt a law, but if a company really wants to keep drivers, they will get drivers home on a regular basis, or have a system where a driver can request hometime, and the company honors those requests, and it also comes down to what kind of dispatcher you get, and how much time the loads that you haul allow. when i was at millis, i was always home after i delivered a load, so if they couldnt find a load(i live in nys, so freight out of nys sucks with the way the idiots in Albany runs things), i wound up home for a little longer. now that im back with GSTC, i still get 1-2 days home on a weekly basis, or i can run if i want. i will admit that being home under load may have its limits, but i made better money doing that than when i was off a load with millis, where they expected me to make up those days off by running right to the edge of my 70, (and most of it was short over nite loads, 600-700 miles and used up a lot of on-duty not driving time), and fighting my log book for the next 1-2 weeks. both have pros and cons, just i did better with gstc because i was able to get an average of 2500 miles a week doing longer runs, which used up less on duty time per load, and they always went through the house, which is good because with the electronic logs there isnt any more fudging.(and this keeps the nys gestapo off my back.)

 

Think you have a truck stop lawyer for an employee.

 

Hah, at werner we have a hometime policy with very specific definitions of what a hometime day is: If you get home that day after 6pm in your timezone, that day does not count. If you get home that day after noon but before 6pm, that day is a half day. Now, according to the letter of the law, if you got home at 5:30 thats a half day, but they've never done me like that. last time i went home i did not count that day because i got home at 4pm, did not say anything to dispatch, and it was ok.

But usually i do go home under a load. Sucks but atleast i know exactly when i have to be back to the truck. But it sucks having to leave at 2am on a monday..Hah.

 

14 days on the road, 2 days at home Ain't no way that I would work under these conditions, I ain't never been that hungry.

 

Good thing,....You probably couldn't afford to eat on the wages they pay,...