Hours of service old and new

The old. I could nap when I wanted without penalty. I do like the 34 restart tho. I rolled solo.

 

Can't help you there I roll solo.

 

Well i have done both solo and team under the old and new. Truth is When I do team I do it by miles. Each driver doing 500 miles then switching. If you do it in 8 great if it takes you 10 oh well. As a solo I stop for 10 - 14 hrs when I stop so there's no difference there.

 

There is no question about it, the old regualtions were much better. I ran team for years and we usually did a 5 and 5. And even running solo, having the privilege of "stopping the clock" worked just fine. Even at a dock where it was going to take several hours to load or unload, a driver could get some sleep and not be penalized.

I have to touch on my pet peeve and that is the bus drivers staying under the old regulations. Hauling human lives and yet they can "stop the clock", this is so stupid!!!

 

Old HOS were much better for resting. You could sleep when you were tired plain and simple without penalty. The only good part about the current HOS is the restart but other than that it's crap.

 

NOW THE FACT IS , a log book has never made a safe driver or a safe truck it can't just not possible.
some time a driver will statrt driving and run for 10 or 12 hours or more and feel great, atr other times he will drive 5 or 6 and feel like hell, in order to drive safly you have to drive the way you feel if you feel bad have the liberty of gong to bed , a #### book wont do it , the log book is the sign of a good poitician , there is no such thing , thats why they have called it a funny book for years and continue to do so.

you have to drive according to you and you only.

southernpride

 

When I drove under the old HOS I could drive for 10 hrs, or I could drive for as many hrs I wanted to, not going over 10 hrs, without penalty. Cource thats was back in '77-'83. Too many rules now.

 

i can't fully comment accurately because under the old rules i did alot of "hot" running basically all the time, so of course i'm going to be tired. Since i run legal now, then yes i feel rested pretty good for the most part. i didn't start running legal (mostly for heath reasons) until the new rules were implemented.

The other thing is, and i'm not nessesarily cheering for the new rules, is that i feel the 10 off actually fits me ok. In other words, after i sleep for about 8hrs, i notice that it takes me about an hour to an 1.5 hours to really wake up, get something to eat, shower etc. to really get going, so it works out great. And by the time i'm ready it's almost 10 hours, so it doesn't feel like 2 hours are being wasted.
Under the old rules, after 8 i would rush to get going because it felt like i was wasting time if i didn't and maybe this too contributed to me feeling tired.

One thing i don't like about the new rules is the elimination of the 4off 4on 4off and so forth indefintely. i'm still not sure why this was eliminated?

i think my biggest complaint/concern for both old and new rules is that i feel the biggest aspect of safety is not how many hours on and how many hours off is the problem. The problem, in my opinion, that is the biggest aspect of safety is when, at what time, you came on duty vs. the next time you come on duty? In other words, is your natural sleep rhythm steady, or is it all over the place----work during the day one day and the next, you're working at night?

This is something neither of the old or new rules ever addressed.

 

I like the new. And i like the 14 hour rule. Those guys that want to take a nap in the middle of the day, I just don't understand the logic. I can drive 650 miles in a 14 hour day and still have 2-3 hours of screw off time.

When we were allowed to split log any combination we wanted, that usually meant the 5-6 hours of dock time was expected to be logged as sleeper time, so we were then legal and expected to drive all night to make the delivery the next morning. The typical week prior to 2003 for me went like this: 6am delivery appointment. 10am send in empty call on qualcomm. 1pm get dispatched on next load. 75 mile deadhead, 600 mile run delivers 6 am tomorrow. 12 noon show up at shipper. Get in line. Sit, 3-7 hours waiting for your name to be called on the cb for a door. If your lucky, 6 pm your loaded and rolling. 2am, still on the road, slapping yourself on the back of the head every time you hit the rumble strips. Another 150 miles to go. 4:30 am, you roll up to the receiver. You set your alarm clock for 5:45 so you can check in at 6. Repeat previous day. Keep this up until Friday afternoon, when you get loaded with your load going back to the house. Then park at the closest truck stop to the shipper and fall into a coma for 12 hours because you haven't had more than three consecutive hours of sleep for the last 5 days. Get home Saturday to a wife that doesn't understand why it took you 24 hours to drive the 500 miles home.

Now with the 14 hour rule. We can't be expected to do this. It's against the law. When a truck is sitting at a dock for 5-6 hours, now the carrier is losing money too, and the carrier has a lot more clout and weight to throw around than we ever did. As a result, I'm not spending the better part of my day clamped to a building with a docklock any more.