Pre-trip, enroute and post-trip inspections! Surprises?

You bring up an interesting thought.

You are at home for your 34 hour restart.

You leave for a family reunion in Florida early the first day. You are off duty, but you drive from Illinois to Florida. While you are down there, you go to Disney Land or whatever it is called. You are up all day. Later that night, you go out with the boys and have a great time. You get in at 3 in the morning, but cannot sleep long, because you guys have an early fishing adventure or golf game or something like that. Needless to say you leave on the way back around 10 am. You are not driving, but try to catch some sleep on the way back. Wife gets tired, but you have to get back because you are under dispatch.

You then take over the driving. Get home just in time to leave on the 11 hour trip to deliver the load. No problem, the log shows you were off duty and on your restart. There is no problem.

You have an accident just before you reach your delivery. Are you in violation of the law?

Just wait until an attorney gets hold of it.

 

In this case, we figure the guy who hopped the fence had problems because of that. Front end loader on the property was found with the doors open, so we assume that it was used to push on the back of the trailer to relieve that pressure so the pin could be pulled.

 

This is fun. Oldnewb's posts always get hijacked lol. Sorry Old, you're a "Professional Driver" now so you might as well get used to it. Usually a wrecker driver is going to park in front of you and you can see out the winder. Even if he parks behind you, if he doesn't see you he'll come a knockin' just like a cheap #####.

Do you sit in an anxious state of urgency while waiting for the service to come to you? It just doesn't make any sense to me. Either you're in the sleeper or you're not. What kind of work are you performing in the sleeper while you wait on the people to get to you?

Why can't you take a nap if you like while waiting on them? Why can't you sit down and read a book and relax while waiting?

I mean you've already shown some time on line 4 for putting out the triangles (if required) and for inspecting the problem and reporting it and all. Can you not do all that in 15 to 30 minutes?

Then you go in the sleeper for an hour waiting on the wrecker and "resting". Then when wrecker or service get there and you get out of the truck and sign the paperwork and help them out or whatever, that's line 4.

Then you either get towed or they changed your tire or fixed a part or whatever and you get back on line 3 and all is well. Geez man, you work too hard!

 

Well now that guy was determined! That's quite an exceptional experience there.

 

The service guy may have trouble finding you, or may be delayed as he wrangles up the parts he needs, or may need to talk to you to find out what the problem is so that he can bring the right parts to fix it the first time out. You need to be awake to answer your phone when he calls. There will likely also be some sort of communication with dispatch during this time, too. Sure, sometimes you can get away with taking a nap...but you are supposed to be attending the disabled vehicle, not napping.

 

I haul Paper. It is no touch loads. when they unload me, I can't drive, I can't help. So I sleep in my sleeper. and I log it that way. When I get loaded. I sleep also. most of the time if I am not driving, I am sleeping!

 

What the phone won't wake you up? Get an amplifier baby! lol. As far as I know communicating in the sleeper is still in the sleeper. Some people get paid to talk on the phone but not truckers.

 

Like I keep saying...there is a difference between the LAW and what is generally an accepted practice within the industry. Chances are, you can log it as you are for your entire career and never get in any trouble over it. However, all it takes is one crash, with one attorney deciding that you were not logging loading/unloading time, or time waiting for repairs within the exact letter of the law. If the crash occurs when you are near enough the 70 hour limit that by his calculations you would have been over-hours had you been logging strictly by the book (instead of in the generally accepted manner within the industry), you would have been over hours, well lets just say it ain't going to be pretty for you.

Just because it is a generally accepted practice within the industry does NOT mean it is legal to log it that way. When you log in a manner that is not 100% by the book, you run the risk (as slight as it may be) of increased liability should anything happen.

Know the law, and understand the risk....then make your decision and log it accordingly. I don't really care how you draw the lines in your coloring book...just know the law and understand the risk before you play the game.

 

I am going by the law lol. It says if you're in the sleeper to log sleeper. You're only going to be in trouble if you don't log any time on line 4. If something is time stamped and you signed it, make sure you're on 4. Otherwise, they can't prove a #### thing. Even if you're being secretly recorded somehow, as long as you're in the sleeper when you say you are, you're good to go lawyer or no lawyer. We can agree to disagree I reckon.

 

No, it does not. It says you must be RESTING in the sleeper, and the other sections define situations where you are not legally "resting"...such as while remaining in a state of readiness to operate your CMV while loading or unloading, or while attending a disabled CMV while waiting for a service truck to arrive. If one of these situations exist (and they are easy enough to prove...you call the company to report a breakdown and it is in the company's records, as is the time you notify the company the repairs are complete and you get the PO# to pay for the repair.) All of the companies records will be subpoenaed and a lawyer will be going through them with a fine tooth comb with the express purpose of finding ANYWHERE that you have logged anything that is not 100% according to the letter of the law. If you are logging sleeper time when the law states you are to be on duty, you are falsifying your logs and it could come back to bite you.

Know the law, and understand the risk. If you decide it is worth the risk, log it however you feel like logging it. The generally accepted practice of logging loading/unloading/breakdown time in the sleeper, though, is NOT legal.