Is this legal?

I'm sorry if I may have offended anybody, but I believe it is everybody's responsiblity, that drives commercially, to at least be familiar with, or better yet, know the rules that we are required to operate by. This is why companies handout the little green book. FMCSA also has the regs posted online, with interpretations, so it is quite easy. It is just basic, and better to become familiar with them, then to let Scalemaster and his brethren give you high dollar lessons on them. I don't know about y'all, but if I meet up with him, I want to make it as difficult as possible for him to find any violations on me and my rig.

 

Then in that case no, it isn't legal if you are unable to legally log your loading/unloading. When your 14 is up that's it for your day. Your company might want you to believe different as it could be to their advantage, but they still need a legal log to show.

 

The regs state that you cannot drive after 14 hours, on duty, without a 10 hour break. They do not prevent you from working beyond the 14th hour and logging it as on duty.
The HOS only restrict driving time, not on duty time.
You can also work beyond 70 hours in a week, you just can't drive beyond the 70th hour.

 

From a purely legal standpoint, if you were to load/unload, back to a dock, or deal with paperwork during your ten hour break then you must log all time spent doing such activities as either driving (backing up to the dock/moving off the dock to a parking spot) or on-duty/not driving (loading/unloading, paperwork).

If it takes you less than 7.5 minutes (and your on paper logs), you may merely 'flag' the time, if over 7.5 minutes you will have to actually block and log the time. Again, that's on paper logs. E-logs run different depending upon your specific carrier and thier programming set-up. And yes, this will interrupt your break so you will either have to 'split break' your sleeper time, or restart your 10-hour break. Again, this is dependent upon your company's policy. And your knowledge of how to do log a split sleeper break, since not all drivers understand how it's done. If you don't understand the current split break rules, don't fret. There are entire safety departments, scalemasters, and DOT bears who don't understand the current split break provisions.

Now here in the real world, I never interrupted my break log for shipper/reciever work. I hit the dock, did the work and paperwork, pulled off, parked, and went back to sleep. I logged the time after my break, regardless of what time the work was actually done. My belief was as long as the length of time was logged (somewhat) accurately, then the actual time of day or night I logged the time was my issue and no one else's. I'm sure that ScaleMaster and DieselBear would disagree with me, but I'm also quite sure that if I'm rolling safe and have all my i's dotted and t's crossed they aren't going to check that closely. They understand the real world of trucking as well as the drivers do.

 

According to whats left of my ripped and shredded book, line 4(On duty, not driving.) Does not count towards your 72 hour.
I guess your 10 will pick up where it left off... OR, if your not sure, log it has off duty(line 1), if you company calls you and say you got confused hat to do.

 

They are actually quite simple. Just remember, everything is geared towards restricting our hours driving, nothing else.

 

Maybe you can help me find something I have looked for for years, that being the 7.5 minute "flag" rule.

The only thing I have seen in the reg book concerning this is 395.8 Interpretations, Question 1:

Question 1: How should a change of duty status for a short period of time be shown on the driver’s record of duty status?
Guidance: Short periods of time (less than 15 minutes) may be identified by drawing a line from the appropriate on-duty (not driving) or driving line to the remarks section and entering the amount of time, such as “6 minutes,” and the geographic location of the duty status change.

So, your statement is pretty close. If it takes you less than 15 minutes you show the amount of time in the remarks with the location.

If you log activity at a different time than when it happened in order to hide an hours of service violation, that is the definition of a false log.