30 min break for HoS question

My company is already telling us sitting in the truck while being loaded may not qualify as off duty time if the customer 'told' us to sit there. Especially if they told us to sit in the truck and wait for the red light to turn green or tune to a specific channel on the CB. Sitting in the customer break room or dropping the trailer in the dock door and bobtailing over to a staging area is also considered on duty.

They would prefer us to bobtail off property or even walk off property to legally log off duty. Logging sleeper while on the customer's property is going to open up drivers to extreme scrutiny by law enforcement. They will ask you questions about what was happening at the customer and if you answer it just wrong or if they call the customer and determine you lied, boom you may be placed out of service.

 

under the OP original question
you cant exceed the time frame of driving
if you take a 30 minute break after 3.5 hours driving time anyway
your drive time would end wouldn't it
if your at a dock and go off duty that counts

people are going crazy over nothing

 

If sitting in the truck you are on line 4 you are just burning up your 70. Most companies will allow you to go to Line 1/2 while being loaded/unloaded unless you are required to be on the Dock.

As mentioned before. Once you leave line 1 or 2 and drop down to line 3 or 4 your 8 hour clock starts. Once you reach 8 hours (either on line 3 or 4 or line 3/4 combined) you must go to line 1 or 2 for 30 minutes. Then dropping down to line 3 or 4 your 8 hour clock starts again.

 

RM says it right. For every 8 hours on-duty you have to take a 30 minute, UNPAID, off-duty break. As most of us know, we can be on-duty for 16 hours only ONCE per restart. You still can't go over 11 hours driving, ever, no-matter-what (except in emergency conditions such as extreme weather conditions) in that 16 hours. Myself and most of my co-workers get paid hourly. We will have to take an unpaid 30 minute brake. Sure we are off-duty but we are still in attendance of our truck. Hazmat haulers have to be in attendance of their vehicle. So hows does that figure in? Crapola.

 

There's nothing preventing your employer from paying you for the break if they so choose.

 

I've pondered that. Before we went to computer logs, we punched in on a timecard. Then the time-clock broke down and they never fixed or replaced the old one. So Management decided to pay us hourly drivers by what we wrote down on our trip report, which has been good for us drivers(a sign of trust, as we could lie on our trip reports). But after the PC Log went online, they have been saying for at least 3 years that we will start getting paid by the PCL. Hasn't happened yet, but on Monday our PCLog will let us know if we have taken our 30 minute break. Once we pull over and log out officially off-duty for our 30 minute unpaid rest I'm not gonna rest. Got a day-cab. I'll wander around, after intertripping my truck and set since I'm wandering around aimlessly having a very restful and relaxing break? Sure. Most likely I'll check my rig, then grab my tab and fire off a few interesting insights to this forum. Ahhh. Only in Obamaland!

 

https://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/rules-regulations/topics/hos/index.htm

 

The way i figure it is if you want to utilize your full 14 hour window you should not start your 30 minute break until at least 5 hrs 30 minutes after you start your 14 hr window!
I dont know why dot says 4 hrs because 4+8 =12? If i drive after the 12 i will be in violation if i have not had a 30 min break.

The point of the 30 min break is to take a break from behind the wheel! Therefore i would not use off duty driving for this 30 min break for you on elogs.
Qualcomm will allow you to select it but i would not encourage you to use it !
The 30 min brk must be off duty, sleeper or any combination of off duty/sleeper for 30 minutes!
You can not be doing anything work related during ANY dot break and that includes the 30 min brk!
You can google fmcsa dot reg and view the question and answers. Log book examples (them are great)
And read other info! Let me know if you have trouble finding the links or the information

 

My boss encourages us to use this 30 minute break during loading, especially if it is going to take an hour or more to get loaded. I argued that the regs say we must log such times as on-duty. He claims that he personally talked to KCC and they told him it was ok to use the break when loading.

That said, I know what he's saying... How is DOT going to know if you did or did not? There's times where I'm sitting in line for more than an hour, truck not moving. The new 30 min break does say that you may remain in the truck, you do not need to be in the sleeper, and still log the 30 min break. This does contradict the other regs, where you're suppose to log sleeper if in the sleeper, or on-duty if sitting in the right seat.