What kind of regulations are guidance?

Here's the online version of the regulations.
http://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/rules-regulations/administration/fmcsr/fmcsrguide.aspx?section_type=A

You will see "Guidance" to the right of pertinent categories. The are helpful in the subcategories. Interpretations is the same thing as guidance. It's nothing but Q&A of common questions pertaining to that regulation.


One thing about the rules is you have to watch key words carefully. One or two words can change the whole ballgame.

Your 395.8 f (7) above. The words "of all entries". The only way you can have "all entries" is at the end of a work shift.

Why would the entries not be yours? Is there logbook bandits running around? You have at least the 7 preceding days with the same handwriting.
All you are doing when you sign it is certifying the entries are correct.

Use the quote button. It's hard to figure out who is saying what in your post.

Someone should be able to grab your logbook at anytime and get a picture of what you have been doing. That's the purpose of keeping the change of duty status up.

How are you going to get in trouble when you are off duty regarding when you fill out multiple days off duty? I think you are reading between some of the lines.

When your shift is up and you know you are going off duty go ahead and close that page out. When you have multiple days off fill that sheet out when you first get back in the truck.

Let's say you get home Sept 28 and go back to work Oct 2.

1. When you get home on the 28th you should close that page out and your logs are current until you return to work.
2. Oct 2nd you fill out a multiple day off sheet to cover Sept 29-Oct 1. You haven't changed duty status these days so they don't have to be filled out until you go back on duty. Nobody is coming to your house.
3. Update your Oct 2 sheet to back on duty and you are good to go.

Remarks only has to show location at change of duty status as a bare minimum. That way you can't disappear in one town and pop up in another. They have to know where you were at.
Companies teach different of what they want as in describing what you are doing but that is not a regulation. When you describe things in remarks it alleviates any questions.

What you posted for multiple days off in remarks is true because we go back to someone looking at one log page and figuring out what you are doing. Hey he's off duty such and such days at such and such place.

I think I covered what you were asking but I'm not sure what you asking.

Here's the guidance (interpretation) for 395.8

http://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/rules-regu...fmcsr/fmcsrruletext.aspx?reg=395.8&guidence=Y

 

They don't enforce guidance. Guidance is an explanation of the rules in the form of Q&A.

I told you your post was hard to understand.

That one was better.

I still don't understand why you question that because you even posted the rule. It doesn't look like a copy/paste is why I thought you were hand typing from some other source.

How is someone to know where you took your off duty time at if you don't write it? The DOT doesn't look at other pages to figure out that page. You can move to another state on your off time and start a different job showing a new town going back on duty. Then ???? will fly. How did he get from here to here?

 

That's right... an attempt to "unmuddy the waters" as it were. But we both know that the flatfeet will sometimes base their enforcement actions on this gibberish, and sometimes on nothing more than thin air and fairy dust as well. At the side of the road they have the ticket book and gun, so their interpretation of the law at that moment in space and time IS the law. It's also why we have courtrooms, judges and juries. Just because a cop says it's so, doesn't mean it's so, and just because the FMCSA writes a stupid, unclear rule doesn't mean that what the rule says it says will be the same in a courtroom in front of a judge.

Minnesota and that stupid, inane HOS questionnaire comes to mind. I'll bet that Urquart jerk is still fuming over his inability to get that nonsense adopted as the rule of law in all of the land.

That would be common sense, but we're talking "gubbermint" here. No such thing as specific and clear, when amorphous and muddy are much more to their liking! Unfortunately, the regs are what they is.

snip...

The why of course is to show to Congress that the employees of the FMCSA have a practical reason for their existence other than just taking up space and collecting paychecks. The FMCSA has been issuing more guidance in lieu of rulemaking just to get things done... the rulemaking process is messy, and the FMCSA doesn't always get their way. The CSA program should have been subject to the rule making process as Congress intended it to be, but it just went "poof!!, bang!!" and there it was. The guidance issued on sleep apnea is a case in point.

The changes to the guidance for doctors concerning sleep apnea made it onto the DOT medical exam form this year, even though there has been no change to the rule, no requirement for sleep tests, etc. But yet, it's there... you, I and all of us are now subject to it when we go in for a DOT medical exam. Congress has passed a bill in the House (HR3095) that instructs the FMCSA to stop with this practice, at least as it pertains to sleep apnea. So the subcommittee that deals with the FMCSA understands that this is going on, and they disapprove.

So does the FMCSA get "it" yet? Time will tell...

 

I agree they should be rewritten. With all the changes and additions over the years it's like one big collage. Reference this, reference that. Yesterday I was reading on tire damage. One rule says you are forbidden to drive on a damaged tire and another rule on another page says it's okay to go to the nearest shop and another rule says you can take the tire off and drive that way. Which one do they want? I could write what a driver needs to know about tires on one page. They have it scattered out in like 7 different rules. That's a perfect example of how some things are screwed up with it. Then they have all the grey areas. Designed to confuse is what I call it.

Being on this forum for 3 years and digging in that book daily I have learned more about the rules than when I did driving. They should make all CDL drivers become TTR members to learn the regs.

I think I know what you done now, you clicked on that Regulatory Guidance link which goes back to the regulations. Ignore that link and use the ones above it. I think they have that there because it separates the rules that have Q&A from the ones that don't. I always use the "ALL" or "DRIVERS".

 

Another issue is background checks. Back in the old days if a driver lost his CDL he would go to the next state and get another. Hence the 10 year background check was born. Today with modern computers and everyone linked together a company should be able to see everything about a driver there is to know in just a few clicks. Yet the manual hassle of companies having to fax and email each other tons of paperwork just to satisfy gov't red tape is still done today. They could streamline that process big time.