Do you shutdown when the 14 hour clock is up no matter what?

Depends on your situation I guess. If you're a mega fleet driver at the mercy of DAC reports and e-logs, I guess this stuff scares you. If you're an owner op and don't really have a "job" to lose per se and don't need one from anybody, getting caught with a hot logbook or minor equipment violations is just cost of doing business.

 

On the other side of this look at that Crete?(I think that is who it was) wreck some time back in Florida when the guy was way over hours. Do you think they thought his hot logbook was just the cost of doing business? Most of the time you can skate with a bit of fudging, but if it goes bad it can go really bad.

 

IF your trying to get a decent paycheck you can't be taking 14+ hours off every night which is what it took for me to run E-logs and be well rested because for the first 8 hours of my 10 hour break I was very rarely able to sleep. Now I could have driven for that time when I wasn't tired anyways and then slept well when I got done what I needed to get done, but instead the E-logs ruled all and stopped me from driving when I felt good to drive and told me I was good to go when I had just been sitting around for 10 and hadn't slept worth a #### and now I actually am tired.

The end result of E-logs for me was
1.Drive when your tired
2.Sit around bored and agitated as heck when you feel good to keep going, but the box says you can't.
3.Want to take a nap,a shower,sit down for a hot meal and bs with your peers too bad. You got a 14 hour clock ticking down on you and that box is tracking you down to the second.

 

I'd do it and try to claim the two hour overage emergency time. I'll swear there was a backup in traffic that I could not anticipate and there was no place safe and secure to stop the truck. Might not work but the it might.

 

Was that the guy that ran into the back of the school bus and killed those kids? Never heard any more about that I wonder is he's still in jail. And I wonder what Crete (or was it CRST)got?

 

It was a Crete truck who slammed into a minivan that was stopped for a school bus. From the little bit of quick research I did Crete settled the half dozen wrongful death lawsuits filed against them and it looks like the driver started serving a 7 year prison sentence in 2008, so he should be just about out. One year in prison for each kid he killed.

 

The problem wasn't E-logs, the problem was YOU. And then wtf are you doing that you don't have any time in that 14 hours to play with? Unless you're the one loading and unloading your trailer and it's that involved of a job that it's totaling 2+ hours every day, there's NO excuse to not be able to sit down and eat, or take a nap during the day.

On topic... You stop, period. Your company can't do #### about you missing your appointment because you were out of time, long as you weren't wasting time by taking a 4 hour nap in the middle of your shift. If they do, you sue. You have your logs, that shows where you went, what time you got there, how long you were there... If you use your logs right, you're 100% protected if it wasn't your fault. For an O/O: You should have planned that better, and hopefully had the experience to know way ahead of time that you weren't making that appointment.

 

Ah yes, you should have planned better. There are some things you can't plan on, you can say better planning all you want but it doesn't mean anything when you come up on a three or four hour delay because of traffic or some other delay.

It didn't happen much otr but I've learned doing what I do now, hauling fuel, a 10 minute delay can put you hours behind. There are so many variables that go into making everything on time that you just can't plan for it.




You can stop if you want, some of us will stay out and get the job done safely. Before you say it, no, just because you're legal doesn't mean you're safe, they don't always both go hand in hand like most believe.

Your company might not be able to openly punish you for missing that appointment but maybe the next day you deliver to that customer and your dispatcher doesn't have anything for you to run. You missed that appointment so you missed the load that was planned to pickup that day, if only you had made the appointment the day before, but you didnt. So now you sit for 24 hours because the next load available isn't ready for pickup until the next day.

I gave the scenario above because it's EXACTLY what happened to me at a previous company I worked for. which is why I learned to always get the job done. Don't B**** and complain to your company, just do your job.

 

Funny thing about that huh. Back then I'm sure Crete had GPS tracking. They knew what that driver was doing. And only the driver went to jail?