Smartphone, tablet logging apps no longer require printing or manual signatures

Part of the reason why I don't want to take your phone into my office and look thru it.

 

Hi everyone, been a local driver for about 9 months starting my 2nd career, after being a roofer for 22 years, for a New England mom & pop non-trucking firm and been lurker here for a couple of months to educate myself. I came upon this issue in New Hampshire using the Keep Trucking app on my iPad mini that I bought thru AT&T for $100 when upgrading my wife's iPhone.

While I print my logs each day when I get home and keep in my bag the previous 7 days in paper form the current day is all electronic. I figured if the DOT won't accept the e-log I'd only have to copy the current day, except I forgot to place the logbook back into my bag after cleaning it out over the weekend and the officer didn't have any copies I could use and we were in one of those part time weigh stations without a permanent scale or buildings.

He was just about to place me OOS for not keeping a log, after many minutes of back and forth point counterpoint, I remembered the 100 air mile radius exception. When I brought that up he just kind of grinned asked, to see my BOL's for the day and said you're good to go. 29 out of 30 days I go further than 100 miles I just kind of lucked out on this day. That night I bought a used Cannon Selphy CP1200 portable printer, https://shop.usa.canon.com/shop/en/catalog/selphy-cp1200-black-wireless-compact-photo-printer,
at Amazon for $70 and leave in the truck with extra ink cartridges and a cigarette lighter DC/AC converter I had bought years ago. I won't depend on batteries. Fortunately I had the 100 miles exception that day or it would have been a long, long night without a sleeper.

The reason I use the app is I have horrible penmanship where I was unable to read a lot of what I wrote on paper logs, as my teachers used to say it looks like chicken scratching and I made many mistakes. As to entering password every time needing to use you don't. It is purely optional if you want a passcode and I don't. But I only use my iPad for work I store nothing personal on it.
By the way, sorry for long post and this site has been a great resource for me. I have learned a lot here.

 

styro, FYI if he had put you OOS, you would not have been allowed to spend the night in a day cab tractor. That is not a legal 10 hr break. You would had to call a cab and go to a motel.

 

I didn't think of that, roofing was a much easier profession concerning regulations but my body just couldn't handle another winter in the elements. In that case the company would have sent our other driver to pick up the rig since I was only about 60 miles out, depending on his HOS.

 

They'll straighten it out eventually. Just like they did with the medical cards, which you no longer have to carry either.

 

That law changed back in 2012, so you are incorrect.

A break is valid in a PARKED cmv.

 

Show me anywhere in any of those regs where there is a requirement to sleep. It's not there and you can log off duty in a parked CMV there is no requirement that you must log sleeper berth in order to be legal.

 

You might get questioned though about when and where you slept though.

I only logged off duty if parked for more then 10. Usually when I had nowhere to go.

 

Just because they ask a question doesn't mean they're entitled to an answer. I just refer them back to the logs; they get tired of getting the same answer after the third or fourth time and move on.