Spoke With A Freind At The CVSA

You guys all know there is something wrong with this.

The FMCSA rule is already there and has been addressed a lot of times in the past.

The FMCSA doesn't enforce a thing, they don't enforce regulations on trucks or drivers, they do on carriers.

The states enforce their own regulations and laws, however most of the states since 1948 have agreed to use the US DOT/ICC/FMCSA regulations as their own. They enforce it against the drivers and the trucks, but not the carriers.

The states also leave this up to the officer who is in the field - a discretion of sorts.

I have yet to get a MSP bulletin about this from my friends at the state police.

AND you never could use your back seat as a sleeper, but you can log off duty without a receipt now.

 

Why would you enforce it against the carrier when the driver is responsible for the vehicle to be in a safe and drivable condition. The FMCSA sets the rules and regulations that the state DOT's go by and if in a truck the field officer always have had discretion. Some not so much. Same with any LEO pulling a car over. The first "meet" with the driver sets the tone for the rest of the period.

Receipt? Why logging off duty would you need a receipt? Can you point to the regulation showing that?

 

They tell me that they log it as off duty and then tell the dot that they slept at a friend or girl friends house.
They also said that dot couldn't question it because dot has no jurisdiction over off duty time and can not question who you spent the night with.
So I don't know?

 

The receipt thing comes from the old days where hotshotters would try to save a few bucks and sleep in the sleeperless truck off duty so the officer would ask for supporting documents.

They changed the regulations almost 5 years ago, it is legal to log off duty in a parked commercial vehicle.

If there is a crackdown it will be on those hotshotters in sleeperless trucks falsely logging sleeper time.

 

I get a feeling of a overall Crimialization of sleeping or homelessness in the cities Nation wide. Pickup trucks hauling something with people sleeping on the back seat would make a financial target to be exploited by the cities.

A long time ago I had a board on the catwalk, where we throw it across the seats in the Mack and curled up to sleep a while. No one bothered us then in them days.

 

BS not going to happen

 

Yep a quick search on youtube for "stealth camping" brings up tons of videos of people who live in their vehicles sharing ways to avoid the cops.

I had my dog on the truck for 4 years, often our walks were just around the perimeter of the the truckstops. Almost any truckstop in America, you can see poor people sleeping in their cars in the 4wheeler lots at night.

 

Actually you misunderstood or I am confused with the NY celebration stuff.

I said the FMCSA enforces it regulations against the carrier not the driver or the truck, the state enforces the regulations against the driver or the truck but not the carrier. YOU get your authority from the FMCSA, you get your drivers license from the state.

Does that make a little more sense?

Actually it comes for the old days where people were to be off duty and claimed to be in a hotel but were sleeping in the truck. The cops have been asking for receipts for over 60 years now.

 

In July of 2013, the rules were changed. Since that time you can spend your 10-hour break in the cab of your truck logged off duty. You cannot log sleeper unless you have a D.O.T. compliant sleeper. You can legally sleep anywhere in your truck you just can't log sleeper, it must be logged off duty.

 

I must be missing something. Other than for purposes of an 8/2 split, which requires the 8 hours to be logged in the sleeper, why would anyone, in a legal sleeper or otherwise, ever be "required" to log off-duty time as sleeper? Similarly, I am not aware of a requirement that demands proof of a hotel, time at your home, time at your "girlfriend's" house or any other location if you have logged off-duty. Is there such a requirement?