Off duty question

The truck stop can tow the truck and you can be fired for parking illegally or all kinds of stuff. Your still Off-Duty, because you are not required to attend the truck as part of your job. You can go home. Next time you getting loaded or unloaded tell them your dropping the trailer in their dock and going home. See what they say. They won't let you do that because your responsible for getting loaded or unloaded and then getting off their property.

They may seem silly but it prove the point you are On-Duty working even if you just Attending the truck being loaded or unloaded. Just like the law says and it not the same thing as sitting at the truck stop for 34 hours.

 

I've dropped my truck at a food warehouse, but I only pulled up so the truck wouldn't rock while I slept. I don't guess that counts.Maybe,cause your not all tense and ready to operate in a split second. What will they think of next.

 

Sleeper berth time is legal. I think logging Off- Duty is a not correct. It can come back and get you in big trouble. If their was a traffic accident, and they see Off-Duty. If they think it's not correct. They can correct you log to show your real working hours. If that puts you over any of the limits. Now they can say you are responsible for the accident, because you did not follow the law.

 

That's really pathetic, makes me wonder if personal injury lawyers have a lobby that pushes for stiffer DOT regs so they can make more money.Anyone with half a brain knows truckers statistically are the safest drivers on the road and we feed them for crying out loud.No respect.I'm just at a loss for words and that doesn't happen often.

 

Yep,
stays on the books for 6 solid months back at the office. Auditors and more importantly, dog bite ambulance chasing lawyers will have discovery access to those logs and can convince a jury in your fatality crash trial that the driver had a history and pattern of exceeding legal time on their logs and if they were compliant his/her client might still be alive today so therefore they ask for $91 million in damages and the truck driver to do life without parole.

 

Sometimes I am not even on the property. Having dinner down the street. The truck literally will just have to take care of itself while they unload it.

I paper it sleeper berth and will assign the same value to the computer. If the company wants to fight over it call it a violation then we will have a converstation about the situation inside the office somewhere. What happens next will decide if I am still employed with them or not.

It is very widespread, the practice of sleeping while being unloaded. Genesee Ale in Rochester used to have us tractors laying over in what they call a bullpen corner downtown core a few blocks away. They load the trailer we dropped in it. It is literally off duty or sleeper for us. Minus the little pretty coming around asking if we want a date. ( I usually tell her wife overhead and she need to go away...)

 

How about the otherside of the coin,
If you book it off duty you are creating your own problems.IE how can you complain about not getting payed or detention after all you are OFF duty.
If everybody booked all the hours they were supposed to what would happen to the trucking industry?
What about a placarded load At a truckstop you are responsible for the load 24/7. At the customer they can relieve you from duty and place an employee in charge.

 

Isn't off duty and sleeper berth essentially the same thing?

 

Or put another way, sleeper birth IS off duty.

 

Sleeper Berth is kind of a sanctuary when at a customer that law enforcement allowed as a legit way to stop the On Duty clock from ticking down. With the 2012 revision stating that we could log Off Duty in a Parked commercial vehicle, that was supposed to equal the playing field between Sleeper and Off Duty such that we no longer had to falsify Sleeper while at a customer (or on our 30 minutes breaks) in order to stop that On Duty clock from ticking down. This also protected daycab drivers who didn't have a sleeper. As you recall the old regs (pre 2012) prohibited all Off Duty time "in or on" a commercial vehicle "except time spent resting in a sleeper berth".