HOS Amendment?

There are shippers and receivers such as Winco, Costco, Supervalue, Krugers, Albertsons. Wal-mart DC that once your loaded or unloaded your to leave the property, they dont care if your out of hours or not, not theyr concern, so really if there isnt a truck stop or a rest area, or a pull off or as in california where many places there is no truck stop for 100 miles, exactly what is a driver to do?? The above mentioned places wont even let you check in till 2 to 1 1/2 hours before your appointment. they wont let you park in the staging area, so yes someone needs to come up with something here.

 

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Yes they can, and we recently saw that abused with a voluntary survey which assessed negative points if you have a pet, book, laptop, tv, neat truck, dirty truck, pop or other caffeine source, sleep apnea and more points if you had the cpap machine to fix it. It was apparently based on the premise that if you had anything to entertain, educate, yourself with that you were not getting the rest you needed.

As the test is subjective it has been drug into the courts. Obviously if the driver is nodding off or other true indications of fatigue while the officer is interviewing him the officer needs a way to shut him down, there is no fine, he just gets shut down, which of course can set off other financial issues.
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Actually an officer could still determine if you are in violation of a grace period , if it were enacted into law. You log going over whatever rule, no falsification needed, he adds up the amount of time over to make sure it doesn't go over the grace period. Granted it would be easier on the officer with EOBR's if/when they are mandated. It just becomes more necessary with an EOBR.
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The shippers and consignees do not want the liability of having you and your truck on their property any longer than is necessary.
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I presently can usually find a side street, closed "out of business" business, or entrance ramp (not exit ramp) (depending on the state) within 7 miles of the location if no truck stop is available. I then round my <7.5 minutes to 0, this is in the grey area of operation and I would like a better solution which the grace period would provide. I have suggested this to the FMCSA in their online EOBR survey and comments section, that if we have to have EOBR that we have to have a grace period available even if it means reducing the hrs so that over hours but inside of the grace period hours would not go over present hours. A little give and take.
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Kind of like the 5mph over the speed limit rule works, you generally won't be cited for going 5 mph over the speed limit especially on a downhill.

 

The bottom line is you'll NEVER receive a "grace period". Mike has it correctly and put it in a way that is much nicer that I would have. Then you have organizations like M.A.D.D., Public Citizen, and all the rest that would file federal complaint after federal complaint through the courts, and it would be shot down immediately when it is filed either in the District of Columbia, or the federal courts for the Northern District of California in San Francisco. H E double doughnuts, these groups, including the Teamsters, don't want the 11 & 14 hour rules and have fought them for how many years now?

Then there are Congresscritters that gave you the CDL and railroad engineer licenses that would be opposed to it. Do you know how the CDL and railroad engineer licenses were started? There was a Congresscritter from WY, MT, or somewhere out there that had a son that was racing a train to a crossing and lost with 3 other kids in the car. The Congresscritter blamed the railroad, hence engineer licenses and CDL's.

 

I still have the right to suggest it to my government representatives, and I still don't like being forced into grey areas of the law. But I will agree without much give such as reducing the rules to 10.5/13.5/69.5 with a .5 grace period or even more restriction to the present rules we would not be able to negotiate the take side, a grace period. On the other hand I would have never thought the government could own a car manufacturing company. Just guess it goes to show you never say never. But yes with the antitrucking groups out there it would be improbable.

 

The gist is...Shippers and Receivers could give a rat's a-z-z about the HOS.....They're not under any responsibility and cannot be held liable for their actions or inactions as the case may be....

The driver's responsibility is to CYA !!!!!!!!