34 hr restart question

It's simple. Whenever you take 34 hours off, including two periods between 1 am and 5 am, you get a reset, but only once a week. If you take off this weekend, you'll start Monday with the reset.

 

Thank you for taking the time to answer my question. The HOS have confused me. If I deliver my load and the receiver says that I will be unloaded in 5 hrs, can I sleep for 5 hrs and not have that time count against my 8 1/2 hours of drive time?

 

Here's an example for you.

Three weeks ago, I clocked out at 12:59 AM on Monday morning, literally the last minute. My 34 reset finished at 11 AM on Tuesday morning.

For the last two weeks, even though I finished up significantly earlier (around 10 PM Sunday), my reset didn't occur until 11 AM on Tuesday.

I had a short day yesterday due to the storm, parking around 6:30 PM. My reset won't occur until 11 AM tomorrow.

 

I've heard stories of the mysterious trucker who would only drive/work 8.5 hours a day every day, forever, but I've not ever seen an irregular route trucking job where customer and carrier needs would allow this for more then a few days. But more power to those who claim they make appointments and others fit into their 8.5 hour/day schedule in the 24/7 trucking real world.

 

Thank you. In the real world, is there any way to avoid the 34hr reset?

 

Yes you can. You just have to watch your hours and look at your recap. I did that this summer when I ran produce between CA and WA for four month. I pretty much worked 7 days a week with a half a day off here and there. Some days I ran 11hrs and other days I just had a couple hours, but with sitting at produce places for hours on end it is doable. Just check and double check your math. Remember you can work 70hrs in 8 days in the lower 48. If you go North it is a complete different animal. Right now I go to Alaska and you deal with 4 different sets of HOS rules.

 

Anything logged DRIVING or ON DUTY will count against you.

Anything logged OFF DUTY or SLEEPER BERTH will not count against you.

 

That's not strictly true. Anything off duty or spent in the sleeper will count against you, BUT only on that specific day.
once the clock starts on that day, you have to get your job done because you've got 14 hrs and that's it for the day.
but on any given day, once you go off duty, you've STOPPED the clock on the 70 hrs.
thats why it's critical to log off duty at any opportunity, especially when you're on elogs.
If you forget and you're status is at on duty, in many cases it's going to hurt you in the general scheme of things, if you know you're off duty.

 

stuff happens and quickly the driver is not in control of hours of service, as a newbie i'm trying to educate myself and prepare for these situations

if you are broken down and know the service call will take more than 10/8 or 34 hours, can you take your 10/8 sleeper berth or 34-reset and use that waiting time so it resets drive time to the max by the time you are back in service? if you know repairs will take less than 10, could you take your 30 min break at that time and/or just log off duty until they arrive?

if you can opt for the 10/8 sleeper berth while waiting with rig out of service and service actually arrives less than 10 hours later while driver is still on a 10/8, would whatever time spent logged as sleeper before the interruption become a "long break" and count toward the 14 or could i change the passed time at that point to being logged off duty?

i will no doubt be using e-logs, and this may be a company policy question best directed to the company: is it good form to change what was previously transmitted on the company e-log device and log the time on another line or is this even impossible or just not done?

thanks.

 

Wrong.

The 168 hour clock starts at the beginning of the last 34.

http://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/rules-regulations/topics/hos/index.htm