Bare min "on-duty" time and Legal?

I guess it's whatever you think you can get away with and what your internal auditor will tolerate.

But not logging any OD fuel stops for multiple days is really pushing your luck in a log audit. But everywhere we fuel, they have ultra-fast fuel pumps.

Rules were made to be broken. Weren't they? And there is no "minimum times" published anywhere and with today's eLogs, 15 minutes is no longer considered "the norm" for various minor duties.

 

Since you asked legality....
Log it as you do it is the only legal way.
Elogs makes this easy with to the mimute logging.
Paper if it takes 8 minutets round up, if it takes 7 simply flag it with how long it took.

 

Every company I ever drove for took time during orientation to handle that company's log requirements. LOG ACCORDING TO THEIR INSTRUCTIONS. If they say log 15 minutes for fuel, log it that way. Same with pre/post trip inspections. I always used paper logs so I can't give advice on the elog systems.

 

I got put OOS today for not logging a fuel stop.

 

driver must be logged on duty to fuel, you are moving a commercial vehicle and working
typical day for me, minimum ODs required by my company:
pre-trip, dvir = 15 min
fuel = 10-15 min (not every day)
drop & hook = 10 min
post-trip = 5 min

 

That drivers company is Swift. Let me put it this way... they did a manual log audit of my logs. I've never logged a DVIR, never logged fuel, scaling, shipper/consignee time... they went back a month on my logs. When my driver leader was reading the list of crap that I had to hear to get off safety hold, she was reading it aloud to me over the phone for going on 25 minutes. Not just the things I was supposed to log per company policy, but per FMCSR. Mandatory compliance. If that dude gets a log audit there's a seriously good chance he will be suspended, put on a safety hold and require a personalized logging class or possibly have his contract terminated. By driver leader went to the mat for me and that's the only reason I survived it.

 

Pre-trip is required 15 mins on-duty not-driving. Fuel stops (on paper) are required 15 mins on-duty not-driving. Elogs, fuel stops can be logged as they happen.

 

While technically there is no minimum time required by government regulation for logging a pre or post trip, the driver must be satisfied that the vehicle is in a safe operating condition.

How does the driver do that? By inspecting the vehicle.

All inspections must be logged on duty.

Therefore there should be some sort of pretrip logged.

Extrapolating out (as any legal eagle would) since FMCSA has a pretrip test as part of the CDL requirements It is reasonable to believe that all vehicle inspections should meet the CDL pretrip as a minimum. Thus if you log a 15 minute drop and hook, you better be able to drop, hook, and do a CDL level pretrip in that time.

Over time you learn what will get flagged by your company's automatic log review program and what will pop up when someone manually reviews them.

The best answer is log it as it happens. Log legal, log accurate. Finally log as I say, not as I do. I stretch the law to the limit and will probably have an issue if I'm ever involved in a serious accident.

 

Bare minimum. ..is usually your Company policy.Do you really want to explain to a DOT INSPECTOR at the weigh station"Yeah,it's solid...I did a 4 minute inspection!!.Just wondering what are these ideas about "getting over" ,1/2 as..ng logs.I know it's just 3rd person stories.,but really is that extra $10 a day really worth sacrificING Safety?