Define "Home terminal"

Ive always been told its the address of the motor carrier where ALL the records are kept

 

The company you are leased to is the motor carrier.

 

Whatever that company says to use. What name and address do you put on your logs?

What's the purpose of leasing if you find your own work?

 

it will most likely be the terminal from which dispatch occurs, but the company shouldve told you what time zone to log in. and the question should be directed to the company...any answer you get here may be wrong. you say the company is in eastern time zone, which leads me to believe that is the most likely answer, but you can incorporate anywhere, so that may not be the case either. call whoever your liason with the company is and ask them...its not a question you should feel dumb for addressing to them.

 

Terminal time is at the carrier's discretion and is usually the principal business location. The fact that you self dispatch is not relevant. The guidance in the regulation is to direct the carrier to decide on a standard time zone and start of day, based on the location where their operation is based.

Easiest way I've found to avoid confusion is set my truck and laptop clocks to terminal time (Eastern for me) and use the clock on my cell phone for local time, which will automatically adjust while moving.

Look at the cell phone when considering pickup/drop times or setting the alarm to wake up. When setting out on an all-day drive, I make a mental note of when my 11 or 14 will run out from my laptop logbook and watch the truck clock for the countdown.

If doing terminal - 1 for your home timezone is problematic, wear a watch or stick a cheap digital clock to the dash on Central time or use a smartphone with a multi-zone clock app on the home screen. Personally, since the time zone at home is least relevant to the trucking timekeeping, I'd place that one somewhere less obvious to avoid accidentally reading it unless I specifically wanted to figure out if I was waking someone up at home or catching them on the drive to work or something.

 

When I was OTR, this is how I had it set up to avoid confusion:

Dash clock on truck = Home terminal time, which was PST/PDT.

Wrist watch = Set to the time zone that your delivery point is in.

Home time didn't matter to me as it's useless.

As far as logging is concerned, it's based on the time zone your companies main terminal is in. So if your delivery point was at 0900 EST, and your terminal is in PST, you would show your arrival on your logs as 0600 PST.

 

*Side note*

I really wish that the FMCSA would adapt a mandatory time zone like the FAA did. It would make life so much easier if all of us (including customers) ran off of GMT.

 

The company sets the time zone to be used. In my case, the company headquarters is in Eastern, but they have me log my domicile Agent's time, which is Central. My domicile Agent is my "Home Terminal".