Does 20 hours off duty = two ten hour breaks?

Heavy, I understand the 70 rule and 8 day recap, and if I have hours I'm driving. Someone made a comment about too much time in SB. I've never heard the rationale behind it being a HOS violation.

 

Ive thought about what it will take to restore safety in trucking with such laws. The best I can tell you is dispose of the limit entirely. Cap your work day at 16 hours max. Making sure that you will get at least 8 hours sleep time at least once daily. Just like the railroads. At the 16th hour that truck and crew should be dead on the hog law and not move a inch until 8 hours have passed.

You should be able to use that 16 hours in driving if that is what it takes to get it there. The disposal of the 70 hour max in 8 days as well as the throwing out the recap makes sure that you have all 7 days 24/7 to work with. You should then be able to run really good and free relatively speaking, if you were strong enough with good stamina to keep that up. But you would need to stop at one time sometime every 24 for a 8 hour sleep. (People need more, some need less...)

That would be my version of hours of service laws. With the provision that if a trucker is too tired to be safe then that trucker's job should be protected until he or she is rested.

 

He was asking if he can sit in the sleeper 20 hours and gain 22 hours (10 hours sleeper times two sets of 11 hours driving. I cannot imagine what DOT must try to count that high should we use sleep bank time in logging.

The recap says what hours you will or will not have tomorrow. At some point your 60 or 70 hours run out. To have a appt time at that time during the end of your workweek is very dangerous. People get fired for being late. Logs are not a valid arguement to the one who fires me for being late due to being legal. That is where it goes to the courthouse or unemployment.

I pretty much exhausted everything I know about HOS. And it's really hard to explain it online. It';s much easier to sit at the counter with the #### logs there on it over coffee and create a path of action, in my case call the #### dispatcher get a new appt. Why? you have no hours until midnight second day. Oh ok.

There is nothing to fire you on with that. Remember you are not allowed to be put in pressure by company to run illegally outside of your hours.

 

^^ no argument from me. Throwing out the 70/8 altogether is Soooooo simple and has zero affect on fatigue level.

Perhaps too simple and would be too beneficial?

It would be simple to implement at every level and in many segments could be a game changer and make it easier for carriers and drivers to increase their revenue and do away with so many headaches. Most time management problems originate with the 70/8 rule and it happens to have the least to do with safety. WTF?

Also, this would not give carriers an excuse to make you stay out longer. "Home weekly" offerings are there because we have lives and families. Not because of some stupid HOS rule

 

Not necessarily. Don't ever say it's your fault. Someone in dispatcher handed you the load thinking that maybe your appt will be done and finally unloaded with the last hour to your 70 hour rule. Welp ere is teh recap saying you are going to be late.

No shame in calling. Don't be prey. Stand strong. You put in your good fight. There are now a chance to bring in someone with hours to get your load off and run it to keep customer happy.

 

That is the problem me thinks. I have been tired so much sometimes for that reason as to be driving drunk as it were. I refuse to do that now. But try convincing a government to change the laws to accomodate the trucker. I would be happy with a constant diet of 16 hour work days for a while. How long is a while? Well that depends. Weeks? Months? I don't know.

The railroads have a advantage with the 16 hour crew law. When it's over it's over. Bed time. They can sometimes get to places truckers cannot. Such as a overnight juice train to Jersey twice a day from Florida with such law. Try doing that with a big truck. It wont happen once the 70 kicks in.

 

if d.o.t. officer checks your logs and see that 20 hr sb, he go.na ask what were you doing i those 20 hr. If you said i ealked around the truckstop and got things to eat. Went to boys room a few times, he will write you up for falsifying logs if he is a hardnose