Electronic pre-trip

You started your reply to me " I take it you never drove?". This is insulting; please keep this discussion civil.

You are totally wrong in what you wrote. You cannot legally do the pretrip in line 1, per 395.2, section 2, (All time inspecting, servicing, or conditioning any commercial motor vehicle at any time), you must be on line 4 for your pretrip.

 

Then show where in the regs it states I must log a Pre-Trip..and make sure the reg shows a Pre-trip and Logging on line 4 in the same paragraph..

Pre-trip is a walk around... to "satisfy".

Pre-trips can be done from line 1.. you FLAG it on paper.. comment on ELD.

 

You still are not grasping what I am saying, let me spell it out very simply for you.

1. The regs are very clear about the pretrip, per 396.13 you must be personally satisfied that the vehicle is safe to operate.
2. In order to be "satisfied", you need to do something to ensure you are satisfied. Virtually all DOT inspectors interpret that at minimum you must do a walk around. (you cannot just say "I know my truck is OK, so I am satisfied it is OK) While very few company drivers do an actual pretrip, those that do will at least do a light check as that is something you will be pulled over for on the road.
3. Doing a walk around takes time. There are no rules guiding how long a pretrip should take. The "old rule" most fleets adopted was 15 minutes, and many inspectors follow that guidance. Is 5 minutes OK? These days, probably.
4. All inspection time is considered On Duty per 395.2. You cannot legally do an inspection while Off Duty or Sleeper Berth .
5. Per my cautionary tale, if you are in Sleeper Berth mode, have your 10 hours in, then immediately drive, you have no legal time available to have been able to legally have done a pretrip. An astute inspector will note this, and will flag it.

Note that in the above, nowhere do I say you have to either note or flag you have done the pretrip; this is not required. However, you have to leave yourself an "appropriate " amount of legal time to have been able to do the pretrip, in the eyes of a sharp inspector. What you are legally required to do, per the HOS rules, is switch to Line 4, do your pretrip, then drive. Switching to Line 4 mode for a few minutes is all you have to do, prior to driving off. This will prevent the DOT from questioning if you did your pretrip or not.

 

Is the Pretrip or Vehicle Inspection needed every day per legal requirement? In other words, can you just run through the day on line 3 without even mentioning words such as PTI, VSI, Post Trip etc. at all?

 

And here's where the touchy motion sensor things come in.

I come into the truckstop, hit line 1, go to dinner, shower, back to the bunk line 2. SB

Alarm clock is set for 8-9 hours, get up hit the latrine, grab breakfast in a bag and a couple of bottles for the day, go back to my rig, kick some tires, fire it up and wait for it to hit hour number 10,,,, pull up to the fuel isle and check the lights, belts and fluids while dumping 100 gal of diesel into the tanks.

Oh wait,,, because now the ELD might register the 200' trip from the parking space to the fuel isle. (When it doesn't glitch completely and have me driving for 3 minutes right smack in the middle of my sleeper berth time)

So now I can't pump fuel AND PTI, (I can do both in 15 minutes), it's not very bloody efficient.

 

Pre Trip. I take that it's the detailed one...it takes crawling underneath the truck and trailer and touching things with hands and often getting dirty. It takes more than 15 minutes too. I understand it should be performed whenever you come back from a longer - home time- rest and you plan on another week or trip departure.
Vehicle Inspection - that's just walk around and look around, kicking tires and such, can be done while you pumping fuel (?)


This thread tells me that I don't need to allocate/waste log book time on none of the above, just flag it in the comment section. I've always allocated at least 15 minutes for PTI and will continues to do so, VSI Ive combined with fuel anyway and never ever did I log something that is defined as Post Trip Inspection.

 

Well, maybe if you were following logging rules to start with you would not have to adjust to following the rules now. If you wait the full 10 hours first, like you should be doing, then no problem. Just go on-duty, go to the pumps and do the fuel/pre there like you always lied about doing.

 

Yes, it is required at the start of your working day. You never need to log anything or offer proof that you have done it. The requirement is you are to be "satisfied that the vehicle is safe to operate". It used to be that there was a long list of "capabilities" that a driver needed to know how to do, but this list doesn't exist anymore as that particular rule was eliminated in 2011. So there now is this ambiguous "satisfied" term.

 

You don't even need to flag it in the comments section, just ensure that you have left enough time for the Pre Trip in line 4 status before driving. Just a caveat about making annotations: these show on the roadside evidence as modifications to many logs. This can flag your log to an inspector for him to dig deeper, that is, why was the log modified? Word to the wise, never touch the log data unless there is a good reason to do so. Annotating pre trip is not a good reason....

 

I need to learn how to read. Or I'm not bright enough to understand all the contradictions in these statements. Uggghhhhh?