Logging Pre-Trip and Hooking

When I was on electric logs they knew when we were hooked and unhooked from trailers. They wanted minutes shown for all the time at the customer from the time we sent arrival til we sent empty call with new trailer numbers.

I recall a couple places I went, check in, guard says 'drop in Lot D, empty trailer in Lot A on the other side of the complex. Another company driver ahead of me already racing in to drop his, I go over to Lot A right away and drive down the line perpendicular to the empty trailers, find the best one or even the only one lol, park and disconnect my pigtail and reach it over to the empty and plug it in. Jump back in and send all my macros including empty call then go offduty after only a few minutes on duty saving a bunch of time by going over to Lot D to drop and come back to my empty trailer which the other guy is now trying to hook to. I drive up driver window to driver window and tell him that's my trailer. He looks at me like I'm an Ahole but he gets a message on the qualcomm, "Trailer Not Available". Then he laughs and tells me I can't have it either. I back under it hooking and he comes over telling me I'm wasting my time this and that I pull out and leave this guy shocked and pissed that I did that lol.

But now-a-days I'm back on paper logs just show 15 minutes for a drop when I arrive at a terminal and later 15 minutes to rehook to it when it is reloaded.

 

That will never happen. The DOT has no authority to make you perform a pre-trip in front of them. That BS that comes from desk jockeys trying to put the fear of their rules into a driver.

Pre-trip just says a driver has to be satisfied with the operational safety of a vehicle. No length of time specified for pre-trip by the DOT, although companies have their rules. I have had many log pages with no pre-trip on them and never had even a question from a DOT officer.

Personally I don't care what 'company rules' are about log sheets. I never label a change of duty-status in a log sheet; there is no need to answer questions before they are asked. I log things as they happen or need to happen and no company has ever called me out on 'violating their rules.'

 

In most cases when you do a drop and hook it is not at the beginning or ending of your day. I always logged 15 minutes for the D/H and the trailer PTI. I never saw the need to log more time.

Edited to add if it was at the ending of my day I always logged 30 minutes, if the beginning of the day I logged 15 minutes.