Logging

Until I get my answer from the FMCSA I am -----



of this subject!

 

SB you are in the sleeper. OD you are outside the truck relieved from all duties, work and operations to do with the truck.

 

And no one needs to know what you are doing in that Berth or outside of it.

If we slide down the slippery slope towards logging this and that and something else someone shoot me.

 

When I was at a shipper and was being loaded I was off duty, or stopped at a rest area for bathroom or something. Any other time I was on sleeper birth.

 

In the eyes of the DOT there is a big difference between Off Duty and Sleeper, meaning if your body is not in the Sleeper one must not be logging such and if your body is in the Sleeper one must not be logging Off Duty.

You will now see in the following responses tons of drivers claiming they log however they want oftentimes contrary to the legal regulations and have gotten away with it for so long they believe it must somehow be legal to illegally log their time as they have done for decades.

Understand logging Sleeper when your body is not in there and logging Off Duty while your body is in the Sleeper are log falsification events.

Log falsification falls under Hours of Service Compliance in the CSA environment. Under CSA such violations are considering that the driver is "fatigued". Violations here will affect not only the driver, but the the driver's motor carrier as well. The driver will have the violation recorded on their PSP report and the carrier will carry CSA points for 2 years because of a driver's incompetent logging.

Chances are pretty slim a DOT officer would be so nitpicky to hand out a violation of this sort but it could happen. They will also have the discretion to determine the driver committed this violation because they were "fatigued" and shut the driver down an additional 10 hours "Out Of Service". If that happens, it carries additional penalties in PSP and CSA points for the carrier.

Chances are, a motor carrier would straight up fire a driver for such a simple preventable violation that simply could have been avoided by logging correctly where their body was located.

Further than that though, understand the motor carrier will hold your logs for 6 months according to regulations. Say 4 months down the road a driver was involved in a fatality crash, the lawyers will comb over your last 6 months worth of logs looking for illegal activity such as swiping your shower card or ATM card while logged in the Sleeper. Once they have found a ton of those violations they can argue a pattern of illegal activity on the driver's part and being that the regs call it "fatigued" logging, they will argue the driver was tired and therefore should have been parked resting rather than have been in the path of their client who died. They will sue the driver and the driver's carrier for not ensuring this driver was fully trained in proper logging.

The big June 2018 Safety Blitz coming up is focusing on Hours of Service Compliance. Chances are pretty good they will be looking for little ticky tack violations like this since most drivers have switched over to the ELD device now, standard log violations ie. DOLLARS from fines have really dried up for states. They will be looking deeper into the fine tuned regulations for easy violations like this to get more dollars from fines--- all in the name of saving lives on the road.

 

Just remember it is the function of the regulators to extract the gains of the ones gaining in society so that they can give it to the ones not gaining keeping us all equal. That will come into play when they find a way to put a chip in you to track your every move.

 

I log an hour to an hour in a half off duty per day for shower/dinner. Anything other screwing off time i put on line 2.

I have been questioned about off duty time over the years, i have never ever been questioned a out sleeper berth time.

Y’all can cry johnny law all you want, but you ain’t lawyers or cops and mostly 2 faced.

I love reading the comments on falsification, because the ones saying it just plain don’t do no wrong their own eyes.

It’s your log book and it’s not for others to tell you how to run it! You log how you feel comfortable, and the way you know you won’t get hassled. What the internet warriors say be ######.

 

We shall see in the great 2018 Safety Blitz in June.....

 

I have seen with my own 2 eyes DOT citations for driver logged in sleeper birth when he was not. I think of logging as a tax return. Once you sign it , government employees have rights to fine you $$$ for art work on paper that they disagree with or plain just dont like for whatever reason they can or can not think of. Here is a ? For anyone that wants to answer it ? Can you log LEGAL for years and years and pass any and all dot audits everytime all the time with NEVER flaging / showing sleeper birth time HOWEVER sleeping in the sleeper birth on a frequent and regular basis ?

 

Do you have to be a cop or a lawyer to use the law ?

What is the purpose of the law ?