New HOS Regulations 9-29-2020

But what about Mole People Miles? Remember....Mole People Lives Matter, too. lol

 

Split sleeper berth question: Can the minimum 2 hour period be 2 one hour periods or does the 2 hours have to be continuous? Thanks

 

Must be at least 2 hours... so, continuous.

 

I was watching a Utube video on the new rules. This guy should be shot. He stated you could take your 30 minute break in 2 15 min. periods. According to one of the first posts in this thread that is WRONG. Can someone explain why the 30 minute break can now be either Off duty or on duty not driving? Why would one ever want to use up on duty time? As for the split berth provision: I am not going to bother. In Canada it is much simpler and I use it often. I also wonder if the lower end ELD's will be able to implement the split berth correctly. Of course the Qualcoms and the other costly ELD's will be OK but how will those $200 babies react???

 

One doesn't "want" to use on duty time, but one must to be legal. When on duty, of course.
For me and a good deal of LTL guys it's wonderful. I go on-duty at shift start and now I can go off duty at shift end. No need to take a break somewhere around the 6-7 hour mark (just the way my schedule falls). Fr the LTL guys, they can go on duty, deliver my cabinets which took 25 minutes the first time, (they get 30 per residential per the driver) and only needs to cool his heals for 5 minutes before he has a fresh 8. beverage and food delivery it's a gimme that they will have at least one delivery a night that's longer than 30 minutes.,

For the OTR guys, it will help flatbedders. They can get a 8 hour reset while tarping. Also, the guys that do touch freight like furniture delivery and tires and the like can be legal and not have to worry Sure, the OTR guys will see little benefit from it, but OTR isn't the only group of drivers by far.

 

Like @ZVar mentioned with the LTL guys the on-duty not driving break will help us bulk guys as well as the loading/unloading time will take care of our 30 so it will actually let me get back to the darn somedays instead of being stuck out for a 10.

 

To add to this.

One minute of latitude equals one nautical mile and 60 nautical miles equals 1 degree of latitude. Officially a Nautical mile is defined as 1,852 meters but as we live on a planet that is pretty close to a sphere that relation to latitude is important.

If you have a GPS that lets you still configure it you can have it tell you how many degrees, min and seconds you are from your origin. As long as you are less than 100 (soon 150) min away from your origin you are good to go.

 

This change is just a half ### win. The good half ### is the 3-7 split but the rest is not worth a spit. IMHO.
That's my review.
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Let's drop the naivete here.
We are all here for money and being a carrier is money driven business. A driver who will take endless breaks and keep coming late to shippers and receivers on the account of having to rest is a liability to that business and will likely be replaced by another driver who does not feel tired as often and as much - and rightfully so because their carrier's reputation, reliability and performance are measured by punctuality and proper freight handling. Notorious coming late to appointments and having to reschedule is just as bad a service failure as dripping water after plumber's visit. As a consequence, fatigue prone drivers, to protect themselves will still push it for the fear of loosing their job. The problem is that the 14 hour window is not helping here creating a race with the 14 hour clock. 3/7 helps a little bit - but not enough.

From a perspective of a shipper/receiver/broker it is simple and I was told more or less this, after I objected to time vs distance required to deliver a load from point A to B :

You don't think you can make it then don't take it. They'll be others who will get the job done. Nobody forces anybody to nothing. Go and book another load.
We are not changing no appointments because your driver might feel too sleepy to arrive at 4 am. We want someone who will not be sleepy, and if it is not you then go do business with someone else.

That's reality and if you want to change it, good luck!

 

Human bodies are not programmed to sleep/rest at will or able to get a biological sleep/rest credit by sleeping in advance.
The very purpose of HOS should be to ascertain non-fatigue driving, no more no less. First, I have to tell you here that changing appointments or arriving too early or too late hurts a carrier's business from the perspective of a customer, so some of you saying that appointments can be changed as if it were not a big deal are wrong because in fact it is a big deal and only company drivers don't realize that. I agree 100% that arriving safely supersedes anything else but in order to stay in business not only must you arrive safely but also on time.

14 hour shift creates a situation - all too often and so called proper trip planning has nothing to do with it - that a driver must shut down due to 14 hour shift in the middle of a perfect day to drive, being 250 - 350 miles away from customer and wait at least 8 - 10 hours to resume driving in the wee hours to get there on time. There would not be any sleep or doing nothing (resting) in the middle of a day that would provide you with necessary powers to overcome the inevitable level of fatigue in the middle of a night. Had there been different HOS rules (such as before 2004) then a driver could proceed to a customer or its nearest point and stage there instead of shutting down and postponing the remaining distance at the time where he is indeed in much worse condition to drive than before the mandatory break.

This dude's story is another example of how HOS cannot ascertain non - fatigue driving. To say that nobody forces anybody to nothing is all too cliche - ish. You might as well say to someone that if he cannot overcome fatigue to be able to drive, he should not be a truck driver. He (the youtube dude) did the right thing and his company accommodated him but do you think he could do it more often? There is no way in this World that situations that create potential for fatigue driving will cease to exist.

 

It would behoove most people to print a copy of that out and have it with you to kind of familiarize yourselves with the changes. I for one don't think they're a "bad" thing. And I'm not one to be all that crazy about following rules in the first place...