No personal conveyance?

Taking your truck to be serviced isn't personal conveyance, and should be logged. PERSONAL conveyance is you using the truck to get where YOU want to go while off duty...food, lodging, entertainment...basically when you're using the truck as a personal vehicle, you're "off duty". Always has been. When you're moving the truck to reposition for a load, have it serviced, or any other "work" related task, you're "on duty".

 

What about dropping off a load like 30 miles from home and then driving home empty? I'm not under dispatch and I am off duty going to my lodging. I've always wondered this because I regularly have a delivery within 50 miles of my house and some days I'm close to running out of time. It would suck to have to sleep in my truck that close to home once ELDs are mandatory.

 

Have to be bobtail. Also, wherever you started personal conveyance. You are supposed to return to that location to go back on duty.

I'm pretty sure. I would find it pretty strange for the feds to be messing with that portion of the regulation also. They are too busy jacking with other topics that work fine...

 

I've done that before, too. Delivered an hour from home on Friday night. Didn't need the trailer, so I dropped it at the yard half way to the house. That was the end of my 14. PC'd it the last 30 minutes home for the weekend. Not under dispatch. Not loaded. Not positioning the truck for my next load. Just driving myself home.

 

No, you simply cannot be loaded. You can have an empty trailer, so long as you are not under dispatch moving the truck or trailer to reposition for a load. If you PC home, and then are dispatched from the house on your next load, then you're back to on duty driving when you roll out...no need to return to where you were. However, if you drop your loaded trailer and PC home, you can PC back to your loaded trailer to resume your trip.

 

It's not anything coming down from the feds...sounds like company policy. They need to tread lightly with that sort of policy, though...if they treat you like an employee (instead of an independent contractor), they can find themselves in hot water with the IRS.

 

PC is not just for owner operators. A company can give a driver permission to use the truck that way. Our company lets us use it for PC up to 10 miles a day. All the laws according to the DOT still have to be followed, of course. I might only use it once a week or two to go get groceries or something, but it is a nice thing to have. If we are caught abusing it, they turn it off in our PeopleNet so we can't. I haven't got it shut off on me yet.....