Personal Conveyance revisited

15 minutes drive time and 5 minutes PC to safe parking is acceptable since you were just unloaded/loaded and are looking for a safe place to park. Now if you pass that place to park then you better have a good explanation for the DOT officer.

The biggest thing I have learned is just be honest, make annotations for every change of duty status, and save every receipt. If you do those 3 things when called into the DOT office for reviewing your HOS you have everything you need. The officer will thank you and it will make things go so much smoother.

 

Yea, I don't think pulling over on the highway (if even possible) & switching to PC is the right way to handle it. At that point, I am thinking just continue the 5 min drive remaining to the parking & make an annotation for the reason.

 

As long as you don't make a habit of it you should be fine. Annotating is always good.

 

No; never use PC for the first arrival at a shipper or receiver. Now if you are already at one and load isn’t ready or you can drop your trailer instead of staying with it; you can use PC to go to a store or restaurant and PC back from there.

Yes; you can leave in PC to not interrupt your break but I would check with your company on their interpretation. If traveling to a safe location while under PC, you will still be required to get adequate rest even if the 10hr reset is not interrupted.

 

Yes; continue the drive in driveline and annotate the reason in the logs. My company considers it to be PC abuse to switch from driveline to PC.

 

Exactly

 

Can you rephrase that so drivers don't get themselves in trouble?

 

No. If a driver doesn't realize that going on duty will mess up their break, nothing I say will help. They need to hang up their keys if something that basic causes them to get in trouble.

 

There are two basic types of PC. The first is during a break, home time, in a terminal etc you can use the tractor to go get food etc. This is dependent on the carrier allowing it. Some carriers like my last one did not allow this type of PC and they provided a car. Then there is PC to get out of a tough situation when a driver is forced to leave private property after being loaded or unloaded. Let's not confuse these types of PC. The last one is really not up to the carrier. If you drive a truck OTR long enough you WILL be forced to drive while out of hours most notably that 14-hour clock. A driver needs to make sure they are privy to what the carrier wants you to do in regard to what line to use. 390.6 is explicit and can't be gotten around. the HOS rules in 395 are as well. When these rules collide you MUST use PC to get to the closest safe place off the road. The FMCSA expects to see some clock busts when they do an audit. Like I said in an earlier post, it is a red flag to them if they don't see some clock busts from time to time. My last several years driving I busted my 14-hour clock many times. When I did I called my safety dept and made sure they had the conversation noted. This PC thing is starting to really get complicated and it should never be! If in doubt about PC and how it applies to you I suggest speaking to your carrier's safety critters.

 

But. You said it was ''legal''.