Should I be on duty or off duty

Question for the audience. Would you rather die in a fiery roadside crash or get stuck in West Memphis? To which I answer

West Memphis, Arkansas is holding onto it's well-earned reputation from 20-30 years ago. It's a separate town from Memphis TN, which is the Deeetroit of The South. West Memphis is like the bad part of town next to a bad city. It's calmed down quite a bit from the old days when you could hardly sleep in the truck stops because of all of the knocks on the doors from prostitutes, drug dealers, independent retail associates, etc. Now, it's just an occasional knock on the door, an occasional panhandler, and no more than a few gunshot victims per year. It still retains its title as home to the dirtiest, most-rundown chain truck stops. Each chain has worse truck stops somewhere in the US, but few cities have ALL of their truck stops in such filthy and broken conditions as West Memphis. Louisiana has some real winners.

People in Gary, IN take pride in "at least we aren't as bad as West Memphis."

 

Yeah, on the very, very, very rare occasion I have to park in West Memphis, I pay to park at the Petro. More often than not, I just park on customer property in Memphis instead of choosing to park in WM.

 

If on the shoulder I log on duty for obvious reasons. Once problem is resolved you can always edit it to off duty to save your 70. Not saying it's right, but it's what I would do.

Somewhere on here there is a thread about a guy who stopped at the twin Pilots to get a chicken box from Churches, only to be truck jacked and have his chicken box eaten by the truck jackers. That's about as rough as it gets. Lol

 

DOT program specialist (FMCSA Nebraska Division) told me that the time I was spending walking to/from Receiving/Shipping Depts, the time it took for shippers/consignees to process paperwork while I was standing in front of their windows, waiting while being live loaded/unloaded etc. and such is off-duty. I pointed out to the DOT specialist I was doing work-related things, he kept telling me those times should be logged as off-duty.

 

It will also depend on who you are driving for. If it is one of the megas where they make decisions instead of you, like one of my previous employers, you'd get a call from the dispatcher instructing you to get off-duty right away, those megas who make drivers work for 80-90 hours a week without 34-hour reset want drivers to use 60+ hours on the 70 hour clock for driving. I hope you work for someone better than one of such megas.

 

Thats one thing no one inside any trucking company large or small gets to do.

Bark orders at me to log this or log that or do this or do that.

No.

No?

Yes, No means No, what part of no do you not understand Boss? My logs, MY legal document MY signature, MY time you don't get to bark at me how to do it. I am professional and know how to do it anyway, when my 70 is up Im taking that 34 reset and you can just stick the hot load onto another driver. Im going to the house or beach somewhere. I'll call you in two days.

Otherwise you don't tell me how to log something. End. Dot. Period. You can fire me with BS lies related to whatever excuse you can cook up for firing. But my logs are mine. No one, not even God can fill those out. Ever.

 

What is the plan now then, just leave you sitting there till it fixes itself? lol
I would think there are plenty of service trucks in the area that could get her up and running, pretty quick.

 

I hope you are getting hourly pay. lol
I have to wonder about a companies thinking that has a truck towed to any loves. lol