Should I PC home, 5 hours from home?

How can the word reasonable be in there other than talking about parking? If I want to use my truck to haul personal property across the country and back I can, given the authority owner is fine with it.

I plan to haul my cabover to a shop later this year. It’s about 90 minutes pick up the trailer I’m renting to haul it, then about 7 hours up to get it, then about 15 hours to the shop, then 14 hours to where the trailer came from, then 90 minutes home. There is not a thing in the regs saying I can’t do that.

 

Since the entering of the TTR Bar association is gathered, I'm going to hijack with a question.

Say a driver is being paid by the hour while they attend orientation. The bus picked them up from the hotel at 0615 and drops at the yard by 0645, class starts at 0700. Day ends 1600, bus drops them back at the hotel by 1700.

At which point should the driver go on duty? When they climb on the bus, arrive at the yard, or when class starts?

When should the go off duty? When released for the day, when the bus leaves, or when they arrive back at the hotel?

Does the answer change if the driver is "encouraged" not to use their pov?

 

Everyone watch this video from Alex (Mutha Trucker) wherein he talks with an actual former DOT inspector about this very issue. In it, Heidi (the DOT officer), makes explicit four specific scenarios in which, by the guidance, PC is authorized.

Now obviously, the big caveat to all this is company permission, but still...take notes, fellow trucks!

 

My daughter and I were talking last night as she was rocking Beth. Earlier in the afternoon she overheard a conversation I had with a friend. Most of that conversation was about how they were handling memorial day as it will be the first since his dad a WW2 Vet died. This man is a North Carolina DOT Supervisor as well as a past Officer in the CVSA. We spoke briefly about using PC and his thoughts were what they were. Last night my daughter asked me a simple question. "Dad, where are the regulations that cover PC?" I told her there are none. She gave me that same look a 5-year-old will give you when you say Santa is a myth! Then I gave her a long history lesson. Truckers going back decades before she was born have been able to use CMVs as a PC to do simple things like move a tractor back and forth from a garage etc. Not because it was legal per se, but nobody really cared as long as it was short hauls and the operator was staying close to home. The agency that preceded the FMCSA knew truckers were doing this as were state DOT officers. As I said they did not care because it was not a serious problem. Fast forward to the present. Now we have MUCH tighter enforcement of HOS rules as well as timekeeping. This has caused a problem in some areas where Truckers are being as a matter of routine detained on docks all across the US. In fact, most OTR drivers at least 2 or 3 times a year will leave a dock out of hours in most cases that 14-hour clock. Gosh knows I was forced to do so more then I cared for.

As I have told drivers for years the FMCSA knows this is happening BUT REFUSE to stop it. So as usual it is the drivers that are getting screwed over! The FMCSA knows if they put "breathing room" into the HOS rules they will have lawsuits filed against them. In fact, I am surprised even this "allowance for PC" guidance has not been attacked by these safety groups.

The FMCSA has the authority under the US Constitution to regulate interstate commerce and to FORCE these shippers and receivers to change these policies or face fines. They just lack the political will and just want to keep truckers in this bad situation. This is a problem that Congress itself might have to solve!

 

I just posted a direct quote from the bulletin, I produced the wording, the exact wording. I am not wrong, it is clear what PC is meant and what it is not meant.

As much as people think the bureaucrats in the FMCSA/US DOT have no common sense, the examples they have in the bulletin show common sense, it shows the intent in the bulletin. It seems that the driver is the real problem, many of them don't know how to manage time nor know what the rules are to maximize their time.

As I said this is NOT binding across the states, it is open to interpretation by the officer who is doing the inspection, he/she can decide what is reasonable if they see you driving 15 hours off duty under PC, and they can put a driver out of service because they don't think that it is reasonable but the driver can have another one who just passes it over and isn't concerned about using PC.

Yeah I thought I had a hard copy of the older (1997) one but I can't find it and will look for it later. It says reasonable in it several places and we used it to fight a couple tickets and OOS order before.

If you want to haul personal property across the country, then that seems to be a grey area and again it would not even be PC but off duty time. A state cop - where actual enforcement happens - may not care but then your insurance company may if you get into an accident.

If you are taking the truck to repair, that's on-duty driving. The FMCSA is clear about that.

True, when truckers started to complain that the FMCSA didn't address this issue, I thought it was a bad idea, but then when the first guidance and bulletin came out, a lot of people were not happy because they got what PC means to the FMCSA.

However, The FMCSA knows as does the states, because this is NOT binding in any way, the state has the final word, not the FMCSA.

They can't force shippers and receivers to do a thing outside of Hazmat, they don't have the power. The regulations for interstate commerce have to do with protectionism and access to markets - which California is violating by CARB standards and enforcing them on foreign (out of state) trucks.

You can't have the government intervene in something that would force a lot of companies to look at alternatives or just go out of business. Their systems are not there to conform to the needs of the drivers, the drivers along with the carriers are the service providers and have a narrow scope of power.

 

Hauling personal property isn’t a gray area, it’s stated as an example of what is the correct use of personal conveyance. Also, it’s an antique truck, not a commercial vehicle, so it’s not on duty time. It’s no different than loading up a personal vehicle and hauling it to a shop. Insurance is fine with it, I already checked with both. And you are correct, it is off duty technically, but the carrier doesn’t want me unplugging the log so PC it is.

The word “reasonable” only appears in number 3 about parking after loading or unloading, none of the other 6 say anything about reasonable. The company I’m leased to has one terminal and technically I can use PC to travel between there and my house if I want when I bobtail back and forth a couple times a year when I take time off.

 

Learn to read. The reasonable wording is only for when there is no parking at the shipper/reciever and one is out of hours. It's not a general statement for all PC usage like you claim
But since you refuse to admit you are wrong, I'm done with this conversation.