Sleeping at the shipper and reciever

Maybe I'm confused and don't understand the regulations, can someone post the regulation that says it is "illegal" to be off duty or in the sleeper berth in a customer's yard? My understanding is you only need to be on duty if you are actually performing work, like checking in or getting in/out of the dock.

 

Lepton my man, are you referring to my post?

You can now be "off duty" when at a shipper not performing any work if relieved of all obligation to be at that shipper. Meaning you can leave at your own free will and only are obligated to return a specific time. As we both know that is usually not the case. But, we log off duty anyway because we can get away with it.

That was not the case some 4-5 years ago before the majority of carriers got elogs. The rules then required all time at the shipper/receiver be logged 'On duty.' We all cheated that. However, with more carriers stuck with elogs at that time, it became appearent that drivers were indeed burning up their 14 and 70 sitting at shippers/receivers. With elogs making logging off duty more obvious, the lobbyist for big trucking got the law to change ever so slightly to allow a driver to sit at a shipper/receiver "off duty."

That however was not my point, although in most cases that time should be logged "on duty." My point is if you park off the shipper/receiver's property, your elogs will obligate you to start your 11/14 hour clock and prevent easy planning for the office. Your 11/14 and 70 will be ticking away as you are loaded/unloaded.

 

Want to shut down the nation? Every single driver should LOG IT 100% LEGAL for a few months. The carriers will have fits trying to figure out why they can't get freight moved any more. But seriously, do what you need to do. You won't get any attaboys for being Mr. Legal Driver so long as you're being sensible with your fudging.

 

When Swift got 100% of their trucks online with Elogs they sent out messages that all time from arrival to customer to EmptyCall/Loaded Call was to be logged as On Duty unless the driver were in the sleeper. Only way to log Off Duty was to unhook the trailer and park off the property. They quoted regs to support this.

After a few months Swift sent out messages defining what is Off Duty as opposed to On Duty and all of a sudden they relaxed the rules for drivers on customer property. Some of us still operated like we did back in the paper log days, arrive at customer, show 15 minutes On Duty and the rest of the time was Off or Sleeper til we left which we again showed 15 more minutes On Duty.

When I first started with Swift all the load offers showed time windows for each load. What we did was show up at the beginning of the window and go Off Duty, not sending Arrival til we were about ready to leave. Show only 15 minutes On Duty for Arrival and E or L Call and down the road. Then they came out with this Plus 1 thing where they used a calculator to figure minimum time to go X distance and that was your arrival at all customers, no more time windows shown to the driver. This was intended to hustle up the lazy drivers who always showed up at the end of the time windows but really hurt us who liked the time window and used it to 'finesse' our logs for more drive time.

 

You can log off duty if you are outside of the truck or sitting in the seat. You can log sleeper berth if you are in the sleeper berth. You are correct that the rules were updated a couple of years ago. The only time you have to log on duty is if you are actively engaged in dealing with the customer or moving your truck.

If you are required to be on the dock assisting loading, like making a count as the freight goes in, that should be logged as on duty.

 

I always drove to the pickup or delivery the night before and start my 14 there in the AM. I was an owner operator and could do this at my discretion. As a company driver you have to follow the driver managers or dispatchers instructions.

 

Like this??

 

If you don't like them make sure you do this at the front entrance where all the office people enter.

 

Exactly.

That's why I gave the example of going inside at the customer to ask where their bathroom is can be logged off duty, but some would argue that if I followed that up with asking when they will unload me, that I would then have to log on duty. Seems rather silly to me.

If I have to count the load I'll go on duty, but only for the time that I'm counting the load. If I'm standing there reading a book or playing on my phone while waiting for a forklift driver to show up, then I'm off duty.

 

I always hated using line 4 unless absolutely necessary. Every 15 minute section on line 4 is 15 minutes eaten off of your 70. I have had to count many times and while it is technically illegal I never ever logged that time on line 4. Sometime it was easy to get that 34, sometime is was not. Now if as a driver I was paid for that time then that is different. But I would never work for free and log it as on duty.