Not sure i am following here.. how is logging a pre/post trip theft of service? DOT requires one to be done, and to be honest, 30 min is not enough time to do a. Complete PTI. Guess I am not understanding the theft part.
more to do with the shipper/receiver thing. but you really need 30 minutes to do a pre trip...every day? if dot requires 7 minutes, or 15 minutes, and your company without compensation requires 30, thats 15 minutes that comes out of your potential for making money every single day. but far worse was the shipper/receiver thing. every company ive ever been with required SOME time, (like 15 minutes on log), and for the remainder of the 1 hour, 3 hours, or 10 hours, you are allowed to log that time as sleeper or off duty time. ive been given several level 1 inspections over the years, and have never been questioned about this on my logs. if you were to haul 3 loads per week, and averaged only 1.5 hours (good luck) per load at each receiver and shipper, this would amount to 8.75 hours of extra unpaid time youd be required to log on duty. at 50 mph average driving time and 35 cpm, this would be $153 per week LESS youd be capable of earning each week. the pretrip at 15 minutes extra per day amounts only to $30 per week...pretty minor. its bad enough that truck drivers as a whole are required to perform many unpaid tasks throughout each week. thats the business, and weve all became fairly indoctrinated to it. but when companies require more stringent logging than is required by dot, and does not pay for that extra time, it takes money directly out of the pocket of each driver working for them. if my views seem petty or downright stupid to someone, i can accept that. but it wont change them. telling me im misinformed would though. i dont pretend to know everything about everything, and im not afraid to admit im wrong.
If one does a proper pre trip everyday, 30 min is not enough. I think we all cut corners though. I generally log 10 min or so at shipper/receiver or just check in time.
Swift must have been getting a lot of complaints from drivers and/or lower-level management, because they recently came out with a statement of "clarification" on the company policy regarding logging line 4 time at shippers and receivers. From my understanding, Swift's interpretation of FMCSA section 395.2 (Definition of On-Duty Time) has to do almost exclusively with whether a driver is "free to leave" a customer while waiting to be loaded or unloaded; only drivers free to leave the property and do as they wish may log waiting time on line 1 or 2. Swift suggests providing a note on the driver's log including the name of the person at the customer who gave permission to leave, in case the dot questions the driver's log. Of course this rule is open to interpretation and will be understood differently by everyone involved, especially if the driver neglects to put any names in the log notes. For my part, I haven't changed the way I logged, and I haven't been called on it yet. I'll typically log line 4 time until I'm backed into a dock, then it's sleeper time. As far as being "free to leave" the customer's property, if I really want to leave, I won't be stopped. My sense is that Swift is trying to push drivers into teaming or training without explicitly saying so. Drivers required to log more of their available hours on duty obviously won't be able to drive as many miles as before, and will be forced to team or leave the company to make decent money. A lot of drivers will have to quit for them to change their mind (I'll be doing my part on that front later this week). On this, I agree with pokerhound's response. Technically, I believe that all unpaid labor is theft of services, but most company truck drivers paid by mile recognize this and realize it's part of the deal. We've pretty much waived our right to be paid for most non-driving work, and very much weakened our negotiating position in the long run. As far as the 30 minute PTI goes, I can do a pretty rigorous one in 15-20 minutes; even less when using the same truck and trailer for multiple days in a row.
My point about cutting corners is for example, checking slack adjusters. There is no way you are checking all 10 everyday. If it takes one minute per that's 10min, now check the air in all 18 tires, 30 seconds per, that's 9 min, so in 19 minutes two things have been checked. That leaves 11 for the rest of the truck. That is my point, none of us log our PTi's correctly. Not a problem unless a lawyer gets hold of it.
You're right on, KMac. You brought up a couple of things to check: first, tire air pressure, which I'm pretty anal about and check every tire almost every day, and second, slack adjusters, which usually get little attention on my PTI. I gave up the tire-thump method of checking pressure after having two blowouts in the same week; now I use a gauge. I haven't had a problem in the last several months, knock on wood. Overall, I think I do a pretty thorough PTI, though there's a lot of room for improvement. Getting back closer to the OP's question, my thinking is that if Swift (or most any big OTR company, for that matter) paid a reasonable amount for line 4 time, driver retention rates would improve, and probably the company's bottom line. But I don't know how high driver retention is on the list of priorities for most training companies. I've only been a driver for 2+ years, but I've found that trucking is a weird industry in terms of loyalty between employee and company.
I did one driver unload It pay $80, I will never do another one, if they can pay lumpers $250 or $375 to unload with a forklift why should I do it for $80 with a pallet jack.
