From My Experience So Far As A Rookie

Since I am now slip-seating in and out of different trucks, I am not going to rely on someone else's lack of attention to detail cause me a problem.

I don't think i'm brave enough to slipseat. I once met a guy that had a blaring leak from a visibly torn emergency air line to his trailer. I was caught off guard by how obvious it was and how oblivious he seemed to be and when i pointed it out he said, "it's just a little air leak no big deal"

Since I am now slip-seating in and out of different trucks, I am not going to rely on someone else's lack of attention to detail cause me a problem.

I don't think i'm brave enough to slipseat. I once met a guy that had a blaring leak from a visibly torn emergency air line to his trailer. I was caught off guard by how obvious it was and how oblivious he seemed to be and when i pointed it out he said, "it's just a little air leak no big deal"

Yeah, no kidding. Not a big deal for him since he is handing it off to you. Duct tape! I can share a very similar story with a cracked wheel rim..."its ok, less than 2 inches".

I should have clarified something, they keep me in one of three trucks, I know most everyone I am sharing the ponies with and they all have LT 50k miles on them. Since I am on a dedicated account, they try (and do a great job of this) to refresh the trucks every two years. Oldest one I drove was a late 2012 with 175k on it.

Jeff wrote:

Get up slowly, take time to check out everything, just do not sit past the end of a ten hour break

What don't you get?

This is bad advice. I give up...do what you want but keep it to yourself because you are misleading people into thinking this is an OK thing to do. It's not and will eventually catch up with you.

Just to clarify, for all the newbies (and Jeff if you care to listen), the correct thing to do is when you reach the 10th hour of your break, put yourself on-duty and at least record 15 minutes for your pre-trip before driving. I don' recommend performing the pre-trip while off-duty for the simple reason if you get injured crawling around your truck and you are off-duty, you might be fired or suspended for performing work when not logged in as "on-duty".

Jeff wrote:

Get up slowly, take time to check out everything, just do not sit past the end of a ten hour break

What don't you get?

This is bad advice. I give up...do what you want but keep it to yourself because you are misleading people into thinking this is an OK thing to do. It's not and will eventually catch up with you.

Just to clarify, for all the newbies (and Jeff if you care to listen), the correct thing to do is when you reach the 10th hour of your break, put yourself on-duty and at least record 15 minutes for your pre-trip before driving. I don' recommend performing the pre-trip while off-duty for the simple reason if you get injured crawling around your truck and you are off-duty, you might be fired or suspended for performing work when not logged in as "on-duty".

No, that wont happen, since it is our company that expects us to do our walk around off duty. If your company says to do fifteen minutes on record then do so. I actually check out my tractor and each and every trailer I hook to. The point is "Safety". I constantly check through the day and if your pti is the main checklist like they use to have on the back of paper logs, not much is going to change in ten hours. If you wake up and you trailer brake set and your psi is under 60, you may want to take a look at it. your breaks did not change overnight. So you check your tires again, open the hood and check under it for fluids belts, suspension, etc. maybe you see something you did not at night, maybe a tire looses pressure but unless gremlins came and did something or a light burned out not much is going to change in ten hours. There are guys out there that don't even check their headlights, you see them all the time. I turn on all light and flashers check all lines and tires and then under the hood, at fuel bay or stops I check these again plus do maintenance or dump some fuel from filter ect. At end of day I get up under it and do more detailed. The truth being I am one of the few who actually do pretrips and most of the "Newbees" will also unlike some of the more relaxed professional drivers I see just starting up in the morning and taking off.

Wow, where to begin. I'll just say, ,,, Jeff, you are a DOT officers wet dream. Checking tire pressure by sight and shoving on them? I guarantee that with an empty trailer, you cannot tell the difference between 80 psi and 90, btw anything below 80 is considered flat and you just cost the company a couple hundred dollars for a road call to air up a tire. Don't be surprised if an officer wants to watch your 9 minute pre trip sometime and then stops you at the 9 minute mark, anything missed or left out will count against you and you'll probably wind up sitting. Tire pressure check takes 5 minutes to physically check and it's one of the highest priorities in regards to safety so to just go around and look at them and say they're good is highly irresponsible.

Most of us drive the same truck every day and you don't know what will happen during your 10 hour break, it's a truck and they break down. If you aren't taking the time to check it out and catch something small, it turns into something big.

The problem is that the legal wording is very clear about being done the same day and before driving. Does it say that it specifically has to be on-duty, no. Are ALL work functions legally required to be on-duty, yes. Now lots of small companies and owner operators will tell you all kinds of bizarre crazy things with the utmost confidence about how what they're doing is perfectly legal when it's not. They'll still be saying the same thing when paying the tickets in court. We aren't telling you what to do here mang, we're just making you aware of the fact they're putting you in a sticky spot. It's your license, you have to make your own decisions brother.

Wow, where to begin. I'll just say, ,,, Jeff, you are a DOT officers wet dream. Checking tire pressure by sight and shoving on them? I guarantee that with an empty trailer, you cannot tell the difference between 80 psi and 90, btw anything below 80 is considered flat and you just cost the company a couple hundred dollars for a road call to air up a tire. Don't be surprised if an officer wants to watch your 9 minute pre trip sometime and then stops you at the 9 minute mark, anything missed or left out will count against you and you'll probably wind up sitting. Tire pressure check takes 5 minutes to physically check and it's one of the highest priorities in regards to safety so to just go around and look at them and say they're good is highly irresponsible.

Most of us drive the same truck every day and you don't know what will happen during your 10 hour break, it's a truck and they break down. If you aren't taking the time to check it out and catch something small, it turns into something big.

Love it! Thanks Bro...had no hair left on this one. Dragon, aka; "The CLOSER".

The problem is that the legal wording is very clear about being done the same day and before driving. Does it say that it specifically has to be on-duty, no. Are ALL work functions legally required to be on-duty, yes. Now lots of small companies and owner operators will tell you all kinds of bizarre crazy things with the utmost confidence about how what they're doing is perfectly legal when it's not. They'll still be saying the same thing when paying the tickets in court. We aren't telling you what to do here mang, we're just making you aware of the fact they're putting you in a sticky spot. It's your license, you have to make your own decisions brother.

True...yes. If however he is not recording "it" as on-duty when he is actually performing the pre-trip, if DOT pulls his logs during an inspection, in their world, if it's not documented or recorded "it never happened", thus he is violation. That's my "binary" understanding of how they will view this.

True...yes. If however he is not recording "it" as on-duty when he is actually performing the pre-trip, if DOT pulls his logs during an inspection, in their world, if it's not documented or recorded "it never happened", thus he is violation. That's my "binary" understanding of how they will view this.

Yea that's exactly what would happen. I've heard of this kind of squirmish attempt to break the laws from O-O's many times. They try to make a small play on the wording in the books and are proud of their exploit, but the DOT doesn't care that you're forcefully applying a vague interpretation of the rules wording and they write the ticket based on the way it's meant to be interpreted and is easily interpreted if you aren't trying to get around it.

Big companies tend to work together with DOT these days to make sure they aren't in violation. For example, different companies will have different policies for max on duty load time while waiting at a shipper. My company works with DOT reps and auditors continuously and they decided on 30 minutes which is very generous considering the process of loading, strapping, and tarping a complicated load can be 2 hours+, but the DOT is okay with 30 minutes. I feel no need to try to scrape 10-15 minutes of illegal time up in my day.

James R. wrote:

I feel no need to try to scrape 10-15 minutes of illegal time up in my day.

Amen... Hey Man we tried, up to him now.