E Log Terminology

What are some of the terms I should be using in the notations section on my E Logs when out on the road? I have been at this for 3 weeks now and seem to be doing OK on them, but as far as how I should be labeling things in my notes I might as well get things right from the beginning instead of falling into bad habits.

Ours are all on pull down scrolling pretyped lists, unless we want to customize, which I only do very rarely.

Hey Joseph, you really can get by with a very simple list of terms.

Here's some examples:

"Pre-trip inspection" - that one is your first entry when starting your day as you go on duty for fifteen minutes.

"Break" - this covers anytime you take a break, whether it's a quick five minute bathroom stop, a thirty minute break, a ten hour rest period, or a 34 hour reset. This note can be used for both the sleeper berth line or the off duty line in your logs

"Fuel stop" - that one is obvious. Put yourself "on duty" and label it as your fuel stop.

"Arrive at stop" - that is for multi-stop loads. When you arrive put yourself on duty for about ten or fifteen minutes and make that notation.

"Depart Stop" - again this one is fairly obvious. You should be sending similar macros (like depart stop or empty call) to your dispatcher with these log changes, but these are simply to make your logs nice and clean. You are logging what you're doing.

"Arrive at Consignee" - once again, fairly obvious. It's your final stop on a multi-stop load or it may just be a straight shot to this customer.

"Arrive at Shipper" - are you getting the idea? A lot of these notations should correspond with your macros.

"Home Time" - when I log myself off duty to be at home, I'll use this notation.

There are others I'm sure. This is a brief list to help you see how to do it with brief clearly understandable notations. Hopefully that gives you an idea how to do this. If it's confusing let us know and we'll give it another shot.

We use PeopleNet and all the remarks are programed, unless we PC or change something in the logs. If I hit "Duty Status" the next screen has options Off Duty, Break, Sleeper, Driving, then a row of on duty, not driving options, like loading, unloading, inspection, and fueling. All of these options put the appropriate remark in my logs.