Question About "E-logs" And Hours

With all this High Tech taking over trucking, and the truck basically shutting down after "approved" hours are burned, what happens if you need to get to a safe place to park when the hours are gone?

Not even close to being an expert here but ,,, #1 the truck wont shut down when you're out of hours you will just be in violation and risk fines and possibly termination if it happens too much.

#2 If I understand everything right you should have you're day pre planned before you start driving and know approximate where you will be shutting down for the day before you run out of hours ( trip planning ) and you should have a back up or two incase you run into any delays along the way .

I hope this helps and I'm sure the real pro's will chime in soon !

This is where great trip planning comes in handy. Never allow yourself to get that close to your hours expiring. As soon as you have an hour left on your clock you better be looking for a place to park.

If you completely run out of hours before of a shipper or receiver then you need to either ask to park on site or find a truck stop that's a mile or two down the road. Remember, it only logs you on Driving status if you drove for 5 minutes or over because the maximum lot status is 5 minutes. Example: you cannot log yourself driving for 3 minutes. So drive as quickly as possible to a parking area before hitting that 5 minute mark.

If you must drive out of hours for over 5 minutes then put yourself on Off-Duty Driving.

Good advice Daniel. makes perfect sense... thank you

I would like to put in my 2 cents here.

Daniel B. You mention that the system doesn't put you on driving till after 5 minutes. I guess each system might be different. Our system works totally different.

It used to be set up if you drove over 7 MPH or went more than 5 10ths of a mile, it put you driving. They did away with the 7 MPH because several drivers were put back on driving while at a drop yard. I am not positive, but I also think they upped the mileage distance to 7 10ths of a mile.

My Qualcomm will activate me driving for 1 minute if I go over the settings on the system. It has happened to me many times when I don't realize how far I have driven on a large drop yard.

Trip planning is the big key for sure. But things happen. Just this week due to a flat tire, I had to drive over my hours to find a place to park. The shipper wouldn't let me park over night. I was lucky, there was a closed side road I found to park about 3 miles away. The closest truck stop was almost 20 miles away.

I was sent to my pickup point with less than 2 1/2 hours left on my clock. And I was an hour away. That is plenty I am sure everyone is saying.

Something told me not to go, but my DM talked me into it.

When I got there, the landing gear was rusted and stuck. I pounded like crazy till it broke loose. Almost an hour. I am now down to 1/2 hour and I find a flat tire on my trailer that I am picking up. Well, my gut told me not to do it. I should have listened. I was out of time 2 hrs 45 mins by the time my tire was fixed. And I still had to drive to find a place to park.

And the "rule" about driving to a "safe haven". There is no such rule. When you are out of hours, you are out of hours. If you run into a DOT agent that is in a good mood, he might over look it. But if they have had a bad day and not in a good mood, you have yourself an HOS violation and ticket.

What I learned to face real fast when I got into driving years ago and while I drove a bus. No matter how well you plan something. You might plan it down to the minute. Or at least you think you do. Something will happen. As Brett puts it, the trucking gods. They will step in and mess your plans big time.

When I drove bus, at times we had schedules to keep to the minute. And sometimes the group wouldn't listen to the driver in planning. And sure enough, most times something would happen that blew the plan right out of the water.

Just do the best you can, that is all anyone can do.

Keep it safe out here, the life you save might be your own. Joe S.

It doesn't matter if it puts you on drive status after a minute, you can easily change that to sleeper berth. It'll give you warnings only because technically the log status isn't "official" because it's only been a minute. You can keep driving up to the 4th minute on driving, you can edit that back into sleeper berth because it hasn't been 5 minutes. Once you've been on driving for 5 minutes you can no longer edit that status like you can if you've been on sleeper berth for two minutes. It really doesn't matter that it puts you on Driving status, it'll only give you warning until it hit that 5 minute mark - then you got yourself a violation.

It doesn't matter if it puts you on drive status after a minute, you can easily change that to sleeper berth. It'll give you warnings only because technically the log status isn't "official" because it's only been a minute. You can keep driving up to the 4th minute on driving, you can edit that back into sleeper berth because it hasn't been 5 minutes. Once you've been on driving for 5 minutes you can no longer edit that status like you can if you've been on sleeper berth for two minutes. It really doesn't matter that it puts you on Driving status, it'll only give you warning until it hit that 5 minute mark - then you got yourself a violation.

Like I said, I guess we have two different systems. The very second I put my truck in gear, it senses it and it starts telling me I am in violation of DOT hours. And we can't edit our driving time at all. Yes, we can change it to something else once we see it put us driving, but we can't change any of the drive time. Even a minute. We are locked out of changing our drive time totally. Even driving off duty we can't alter in any way.

The first few times it happened to me, I tried to change/alter it back to something else. The system wouldn't let me. So the next time I was in Indy, I went to logs and asked them. That is when I found out that all drivers are locked out of changing anything to do with driving time.

And as far as being "official". The second it is on the Qualcomm it is official. One minute or 1 hr. The second it pops up, it is official.

If you are close on hours and trying to make it to a truck stop down the road, but you are stopped by DOT for a road check. If you run out of hours before the check is done and you move, the second you move you are in violation of HOS. And DOT could give you a ticket.

However, in a situation like that, if you tell them you are going to the truck stop down the road because you are almost out of hours, more than likely they will let you go. Now, they might follow you to the truck stop. Especially if they stopped you for a specific reason not just a random check.

And talking about Off Duty driving. We here at Celadon found out the hard way that doing that under load is illegal. Well, I guess we all knew it was, but 5 drivers lost their jobs about a week ago for doing it. And we were all warned not to do it.

Keep it safe out here, the life you save might be your own. Joe S.

What happens when you have a radical weather change in the middle of BFE as we are so famous for in the west or have a breakdown in BFE? just trying to wrap my head this part....

What happens when you have a radical weather change in the middle of BFE as we are so famous for in the west or have a breakdown in BFE? just trying to wrap my head this part....

The weather, IF unknown, falls into the category of unforeseen things happening. If you run into something unforeseen, such as bad weather, then you are allowed to driver over 2 hours to complete the trip. I don't know if breakdowns fall under that category or not. I don't remember reading that in the DOT regulations. It might, I just don't know.

BUT, it has to be unforeseen. We have to keep an eye on the weather. If you are going thru Denver, lets say, and you check the weather and they are under a winter storm warning. If you get caught in bad weather, it is not unforeseen. If you didn't check the weather, and run into predicted bad weather. That is your fault.

Keep it safe out here, the life you save might be your own. Joe S.

What happens when you have a radical weather change in the middle of BFE as we are so famous for in the west or have a breakdown in BFE? just trying to wrap my head this part....

The weather, IF unknown, falls into the category of unforeseen things happening. If you run into something unforeseen, such as bad weather, then you are allowed to driver over 2 hours to complete the trip. I don't know if breakdowns fall under that category or not. I don't remember reading that in the DOT regulations. It might, I just don't know.

BUT, it has to be unforeseen. We have to keep an eye on the weather. If you are going thru Denver, lets say, and you check the weather and they are under a winter storm warning. If you get caught in bad weather, it is not unforeseen. If you didn't check the weather, and run into predicted bad weather. That is your fault.

Keep it safe out here, the life you save might be your own. Joe S.

Just remember Joe that 2 hours to drive to a safe haven must be done before your 14 hours expires. It in no way extends your 14 hour clock.