Things that Truckers should work to CHANGE

1: Hours of Service Rules as they currently are make it harder for truck drivers to make a living.

a) 11 hours of driving allowed in a 24 hour period (this one is OK but
could stand some changing).

b) A driver can only work and or drive 14 hours in a 24 hour period (this one
is just stupid. It is one of two reasons that drivers falsify their
logs. Work is poorly defined in the rules, and drivers are not compensated
for this time in any way. Work is defined as waiting at docks, loading or
unloading trailers and post trip inspections, pre trip inspections, accident
reports, repairs on the truck, waiting on hold for dispatchers to talk to
you, and on and on).

c) 70 hour rule. This one states that a driver cannot drive and work more
than 70 hours in an 8 day period. This is the one rule that causes the most
log falsification of all of them.

Truckers should work to change these rules. For safety, and for profit. If we could drive 10 hours a day every day, and be allowed to decide when and how we did that we could all make money, and there would be no need to every falsify a log page.The rule that allows a driver to reset the 70 hour clock would not be needed. Having 10 hours a day to drive would give Company drivers 550 miles a day, and Owner Operators could get about 600 to 630 miles a day in that time. So that is the rule we should focus on. Also work should be defined as all time for which a driver is compensated. In short although Inspections, Accident Reports, Phone Reporting and Loading and Unloading time should be recorded it should not be taken away from drive time. The two different times should not be mingled. They should be exclusive of each other.

That is it for today. I will try to make this blog as interactive as possible. Comments will not be moderated here, but you will have to identify yourself to comment.
Dave Talley