Trucking Hours of Service

I have been talking to Drivers all week about the new hours of service that is being implemented on Setember 14, 2007. The majority of the drivers that had this discussion with me are making the mistake of thinking we are going back to our old hours before the 34 hour restart rule began. This is not true folks. Let me explain.

The new rule is as follows: 10 hours of driving per 14 hours on duty. The driver must take a consecutive 10 hour break after 14 hours on duty. There is going to be NO 34 hour restart. And you MUST take a consecutive 10 hour break before beginning another 14 hours of on duty status. Drivers are restricted to working only 60 hours in 7 days or 70 hours in 8 days, depending on which rule applies to you and your company. After you have depleted your 60 or 70 hour rule, you must recap to see when you gain hours.

Ok, now alot of you are saying "That's the old Rule". Well, it is....kind of. What some drivers don't remember is that in the old rule we could split our driving time. This is not the case anymore. Now, you MUST stop working after 14 consecutive hours, period. It doesn't matter if you were off duty or on duty. Once you start your 14 hours, you MUST take a 10 hour break 14 hours from the beginning of your day. I remember in the old rule, for example, I could start my day at 6am. I would drive for 5 hours to my destination. Then I would have to wait 5 hours to get loaded. That's 10 hours putting me at 4pm on my log book. So far I had worked a total of 5 hours because I could log off duty while I was getting loaded. Now, the difference is in the old rule I could continue driving for 5 more hours after the 5 hour load time. In the new rule, I could only drive 4 more hours because my 14 hour rule would have been over at 8pm then I have to take 10 hours off.

Also, the old rule only had an 8 hour break before you start another 15 hour work day. And you could split EVERYTHING if you needed to. I hope this helps a few of you realise that this new rule is NOT like our old ways. We have to take 2 more hours on a break and we MUST finish our day in a 14 hour consecutive time frame. If we drive for 6 hours and have to wait for 6 hours to get loaded, then we only have 2 more hours of driving, thus losing 2 hours of driving because of the 14 hour rule. The old rule would have allowed us to drive the remaining 4 hours before taking 8 hours off.

I know I am not the best at explaining this, but I hope I have helped a little bit with some of you to understand how this new rule differs from our old 10 hours on, 8 hours off rule.