The 14 Hour rule is Taken out of context.
Posted on Apr 23, 2008 - 7:48am by Jason Hilton in Hours of Service
Recently I have had numerous discussions with drivers whom are slightly confused about the 14 hour rule. The truckers I have talked to say that they have to go “Off Duty” after their 14 hours has been used. That’s not true. The 14 hour rule only applies to your driving time, not your “on duty, not driving” time. If you go On duty not driving after 14 hours, you can remain on the clock so to speak for as long as you want. But you cannot drive after 14 hours until you have had a consecutive 10 hour break.
The reason I bring this up is because we had a driver in our fleet that told a receiver that he could not unload the trailer due to being out of hours. (The Drivers unload their own trailers). He had reached his 14 hours mark and thought that he had to go off duty. This was at 3am in the morning. Well, the receiver could not get in contact with anyone at our facility until 7am that same morning. Due to the driver not unloading his freight, the receiver had to shut their production down at 6am and the driver refused to unload the freight until he had a 10 hour break, when in fact he could have went on duty not driving and legally unloaded his freight and kept our valuable customer in production. We were able to get another driver in the area to arrive and unload the trailer for them so they could get back up and running. It was 9am before they were able to start their machines back up. 3 hours of downtime cost them approximately $9000 in production loss..and it could have all been prevented if the driver had been properly educated about the 14 hour rule.
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If I understand what I think you wrote correctly…..
……the driver was right.
My understanding is that from the time a driver goes on duty, he has fourteen hours to do what he needs to do then he goes OFF duty. During that fourteen hours he CAN drive eleven hours. After he drives eleven hours he can only be “on duty not working” for three hours.
So, your’s is one of those companies that want a driver to drive eleven hours then unload for what? another three?
Okaaaaay.
If I understood what you said….then Good for the driver. He was obeying the law.
Well…there I go thinking things were fair and logical, silly me.
I looked it up on the FMCSA website . And found this.
D. 14-HOUR DUTY PERIOD
D-1. May a driver be on duty for more than 14 consecutive hours?
Yes. A driver may remain on duty for more than 14 hours; however, the driver of a property-carrying CMV cannot drive after the 14th hour after coming on duty. Also, the additional on-duty time will be counted toward the 60/70-hour on-duty limit.
sorry for the oversight. I guess companies are STILL allowed to abuse their employees.
I was kind of shocked too. I’m thinking if you got stopped by DOT they would see that and freak out not realizing that it IS legal….
That’s straight from the FMSCA site.
Personally, I think I would refuse it as well because that is A LOT of time coming off of your 60/70 hours for the week. Five days of 14 hours and your are done for the week.
But then again – that is why it is SO important to know exactly how many hours you do have before taking a load somewhere. Just my thoughts.
He is exactly correct about the 14 hour rule. It is definitely misunderstood even in the classroom. I have talked to instructors in driving schools that don’t understand how the 14 hour rule works. You can continue on line 4 as long as you want as long as you don’t drive again without a ten hour break. BUT the question should be, if a driver has been on duty that many hours should he be required to put in additional hours unloading? This is one of the big problems that plague this industry and I have 22 years behind the wheel, a driver is a cheap and handy source of labor for a lot of companies. Any human being that has been up and working for 14 hours probably doesn’t feel like unloading a trailer full of freight.
My philosophy is this: If you are in business and you can’t afford the cost of labor to unload your incoming freight then you shouldn’t be in that business. I practice what I preach, too. Used to own trucks, could have had more trucks but I couldn’t afford to offer my drivers benefits such as health insurance. That told me that it was time to exit the business and I did.
I hardly see our company as being “abusive”. When we were first hired, it was understood, even before we starting working for them, that hours may range from 8 to 16 hours per day. The drivers are warned about this possibility in the job description before hiring on. And yes, our drivers love unloading their own freight, even if they have worked 14 hours. This is due to the pay rate of unload time being $28 per hour for palletized freight to be unloaded with a pallet jack. The driver that I had mentioned was on his very first load for us and got confused about the 14 hour rule is all.
I understand that there are a lot of people that do not want to work those kinds of hours. Simply don’t work for a company that requires it. There are plenty of other things to do in this industry other than hauling driver unloads. Personally, I like unloading my own freight. It takes about 2 hours to do and I earn, on average, an extra $200+ per week on my payroll because of it. So no, I don’t feel abused at all when being compensated fairly for the work I perform. $28 per hour is hardly cheap labor.
If you are getting paid hourly – are you a local driver then? Or within 150 miles? I am just curious because as you know yourself – different hours for local drivers!
And I don’t blame you for wanting that extra money every week!!
I am local in the since that I am home everyday, but I am not limited to 150 mile radius, more like 300 mile radius. I run SC, NC, VA and some TN. We are not bound by the laws pertaining to local drivers.. we still have to log our hours and operate under the same rules as regional or OTR drivers.
I only get paid by the hour to unload, I earn mileage pay when I am driving.
Ok I was thrown off by where you said hours would range differently per day. I was like “wait a minute” haha
That’s cool you run those states and you have the ability to be home everyday. I know a lot of drivers would be VERY envious!
# Drivers may drive up to 11 hours in the 14-hour on-duty window after they come on duty following 10 or more consecutive hours off duty.
# The 14-hour on-duty window may not be extended with off-duty time for meal and fuel stops, etc.
You cannot work past the 14 hours daily limit. Also I use the lumper service to unload my truck, my broker covers the cost for me.
Answer: False – You cannot “Drive” after 14 hours until you have a consecutive 10 hour break. You can go to line 4 (On duty, Not Driving) for as long as you have hours left on your 60/70 hour rule. So yes, You Can work past your 14 hours.
Lemme see.
Using the above example I can offload my freight at $28 dollars an hour. (Using up my 70 hrs….can’t work OR drive past 70 hours in 8 days)
While I’d driving, let’s see, the last load that I delivered paid about $2.14 a mile. I drive at about 55 mph which makes the pay to me to be about $118 an hour.
So I should wear myself out working for $28 an hour and using up my precious 70 hours when I could BETTER be using my seventy hours to make $118 an hour?
I don’t THINK so.
$118 minus fuel, minus insurance, wear & tear, taxes, etc… You might make 118 an hour, but how much do you keep, plus all that per mile doesn’t include the time you spend strapping/unstrapping. But it sounds good. And unless your 70, pushing a pallet jack probably doesn’t wear too many people out.
Yes you can work all you want past 70, you can’t drive until you get hours back or a reset.
so…are you saying that you can work past 14 AND past 70?
You can work as long as you want, it’s not a driving violation to work all you want. You are required to log the hours and comply with regs before you start driving again. So if you hit 70 hours and continued to work over that, you could not drive again until you had your 34 hr break, or you had less than 70 hours worked.
In reality, just go man. Do you want to starve out here?
I didn’t think we were talking about reality. I thought we were discussing Federal Regulations.