Upcoming HOS Changes

Welcome to CSA Basics.

CSA Basics.

The podcast where we talk about all things related to safety, compliance, and insurance for the trucking industry. We're here to help you save money, save time, and save lives. Now, here's your host, CEO of Carrier Risk Solutions, Sam Tucker.

All right, all right. Welcome back to the second episode of CSA Basics Podcast. I'm your host, Sam Tucker, and we're gonna be talking about the upcoming hours of service changes that are gonna take effect on September the 29th, 2020. So. Multiple changes happening. Depending on where you're sitting, it could be a positive thing or a negative thing. Generally speaking though, everything looks pretty positive, I think, from a safety perspective. You have some folks out there who are saying that for different reasons that's not the case. We can talk about that at a later date, but today we just want to go over those changes, let everybody know what they are, and at the beginning you can take a look at them and judge for yourself. So if you haven't taken a look at everything yet, Go out there to the website, and it's mysafetymanager.com. It's just mysafetymanager.com, and you can read our blog posts associated with that. You can also click in the show notes as well, and we'll have it linked up there. So the first, like I said, just want to take a look at all the different changes that are actually taking place. We'll just talk about them briefly and go through them all. So the first thing that's happening, a couple different things with the short haul radius. A lot of Folks who haul locally operate on the hours of service 100-mile radius limitation exception currently. Well, that's actually being changed to 150 miles. So I think that's a very positive thing that will help those folks who do haul under the short-haul exception. So it's going from 100 miles as it stands currently to 150 air miles. So that's a positive thing. The second thing with the short-haul exception is extending the hours of work that drivers are able to go for from 12 hours to 14 hours. So it's bumping that hours of service shift operating up to 2 hours additionally. So no other changes to the rule, it's just those 2 changes, although I think those are pretty major changes. So 150 air miles is the new radius exception, and the second one is moving to a 14-hour day to be consistent with other property carriers across the country. The second largest change is the 30-minute break requirement. So the 30-minute break requirement currently says that if you are operating a vehicle You have to take a 30-minute break within 8 hours of coming on duty. Now that's going to be changed to you have to take it within 30-minute uninterrupted driving break after you start driving. So it's a big change from when you previously came on duty to 8 hours after you drive now. So that's a pretty big change. That could be a good deal. A lot of drivers out there aren't driving more than 8 hours a day on the shorter haul, so it's not gonna be applicable to them, but definitely for the over-the-road guys, that's gonna be a lot better of an opportunity. So we should see those violations associated with that violation decrease pretty substantially, I believe. And the other really cool thing too that they came out with is instead of having previously where it was, it was just the opportunity for your off-duty and sleeper berth to count. Now they're changing that to on-duty, not driving to count as well. So if you start your day, start driving, go a little bit, and then pull over And take care of fueling, for instance, or go ahead and start or do whatever. Anytime you're on duty not driving, that could be loading, unloading, supervising the unloading, give or receive a shipping receipt. So anything at the shipping dock. If you're in the truck at a shipper's location or consignee's location, prepare to move the truck. If you're servicing the truck, if it's broken down, if you're doing any kind of oil change or anything to it, or inspecting the CMV, doing pre-trip, post-trip inspection. Meal breaks or restroom breaks when you're still on duty and you're not relieved from your duty status, or if you're doing things like safety meetings, you know, those things, if you're doing like a virtual safety meeting with your carrier, those can also be counted for on-duty not driving times. And those can now be used as well as the previous off-duty and sleeper berth for your 30-minute break. So you don't necessarily have to go off-duty, you don't have to go to sleeper berth anymore, but now you have the opportunity to do on-duty not driving tasks as well to take care of a lot of that. All right, the next large changes that are coming down the pike on the 29th of September, 2020 are changes to the adverse driving conditions. So previously, drivers were granted an exception to the 10 or 11-hour driving limit when unforeseeable adverse driving conditions were experienced by the driver. So now what they're going to do is allow the duty day to be extended by 2 hours when these adverse conditions are experienced. And that also counts to increase the property carrier limit of 14-hour driving window By 2 hours, and also if you're a passenger carrier, the 15-hour limit up 2 hours as well. So anytime adverse driving conditions are experienced now that the driver or the broker, the broker, the driver, the dispatcher didn't foresee, then you're able to increase the duty day by 2 hours. So that's pretty, that's a pretty big deal too. So just for an example, so say a driver's 20 miles from the destination and there's a bad accident on a bridge, and say that bridge is the only way to get to the actual destination that he's He's trying to get to. So say you only have 1 hour left of your driving time and 1 hour left in the driving day, the driver can now pull over and wait for up to 2 hours until the road's clear and still get to the destination without violating the hours of service rules. So that's a, that's a pretty big deal. That extension to the duty day and the drive time limit is pretty, it's a pretty big deal. The only word of caution I would add though is to make sure that if you do experience adverse conditions, That the driver should automatically annotate or make comments on their ELD device. So I think that's a very important thing to do. So if a motor carrier officer or a cop pulls you over, they're actually able to see the situation and say, oh, well, you didn't violate your hours of service duty day. This is what the situation was. You're actually driving under the adverse driving conditions exception. So they kind of giveth and taketh away in a few different instances here. And in this particular instance, What they gave away was the 2-hour addition, but they also adjusted the definition of what they consider adverse driving conditions a little bit differently. So previously, the adverse driving conditions, it simply meant if you encounter snow, ice, sleet, fog, or any other adverse weather conditions or unusual road or traffic conditions that weren't previously known to the person dispatching The run at the time when it was— when it started, then that would be considered adverse driving condition. Well, now they've adjusted that to mean now it's gonna be snow, ice, sleet, fog, or other adverse driving weather conditions or unusual road or traffic conditions, just as it was previously. But they are throwing on too now where it's going to be that were not known or could not reasonably known to both the driver immediately prior to beginning the duty day or immediately before driving the qualified— or driving before— The run. The last qualifying rest break or sleeper berth period, or a motor carrier immediately prior to dispatching the driver. So they giveth and taketh away a little bit. So they give with a two-hour extension of both the driving limit time and the duty day extension. But at the same time too, they're coming back and limiting a little bit and saying, "Hey, you have to you know add the driver in there too instead of just the motor carrier or whoever was doing the dispatching previously." So now it's if the driver before they began the duty day or before they began driving after the last period in sleeper berth, the last period. on a qualifying rest break. Now, if they encounter adverse driving conditions, that's fine. You can document it. You can take the exception, but you have to make sure that that wasn't— those conditions weren't known immediately before you started driving. Okay, now let's talk about the final set of changes that are coming down the pike here on 9/29. So the last set of changes are to the sleeper berth provision. So previously, drivers were allowed to take an 8-2 sleeper berth split, which means that they could take a 2-hour off-duty break period and then drive, but then come back and have 8 hours combination in sleeper berth to make the 10-hour total rest period that they had to have before they could start driving again. So now what the FMCSA has come out and said is that you now have the new option for a 7-3 split. So you now have 8 or a 2-8 split or 8-2 split or a 3-7 or a 7-3 split, however you want to look at it. And so it doesn't have to be A 3, then a 7, or a 2, then an 8. It could be any combination of those. So as long as the total break periods in total end up being 10 hours, then you're good to go. So previously, this sleeper berth provisions were okay, and they applied and helped some drivers, but at the end of the day, it really wasn't that big of a help. So the really big deal about this specific change is that now they're, they're coming out, the FMCSA is coming out saying that these 2 qualifying periods now Neither of them count towards the 14-hour driving window. So I'll repeat that again just so we're clear about what this is. So the new sleeper berth provision gives you an option to take either an 8/2 split, so a 2-hour rest break followed by 7 hours, or followed by 8 hours in sleeper berth, or a 3-hour continuous break with another 7 hours in the sleeper berth. So again, the 2 periods have to equal 10 hours. So that doesn't change. You still have to have 10 hours before you get your full 14 hours driving again. But the most important part of this is that now neither of those qualifying periods count towards your 14-hour driving window. So this gives a driver the opportunity to say if they're stuck specifically at a shipping location or a consignee's location and takes a while to get unloaded, and you know you're gonna be there for a while, you can drive to the shipper's location and then immediately say, okay, if you're gonna get stuck in the lot, you know you're gonna be there a while, you can stop, you can turn your clock off, immediately go into the sleeper berth, And have a nice 2 to 3 hour break depending on how long it's going to be. And then once you do that, you can hop back in, take care of your on-duty, off— or on-duty not driving status, get all your paperwork in order and everything else, and then get back on the road and start driving again. And then after you drive and complete the day, you can extend then the full driving time you have to take up until that 10-hour period, up into the 10-hour window hits. So you still have the actual 10— or sorry, 11 hours that you would normally have. But now at this point, that 14-hour driving window doesn't necessarily apply because as long as you take the 3-hour break in full and then spend at least 7 hours in the sleeper berth after that, then you're good to go. Same thing applies if you take a 2-hour break and then do your driving and then spend at least 8 hours in the sleeper berth again. Then it's essentially reset in a lot of ways. So this is kind of a different situation entirely now with that extra ability to extend the driving or the on-duty day a little bit longer. It's going to be a lot more advantageous in some situations to take this 8/2 split or 7/3 split depending on the situation. So we're gonna probably have a whole nother podcast episode on that specifically because this one is A lot more than meets the eye. So it's, at this point, just be aware now you have options to do 8/2 split or a 7/3 split. It's gonna be really, really good if you're stuck at a shipper's or receiver's location for a while. And more importantly too, as long as those 2 periods equals 10 hours, and then you take your full rest break afterwards, then neither qualifying period will count against the 14-hour driving window. So that's a pretty huge deal. So I encourage you to check out our mysafetymanager.com website, look at the written documentation on that a little bit more, take a look at some of the news media outlets and see what they're saying about it, and try to get a better understanding of exactly how you can apply this to your operation. But again, it's a brand new 7/3 sleeper berth split option, and also those 2— or 8/2, whichever 2 you select— those 2 periods must equal 10 hours. And And then neither of those breaks will now qualify or count against your 14-hour driving window. So pretty big news. So just to recap, you got a couple different changes happening here. The short-haul exception, 150 air miles is the new change. So that's gonna be pretty cool. And they also extended the day out a little bit now. So that's going to be 14 hours to match property carriers. The other cool thing is the 30-minute break requirement now is mostly for driving time versus when you come on duty. So that's a little bit better. Plus you also have the on-duty, not driving time period allowed too. Or driving status as opposed to just sleeper berth and off-duty. So you have a whole new status that you can use for that 30 minutes off. Then the adverse driving conditions exception, the additional 2 hours, and that applying to the 14-hour driving window as well is a huge deal. The adverse driving conditions change to the definition, increasing that to add drivers in the mix a little bit more, making them a little more responsible is is a pretty good change. But by far the most important change, I think, or the most, I guess, beneficial possible change is the addition of that new 7/3 sleeper split option, as well as mostly, if nothing else, extending that 14-hour driving window by incorporating those breaks into your hours of service day. So.

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