What are the DOT Rules?

[InTheRed]

The rules for Hours on road in one week/one day? Just curious as it's always somewhat debated in my ctr by drivers...

[dannyboy]

Dot rules also apply to total hours in service, not to just your on road hours.

I believe it to be 60 in one week. And yes, we are under that limit.

d

[Ms Spoken]

For our state (Illinois) no driver shall work more than 14 hrs in one day and that includes your lunch hour and you must be off the clock for 10hrs before reporting to work the next day. No driver can work over 60 hours with-in one week.

Every driver is responsible for keep track of their own time and could be fined by IDOT if you go over hours. Plus UPS will be fined and then they can use disciplinary actions for you not notifying the company you are close to being out of work hours.

[over9five]

...or, if you want to really be confused, go here:

http://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/rules-regul...s/hos-2005.htm

[over9five]

Scroll down to the blue box "New Short-Haul Provision", which covers most of us.

Please note that the employer must keep all records, not us as a previous poster said.

[upsermom]

The center my son works in, the center manager told the preloaders that are also driving that it is their responsibillty to keep track of hours. If they get caught over hours it is a personal fine of $5000 and a $50,000 fine for the company. He starts working at 1:00am and must be off the clock by 3:00pm. He met with them and told them Friday.

[over9five]

I'm going to backtrack a bit, and say yes, we should keep track of our own hours. I guess in UPS Gals state, the state DOT overides the Fed DOT?

But in my center at least, the company does too. Every morning during Peak, the management team gets a report that shows each drivers available hours for that day.

It starts to mean a lot if you sign up for weekend work!

[michael]

The DOT states that you may not "drive" more than 10 hours under NORMAL conditions, 12 hours under ADVERSE conditions. You may , however, "drive" to the nearest safe place if you go past the 12 hour limit under ADVERSE conditions. Then take yourself "off duty".

You may not be "on duty" more than 15 hours in any 24 hour period. You may not exceed over 60 hours on duty in any 7 day period. (There is also an 8 day regulation for OTR drivers)) Every driver is responsible for keeping track of their own hours and is responsible to the DOT if questioned. The company is also liable if they knowingly violate the regulations.

Please note that there is a difference between "on duty" and "driving". This is the big difference for feeder drivers and package drivers)

Most often these regulations are used/needed by feeder drivers, but occasionally by package drivers.

[trickpony1]

The DOT rules are not rocket science. Listen real close.
They are based on a 24 hour day (begining at midnight).
The OLD rules were:
8 hours off between shifts means you could work 15, take an hour meal to total 16. 16 plus 8 equals 24. You could only drive 10 of the 15 hours so that means you could do other non-driving work for 5 hours. As someone just mentioned, you can drive an additional 2 hours if you are caught in bad weather which I find hard to believe given satelite communications, email, the weather channel and cell phones.
The NEW rules are:
10 hours off between shifts means you have 14 hours to work AND TAKE A MEAL. Of the 14 hours you can drive 11 hours. Gotta love our government....they were worried about us falling asleep at the wheel so what do they do? They give us an additional hour of drive time. Bless their hearts. So.......of the 14 hours you are allowed to work AND take your hour meal, you can drive 11 of those hours and do non-driving work the remaining 2 hours. Once again, 10 plus 14 equals 24.
End of lesson.

[tieguy]

Dot rules:

1) No more than 14 hours in one day. Punch to punch. Does not matter if you take meal or not.

2) you must have 10 hours off before returning to work.

3) no more than 60 hours total worked in a week ( between resets) This would not include meal time.

4) no more than 11 hours driving in one day.

5) you can reset to a fresh 60 hours once you have had 34 hours off work.

6) in case of emergency you can extend your drive time by 2 hours once in between resets. But you cannot extend your total work day over 14 hours at the same time.

7) in case of emergency, weather unforseen traffic conditions you can extend your work day by 2 hours but you cannot extend your drive time over 11 hours. This you can do once between resets.

Heres where it gets confusing and why you see so many different answers on this board. These rules really apply more to feeder drivers then package car drivers because package car drivers stay withing a 150 mile range of the building.

Therefore feeder drivers have to keep track of their hours worked, hours off work, drive time as well as their total for the week.

Package car drivers do not have to keep track of their drive time but do need to comply with the 10 hours off rule and total hours of 60 for the week.

A driver could exceed all these totals working more than 14 hours or 60 hours in a week if he is working on property. But he cannot go back on the road until he/she has had sufficent time off for the hours to drop back below the 60 hour mark and then 34 more hours for the reset.

most package centers I have seen try to follow the simple rule that keeping drivers under 12 hours a day keeps them within range for the week. Where it gets tricky is when someone works saturdays or where someone works a split shift inside and on road between two different operations.

A driver who violates can be fined by the DOT. A company who lets drivers violate can also be fined. Both have the responsibility of keeping track of a drivers hours. This generally does not happen because we automatically report ourselves to the DOT when we have a violation.

[upsermom]

The 34 hour rule almost got my son today. He worked Saturday air and because of the early preload start time things did not add up. Because they truck the air to an airport other than our local one on Saturdays this mess him up. He told a sup on Monday but noone worried until today when the clock showed his hours.