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.