AIT Trucking Refresher wk 2

Well, quite a bit of lesson material was covered this past week. So much so that it simply seems to have been somewhat of a blur now that I try to recall what was covered. One of subjects that sticks out in my mind and which all truckers must have knowledge of is the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations (FMCSRs). There are alot of rules here that a driver and his company must be in compliance with or he can be declaired out of service and not allowed to drive.

There was also alot material about keeping your log in compliance. First of all, there is a rule that says the diver can only drive for 11 hours max. and be on duty for less then 14 hours before he must take 10 hours of break time, that means off duty not driving or in the sleeper bearth.

I researched the actual wording in the ruling on hours of service (HOS) to find this:

“A driver may remain on duty after the 14-hour window closes or go off duty after the
11th hour of driving, in each case returning to work after 10 hours off duty on something other than a 24-hour cycle. Nonetheless, FMCSA believes that most drivers, most of the time, will go off duty at or before the end of the 14th hour, since their principal responsibility–driving–is illegal after that point. The circadian friendliness of today’s rule is bolstered by the requirement for 10 consecutive hours off duty. This is enough time to enable drivers to get the 7-8 hours of sleep most people need to maintain alertness and prevent the onset of cumulative fatigue.”

There is also a few log examples as well on this site of which here are a few with no violations:

Note in the last example that there is a split of a two hour off duty and an eight hour sleeper berth break. This is called the split sleeper-berth rule (the driver accumulated at least 10 hours of rest using a combination of at least 8 consecutive hours in a sleeper berth and another break of at least 2 consecutive hours).

The hours of service is something a truck driver must be in compliance with or he can be not only be declared out of service and not permitted to drive, but he can also be given very heafty fines amounting in the thousands of dolars.

Also during last week, we were intoduced to highway watch which was set up by homeland security and run by the American Trucking Association which after googling, I could not find an active web site for both the program nor the association. This may have been a good knee jerk type of program to help fight terrorism, but in my opinion, it currently seems to be disfunctional.

I also recieved notice that my final day of training will be on the 28th and I’m hoping that I will be on my way to orientation with Covenant Transport short after this.

This next week it’s on to the range and back to being behind the wheel of a big rig tractor.