The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has amended the final hours-of-service rule to clarify some areas truckers have found confusing.
The Sept. 30 Federal Register carried the agency’s technical amendments to the HOS rule that is effective Jan. 4. FMCSA stated that the trucking industry had found the new rule regarding time spent in sleeper berths especially confusing when calculating work and off-duty time.
Currently, off-duty time, including sleeper berth time, is not included in calculating the 15-hour on-duty limit.
Beginning Jan. 4, when a trucker’s workday drops to a 14-hour maximum, some sleeper berth periods will be counted as on-duty. However, if the driver spends at least two two-hour periods in the sleeper berth, that does not have to be counted as on-duty.
Two areas not covered clearly in the April HOS rule were off-duty time out of the sleeper berth and sleeper berth periods of less than two hours. These time periods do not qualify for exclusion and must be counted when calculating on-duty time.
The agency clarified situations where the driver takes more than three or more sleeper berth periods, each of which are at least two hours long.
The amended rule states that any two sleeper-berth periods totaling 10 hours may be used in calculating the 10-hour off-duty period. Any remaining sleeper-berth periods of two hours or more must be included in calculating the 14-hour on-duty time limit.
