I’ve written about this provision of the new hours rule before, of course: in the recent rewrite of the hours of service regulations that went into effect July 1, FMCSA excluded time spent resting in a parked truck from the definition of on-duty time. Some viewed it as a mere technicality, a bone thrown to daycab or pickup drivers to force the 30-minute off-duty rest break to make sense if there happened to be nowhere else palatable to go during said break other than the front seat of the parked truck. Attempting to harmonize, as it were, the letter of the law with the reality of life out on the road, given the new break requirement.
But, as I wrote briefly in this story on the hours regs, the exclusion might also be seen as a flexibility-enhancing measure that could mitigate against long delays at shippers/receivers eating up cumulative on-duty hours.
Leading into the July 1 enforcement date, FMCSA would only reiterate their general guidance on what would constitute off-duty time, though they admitted that such time would be next to impossible to enforce as long as the truck was actually parked during whatever off-duty period was logged.
Just days after the July 1 implementation date of the new rules, I had this back-and-forth in response to a query from an advisor to a fleet, his comments in italics:
In the last edition you said that in the new hours rules, FMCSA says time spent in a parked truck waiting to load or unload can be shown legally off duty. Where do I find this in writing? We’re being told this is wrong, can you help me? I really need clarification on this — our safety director is saying different.
It’s a gray area, David – talking to FMCSA, basically they acknowledge that it depends on the circumstances, generally, of waiting time to load or unload. If a driver is “released from all responsibility” for the truck while sitting at a shipper/receiver facility, which you could read as analogous to, say, sitting in a parking lot waiting for the place to open or waiting for an appointment time or something of this nature (i.e. you’re not sitting in a line of trucks with the truck running, waiting for an open dock, etc.), then it seems reasonable to log that time off-duty and permissible under the new on-duty definition. Here’s how it reads:
“FMCSA proposed to exclude from the definition of on-duty time any time resting in a parked CMV…. FMCSA is adopting the changes as proposed. FMCSA emphasizes that the changes to the definition do not alter the existing parts of the definition that define, as on duty, ‘(5) All time loading or unloading a commercial motor vehicle, supervising, or assisting in the loading or unloading, attending a commercial motor vehicle being loaded or unloaded, remaining in readiness to operate the commercial motor vehicle, or in giving or receiving receipts for shipments loaded or unloaded.’ Unless a driver is released from all responsibility for the vehicle while waiting to be loaded or unloaded, time spent waiting is still considered on duty time.”
