5 ms·

I worked 12 hour shifts as a 911 dispatcher and was mentally exhausted after those shifts. I had an hour drive home each of those shifts. There were definitely

by Fogest 5y ago

I worked 12 hour shifts as a 911 dispatcher and was mentally exhausted after those shifts. I had an hour drive home each of those shifts. There were definitely many shifts I wasn't driving home safe. Luckily my hour drive was like that because I was "temporarily relocated". The employer gave us the option to go book a hotel stay so I had some days where I was too tired to drive home safely and would stay in the hotel 5 minutes away. And that's just me in a small little sedan, not an overloaded 18 wheeler. For context, I also do have a commercial drivers license. Driving for 60-80 hours in a week is just not safe. There is no way to try and justify that it is. The only people doing that many hours of driving a week "safely" were probably high on cocaine. Cocaine usage was quite prevalent in the trucking industry because of this huge push to have drivers fudging logs and overdriving. There are tons of studies out there that prove that driving while tired can be just as bad as driving drunk, if not worse depending on how deprived of sleep you are and how long you've been going.

Clubber 5y ago
Here's the current rules. They seem pretty reasonable https://www.thebalancesmb.com/freight-trucking-dot-hours-1361484 https://www.thebalancesmb.com/freight-trucking-dot-hours-136... For example, drivers who transport property in the same state are subject to state regulations but not federal regulations. Whereas drivers who deliver materials from state to state must comply with federal regulations. Among the regulations: A reset occurs when a driver has had marked 34 consecutive hours off duty. The workweek starts after the last legal reset. For example, if you begin at 1 a.m. on Monday, then the workweek continues until 1 a.m. the following Monday. Each duty period must begin with at least 10 hours off-duty. Drivers may work no more than 60 hours on-duty over seven consecutive days or 70 hours over eight days. And they need to maintain a driver's log for seven days and eight days after, respectively. Drivers may be on duty for up to 14 hours following 10 hours off duty, but they are limited to 11 hours of driving time. Drivers must take a mandatory 30-minute break by their eighth hour of coming on duty. The 14-hour duty period may not be extended with off-duty time for breaks, meals, fuel stops, etc. I would say the only issue is on your required break time, you sit around doing nothing and not get paid for it. If you are at home that is fine, if you are a long haul trucker, you're stuck at a truck stop waiting for time to complete. As a side note, as others have mentioned, truck drivers have been getting paid less and less over the years, and that's not accounting for inflation; plus it's rough on relationships, so it's no wonder there is a shortage.
- PeterisP 5y ago
  The safety issues the parent posts were talking about are greatly increased when these rules are circumvented in order to drive a bunch more hours than that.
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    They're generally not circumvented to "drive a bunch more hours". That's a fools game. You need to take breaks eventually. Cramming more hours into the work week doesn't actually help you in the long term because the human body can't sustainably run on unsafe amounts of sleep. The books get cooked to avoid wasting valuable on-duty hours while sitting around waiting to be loaded/unloaded. They generally are circumvented to make it to the receiver or next shipper within a given "shift". So instead of stopping 1hr from the receiver you might cook the books, get there, go off duty, sleep, etc. They unload at their convenience before you clock back in and then you cook the books again making it look like you're still off duty when driving an hour to your next load where you repeat the same 2-6hr loading delay shitshow. Then you cook the books a third time running 30min across town to somewhere you can get prepared food and park, hit up the massage parlor, etc, whatever it is you do to burn half a day off duty. So instead of burning a work day doing busy work and sitting in your truck watching movies on an ipad you've accomplished a 34hr reset in that time and most of those 34ish hours were in fact spent off duty.
    - watwut 5y ago
      > Cramming more hours into the work week doesn't actually help you in the long term because the human body can't sustainably run on unsafe amounts of sleep. The body can run on unsafe amounts of sleep for a long time. It is unhealthy, it is unsafe and leads to mistakes and crashes, but people in fact regularly attempt that. Many many people in fact think they are being hardworking and strong for doing that. The pressure to drive unsafely is very real on professional drivers. The drivers (not trucks) I knew were telling me exact same story. Regularly driving a lot and without good sleep. Pressure to drive more and faster. Also, this is how the debate started: > I used to be friends with a few truck drivers, and all of them were making money because all of them were cheatings the books non-stop. It was basically a job requirement. Drive 48 hours? No problem. While I think 48 hours drive was exaggeration or drivers brag, it was meant to express "a lot of driving way more then is reasonable".

by Fogest 5y ago

Clubber 5y ago

Here's the current rules. They seem pretty reasonable https://www.thebalancesmb.com/freight-trucking-dot-hours-1361484 https://www.thebalancesmb.com/freight-trucking-dot-hours-136... For example, drivers who transport property in the same state are subject to state regulations but not federal regulations. Whereas drivers who deliver materials from state to state must comply with federal regulations. Among the regulations: A reset occurs when a driver has had marked 34 consecutive hours off duty. The workweek starts after the last legal reset. For example, if you begin at 1 a.m. on Monday, then the workweek continues until 1 a.m. the following Monday. Each duty period must begin with at least 10 hours off-duty. Drivers may work no more than 60 hours on-duty over seven consecutive days or 70 hours over eight days. And they need to maintain a driver's log for seven days and eight days after, respectively. Drivers may be on duty for up to 14 hours following 10 hours off duty, but they are limited to 11 hours of driving time. Drivers must take a mandatory 30-minute break by their eighth hour of coming on duty. The 14-hour duty period may not be extended with off-duty time for breaks, meals, fuel stops, etc. I would say the only issue is on your required break time, you sit around doing nothing and not get paid for it. If you are at home that is fine, if you are a long haul trucker, you're stuck at a truck stop waiting for time to complete. As a side note, as others have mentioned, truck drivers have been getting paid less and less over the years, and that's not accounting for inflation; plus it's rough on relationships, so it's no wonder there is a shortage.

PeterisP 5y ago
The safety issues the parent posts were talking about are greatly increased when these rules are circumvented in order to drive a bunch more hours than that.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  They're generally not circumvented to "drive a bunch more hours". That's a fools game. You need to take breaks eventually. Cramming more hours into the work week doesn't actually help you in the long term because the human body can't sustainably run on unsafe amounts of sleep. The books get cooked to avoid wasting valuable on-duty hours while sitting around waiting to be loaded/unloaded. They generally are circumvented to make it to the receiver or next shipper within a given "shift". So instead of stopping 1hr from the receiver you might cook the books, get there, go off duty, sleep, etc. They unload at their convenience before you clock back in and then you cook the books again making it look like you're still off duty when driving an hour to your next load where you repeat the same 2-6hr loading delay shitshow. Then you cook the books a third time running 30min across town to somewhere you can get prepared food and park, hit up the massage parlor, etc, whatever it is you do to burn half a day off duty. So instead of burning a work day doing busy work and sitting in your truck watching movies on an ipad you've accomplished a 34hr reset in that time and most of those 34ish hours were in fact spent off duty.
  - watwut 5y ago
    > Cramming more hours into the work week doesn't actually help you in the long term because the human body can't sustainably run on unsafe amounts of sleep. The body can run on unsafe amounts of sleep for a long time. It is unhealthy, it is unsafe and leads to mistakes and crashes, but people in fact regularly attempt that. Many many people in fact think they are being hardworking and strong for doing that. The pressure to drive unsafely is very real on professional drivers. The drivers (not trucks) I knew were telling me exact same story. Regularly driving a lot and without good sleep. Pressure to drive more and faster. Also, this is how the debate started: > I used to be friends with a few truck drivers, and all of them were making money because all of them were cheatings the books non-stop. It was basically a job requirement. Drive 48 hours? No problem. While I think 48 hours drive was exaggeration or drivers brag, it was meant to express "a lot of driving way more then is reasonable".