How Goes the New 34-Hour Restart for You?

ATeam

Senior Member
Retired Expediter
New HOS rules went into effect on July 1, among them new rules that affect the 34-hour restart. It is now mid-August. How goes it for you under the changes?

Before the new rules, it was easy for Diane and me to do a restart (take 34 hours off-duty or in the sleeper to start a new seven-day period with 70 hours available). After the new rules, it can still be done but not as easy and not as often.

We are doing restarts less often than before because of the new seven-day wait part of the rule (no restart within seven days of the previous restart). We also do fewer restarts because of the 1-5 a.m. part of the rule (restart must include two 1-5 a.m. time periods, effectively forcing you to include two full nights in the restart, which often requires more than 34 hours because you have already stopped earlier than the precise time your legal 34 hours began).

And when we do restarts, we have less mobility than before. In this team-driven truck, the 1-5 a.m. rule applies to both of us. Under the old rules, one of us could drive while the other one completed his or her restart. Now, we must both complete our restarts at 5 a.m. We cannot stagger our 34-hour periods like before unless we want to add a third day to restarting us both. The result is, when we want a restart, we put ourselves into what we call "restart prison," park the truck and sit there for two nights.

Finally, the new rules give us a restarted log book (and the real rest that went into earning the restart) less often. That is a psychological thing that requires a thinking adjustment. Sure, it is nice to start your next run with 70 hours available, but doing so with 40 or 20 hours available still lets you start and finish the run.

None of these changes are desirable. None of them do anything at all to make us more rested than 34 hours of down time did under the old rules. But it is what it is and we're stuck with it, at least for now.

It has been an undesirable and nonsensical inconvenience but no money has been lost to the new 34-hour restart rules, at least not yet. However, there are situations that have risen with us in the past that, under the new rules, may cost us money (as in thousands of dollars) by preventing us from taking a lucrative long run that we could have and would have otherwise taken. It has not happened yet but it could.

How goes the new 34-hour restart for you?
 
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BigCat

Expert Expediter
No challenge here. Run recap after 7 days and make it home every other weekend where the 34 occurs. I get home Friday and leave Monday. It's this 30 minute break screwing things up. Stopped tonight for fuel and had to wait 45 minutes to get to pump.
 

layoutshooter

Veteran Expediter
Retired Expediter
I went off duty last Friday at 1522. I did NOT go back on the clock until 0645 TUESDAY morning, with NO 34 hour restart. SO, I started the week with only 51 hours and am now down to 29. Gotta love it! :mad:

That is OVER 110 hours off without a reset. I fee safer now.
 
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moose

Veteran Expediter
{...LOS learning the hard way how to recap a log...}
(give him some time- he'll catch up)
Joe, you just worked 22 hours in the last 5 days, restart or not, you will never run out of hours before Fri. @ midnight.
sorry.
 

layoutshooter

Veteran Expediter
Retired Expediter
{...LOS learning the hard way how to recap a log...}
(give him some time- he'll catch up)
Joe, you just worked 22 hours in the last 5 days, restart or not, you will never run out of hours before Fri. @ midnight.
sorry.


That helps! :mad: I picked up 5 hours yesterday and will get 6 tomorrow. BEFORE this stupid, anti-income law that PizzAnt Annie, forced on us we NEVER had a problem. We almost always started each Monday with equal 70 hour clocks. Now are clocks are WAY out of whack.
 

layoutshooter

Veteran Expediter
Retired Expediter
Don't even get me going on the 1/2 break. It cost me 19 hours of extra reefer time on this load and 12 hours of APU time. MORE anti-income from the leftist PizzAnt Annie! :mad:
 

moose

Veteran Expediter
It's not you, it's your carrier.
setting up for the predicted lost of productivity, your carrier, instead of holding it's grounds for the benefits of it's contractors {like many other do & did}, he spins the revolving doors, and signed more loads via the Sylectus networking.
you can blame the Gov. till morning fog, but it is your carrier that is setting you up to fail.
do you even communicate those loses with Green?
 

layoutshooter

Veteran Expediter
Retired Expediter
It's not you, it's your carrier.
setting up for the predicted lost of productivity, your carrier, instead of holding it's grounds for the benefits of it's contractors {like many other do & did}, he spins the revolving doors, and signed more loads via the Sylectus networking.
you can blame the Gov. till morning fog, but it is your carrier that is setting you up to fail.
do you even communicate those loses with Green?

You lost me here Moose, how did my carrier cause this? :confused:

BEFORE PizzAnt Annie rammed this to us I would have had my 34 hour reset and when we started our load Tuesday we both would have been setting on fresh clocks. Now, we are not. Please explain.
 

moose

Veteran Expediter
your lost of productivity, and increased costs of doing business SHOULD be passed along to the business paying YOUR bills.
do they?
 

layoutshooter

Veteran Expediter
Retired Expediter
your lost of productivity, and increased costs of doing business SHOULD be passed along to the business paying YOUR bills.
do they?

LOL!! Now THAT is FUNNY!! You should be a comedian! Pass on MY loses!! HEHEHEHE HAHAHAHA!!!! :p I LOVE your sense of humor! :D


They ALL would have to do that to be effective and that is just NOT going to happen. Besides, in just a bit there is going to be 12 MILLION people who will be will to driver for $5 a day. We are TOAST! The Teamsters will sign them up and all will be hunky dory!

:rolleyes:
 

AMonger

Veteran Expediter
I went off duty last Friday at 1522. I did NOT go back on the clock until 0645 TUESDAY morning, with NO 34 hour restart. SO, I started the week with only 51 hours and am now down to 29. Gotta love it! :mad:

That is OVER 110 hours off without a reset. I fee safer now.

That appears to conform to the new rules regarding restarts, so how is it you don't have a restart?

WWATD? What would Andy Taylor do?
 

layoutshooter

Veteran Expediter
Retired Expediter
That appears to conform to the new rules regarding restarts, so how is it you don't have a restart?

WWATD? What would Andy Taylor do?

NO, it did not conform. I was NOT able to start a 34 hour reset until 1900 Monday night. That is when my 168 hour clock dried up. I would have sat from then, for 34 hours + the 2 1-5AM periods to get a reset. It is a joke. 110+ hours off is not safe. :rolleyes:
 

ATeam

Senior Member
Retired Expediter
LOL!! Now THAT is FUNNY!! You should be a comedian! Pass on MY loses!! HEHEHEHE HAHAHAHA!!!! :p I LOVE your sense of humor! :D

Joe,

It's what successful business people do. The HOS rules have changed but the basics of profit and loss have not. Everyone WILL pass their increased costs on to their customers or they will fail. If you are unable to raise your prices at your present carrier, you need to find another one where you can.
 

layoutshooter

Veteran Expediter
Retired Expediter
Joe,

It's what successful business people do. The HOS rules have changed but the basics of profit and loss have not. Everyone WILL pass their increased costs on to their customers or they will fail. If you are unable to raise your prices at your present carrier, you need to find another one where you can.

Yep, or git out and do sumpthin smarter. This just hit and the results are just starting to show. Time will soon tell. I have little hope, not just for this carrier, all of them. We shall see.

If not, maybe I will start moving in the influx of new illegals! :p
 

MaidMarion

Active Expediter
It has only bitten us once so far, on a coast-to-coast run, when we couldn't make it to our parking spot before 1 am terminal-time. But considering that the change has only been in effect for a short period, that's significant, I think. It's definitely less convenient for us. Before the change we almost never had to worry about hours. Now we are having to watch them closely.

And I have to agree that the 30 minute break is creating its fair share of difficulty, too. On some loads we have strict guidelines for where and/or when we can stop. The break requirement is taking some extra planning.
 

ATeam

Senior Member
Retired Expediter
It has only bitten us once so far, on a coast-to-coast run, when we couldn't make it to our parking spot before 1 am terminal-time. But considering that the change has only been in effect for a short period, that's significant, I think.

How did it bite you exactly? What was the effect of missing the 1 a.m. terminal time?
 

cheri1122

Veteran Expediter
Driver
No challenge here. Run recap after 7 days and make it home every other weekend where the 34 occurs. I get home Friday and leave Monday. It's this 30 minute break screwing things up. Stopped tonight for fuel and had to wait 45 minutes to get to pump.

This is what I'm finding, too - and it's what I was afraid would happen: drivers taking the 30 minutes in the fuel lanes, because it's the most convenient, and they know no one can do anything to stop them.
How FMCSA can require trucks to park for 30 minutes midshift, when they know that parking is scarce is just incomprehensible. The stress of trying to comply far outweighs any possible benefit of a 30 minute 'rest', IMO.
FMCSA rules keep putting drivers between a rock [have to park the truck] and a hard place [can't find a safe & legal parking place], and insisting we're all safer and more rested for it - NOT.
:mad:
 

OntarioVanMan

Retired Expediter
Owner/Operator
since the new 30 minute rule, never been held up at the pumps yet....guess you guys are just lucky....:p
 

MaidMarion

Active Expediter
How did it bite you exactly? What was the effect of missing the 1 a.m. terminal time?

Dean was driving. We should have been able to get to the truck stop with a couple of minutes to spare before 1 a.m., but the exit was closed due to construction. So it was 1:15 a.m. before he parked, which meant he missed that 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. period of rest by 15 minutes. We only sat for that night and the next (over the weekend), so I reset, having had two nights rest which included the 1 to 5 period, but Dean did not.

On Monday morning we got a call back to the other coast. By the time it was over Dean was down to 6 hours available. That's much closer than we like to run.
 
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