split sleeper berth and independents

[Rev.Vassago]

WHAT??? You got an ALARM that goes off everytime I post? You were OFFLINE when I posted that. You couldn't possibly read it all in the short time it took me to edit and change my shorts!

I'm extremely adept at reading your posts.

But, to some exent, you are right. Yes, I believe this is ONE time that we agree and have found common ground. The DIFFERENCE is.... I can provide analysis of my opinion whereas YOU are just STATING an opinion.

Actually, I stated several facts, and provided further documentation to support them, which stonefly responded with:

"Hey Rev.Vassago. I got no interest in you. Why don't you rain on somebody else...I'm here for a reason, and your nonsense ain't got nuthin' to do with it."

Frankly, I think he's grasping at straws, and is ignoring all the data that disagrees with him. The reason being, of course, because he is looking for a legitimate reason to change the regs, because his illegitimate reason just doesn't work.

[GMAN]

I think you would have a better time providing support for your cause if you could find a poll or study where drivers admitted to driving fatigued due to the new hos. My main problem with the new hos is that you cannot stop the clock. I know a number of drivers who have told me that they continue driving rather than stopping when they get tired so that they can earn a living. Not being able to stop the clock does tend to force some drivers to push beyond their comfort zone. That is the main problem that I have with the new hos rules. Being able to stop the clock could give you what you want in extra time and still keep the sleeper berth the way it is.

[stonefly]

I think you would have a better time providing support for your cause if you could find a poll or study where drivers admitted to driving fatigued due to the new hos. My main problem with the new hos is that you cannot stop the clock. I know a number of drivers who have told me that they continue driving rather than stopping when they get tired so that they can earn a living. Not being able to stop the clock does tend to force some drivers to push beyond their comfort zone. That is the main problem that I have with the new hos rules. Being able to stop the clock could give you what you want in extra time and still keep the sleeper berth the way it is.

GMAN, is it my cause, or our cause? I can't do it by myself. Thank you for finding the link to the feds' website. It is helpful. That's called working together. I'm only going to do this as long as I'm working together with others. The feds' comment page on hours of service is the poll...the study...where drivers admit to driving fatigued due to the new hos. Nobody at the FMCSA appears to be listening.

I'm sure you do know a number of drivers who continue to drive when they are tired because they need to in order to earn a living. There are about 400 comments on the Bring Back Trucking web page that echo the sentiment.

You're right. Not being able to stop the clock does force some drivers to push beyond their comfort zone. However, your choice of words may not be the best. Not being able to stop the clock forces some drivers to push into the danger zone.

It's more than that, however. Without split time, bunk time that isn't a full eight hours becomes a liability to the driver. How much time do you have in your life? Can you spend a full eight hours in a bunk when you are not sleepy and cannot sleep?

If you got your wish, and could stop the clock for a sleep break less than eight hours, what will you do when you have made a delivery? If you slept four during your clock stopper, now you still have to take eight more hours in the bunk. That adds up to 12 hours. How many times can you afford to do that in one week?

Stopping the clock is not enough. It is necessary to have all blocks of sleep greater than 2 hours count toward a driver's sleep requirement. I appreciate your help, and any support you can give, but if you think stopping the clock is enough, I must wonder how well you have studied this matter.

[Rev.Vassago]

Stopping the clock is not enough. It is necessary to have all blocks of sleep greater than 2 hours count toward a driver's sleep requirement.

This is ludicrous.

What you are advocating would allow a driver to drive round the clock, taking 2 hour sleep breaks. A driver cannot get restorative sleep in 2 hours.

Given your statement above, a driver could legally drive 2, sleep 2, drive 2, sleep 2, drive 2, sleep 2, drive 2, sleep 2, drive 2, sleep 2, and have their 10 hours of sleep requirement fulfilled. A driver could theoretically drive from one side of the country to the other having never gotten any restorative sleep. So much for making the highways safer.

[stonefly]

This is ludicrous.

What you are advocating would allow a driver to drive round the clock, taking 2 hour sleep breaks. A driver cannot get restorative sleep in 2 hours.

Given your statement above, a driver could legally drive 2, sleep 2, drive 2, sleep 2, drive 2, sleep 2, drive 2, sleep 2, drive 2, sleep 2, and have their 10 hours of sleep requirement fulfilled. A driver could theoretically drive from one side of the country to the other having never gotten any restorative sleep. So much for making the highways safer.

Actually, no. The number of blocks allowed has never been more been more than two, as far back as I remember. That being the case, the splits would have to be 2/8, 3/7, 4/6, 5/5, etc... Your driver would get plenty of restorative sleep.

stonefly

[Rev.Vassago]

But that isn't what you said. You said:

It is necessary to have all blocks of sleep greater than 2 hours count toward a driver's sleep requirement.

You've moved beyond your original claim that any block of sleep should stop the clock, and now want all blocks of sleep more than 2 hours to count toward the 10 hour sleep requirement.

As I said, this is a ludicrous statement you've made.

[GMAN]

If we must be stuck with logs then my ideal would be to go back to the old hos, but keep the 34 hour restart. Frankly, I think 24 hours is plenty of time for a reset. I usually sleep from 4-6 hours per night. If I sleep 8 hours then I get a headache. I feel like I have been drugged when I sleep 8 hours. That is just my personal body clock. I never need an alarm clock to awaken in the morning. My body knows when it is time to get up. In fact, I am usually awake long before I need to be up. There are those who need more than 8 hours to function. They could not function on the amount of sleep that I get. Being able to stop the clock would help. As I stated, I would prefer the old hos where we only had to take 8 hours in the bunk and that could be split. It made more sense for me but may not work well for those who require more sleep. Actually, I suppose it could work for them as well since this is the minimum amount of sleep that is required.

[stonefly]

There are some observations that you may want to keep in mind when you look at these figures, regardless of which side of the split berth you are on. First, the numbers are a little misleading. The feds consider any truck with a GVW of 10,000 or more as a big truck and they are included in these figures. That may not give a fair representation of class 8 trucks. If these numbers only included class 8 trucks or at least separated them then I would have greater confidence in them. Second, no matter which side of this issue you are on, you would need more information to lend support to whether the split berth was responsible for more or fewer accidents involving big trucks. Some of the numbers are subject to interpretation. I am not sure how deeply the compilers of these figures go into the causal effect of these accidents. Unless I over looked it I didn't notice anything mentioned about fault involving big trucks and cars. Of course, any of these numbers will be skewed to some degree due to the smaller trucks being included in their numbers. Simply drawing the conclusion that the numbers may have gone up or down around the time the new hos went into effect may or may not be the result of a change in the split berth. It could be suspect, but you would need to look at other factors to draw an accurate conclusion. I believe the difference was only 2 crashes between the two years mentioned. That really isn't enough of a difference to support either side.

I agree that the numbers are misleading. Remember that signature line that jungleblood used, something to the effect that numbers and statistics will confess to anything if you torture them long enough?

Statistics may never clearly show one way or another the value of a split sleeper berth option. There are too many variables. When there are too many variables in a study science goes out the window.

Statistics may never be anything but a poor tool in deciding whether or not a split sleeper berth provision is in the interest of safety. All that one may do is look at a trend and say "perhaps." Beyond that, statistics don't mean much in this matter. Several forum members here cried out for statitistics when the topic of the split sleeper berth provision came up. As soon as statistics appear, interpretation of the numbers becomes a sort of free-for-all and nothing is accomplished.

Simply drawing the conclusion that the numbers may have gone up or down around the time the new hos went into effect may or may not be the result of a change in the split berth.

You're right again, GMAN, the numbers are inconclusive. Maybe if we torture them some more, they'll confess to something.



stonefly

[stonefly]

If we must be stuck with logs then my ideal would be to go back to the old hos, but keep the 34 hour restart. Frankly, I think 24 hours is plenty of time for a reset. I usually sleep from 4-6 hours per night. If I sleep 8 hours then I get a headache. I feel like I have been drugged when I sleep 8 hours. That is just my personal body clock. I never need an alarm clock to awaken in the morning. My body knows when it is time to get up. In fact, I am usually awake long before I need to be up. There are those who need more than 8 hours to function. They could not function on the amount of sleep that I get. Being able to stop the clock would help. As I stated, I would prefer the old hos where we only had to take 8 hours in the bunk and that could be split. It made more sense for me but may not work well for those who require more sleep. Actually, I suppose it could work for them as well since this is the minimum amount of sleep that is required.

What I would like to accomplish is to revert to the original 2003 rule changes, the ones they began to enforce on January 1, 2004. As soon as I was running under my own numbers, the old rules, the 8 hour break-10 hour driving, were alright. When I was leased to a carrier, they managed to push me beyond my limits...if I let them. In fact, I rarely did. If I needed sleep, I slept. I had to listen to a dispatcher holler when I finally made contact...after my sleep break, "I HAD A LOAD FOR YOU!"

"I was tired, I had to sleep."

"That ain't no good, man, that ain't no good."

"Look, I'm ready to go. Whaddaya got?"

"Nothin' now, call back in an hour."

I think there were some company drivers and lease operators were hurt under the original rules. A man running under his own numbers can call his own shots. When the 2003 rule change was first announced, I was worried, because I thought it would prevent me from having any flexibility with regard to bunk time and delivery appointments. It wasn't long before I realized that the new rules wouldn't shut me down. They were complicated, especially when I was splitting my time. Three overlapping layers of limiting factors had to be considered: The 11 hours of driving, the 14 hour clock, and the 70 hour limit. Add split time into the formula, and there were times when I was staring at my log scratching my head, trying to figure out if I could drive or for how long. Therein lies the weirdness and frustration of the log book. I was awake and ready to get on the road, but studying the log book was putting me into a stupor. All in all though, I looked at it this way, it was confusing at times, but most of the time the rules worked pretty good for me. Under my own numbers, I could take the old rules, the 8 and 10, or the new rules the 10 and the 11, and run either way, without it making much difference to me.

For company drivers and lease operators, I think the 2003 rules are better. I think a company cannot abuse drivers as easily under the 2003 rules.

The loss of the split sleeper berth provision is the rule that messed me up real good. I read about it for the first time in the summer, at a truck stop in some small Utah town in the middle of a desert. They had trucker newspapers and I was flipping through one of them when I saw Annette Sandberg's announcement. I knew that this time, it wasn't going to be something to which I would easily adapt.

I've been living with it, but when I saw all of the comments from other drivers on the feds' website, it gave me the inspiration to try and do something about it, and here we are and that's that.

stonefly

[GMAN]

I think you are in an uphill battle. MADD and the others are getting together in an attempt to further reduce or change our current hos. They still think we are working too much. I think you will need to find more drivers who are willing to speak out. Of course, that could have the opposite effect in that it could push more for EOBR's. That is something most of us don't want. The ATA is pushing for the EOBR's and speed limiters. If you want to be successful you will also need to get the legislative branch (congress) involved. I think you could gain support from independents, smaller carriers and some owner operators. Many will be cautious since they are afraid that we may wind up with something that is worse that what we have now and will further inhibit our ability to make a living. Most people have adjusted to the current hos.

[stonefly]

I think you are in an uphill battle.

WHAT? Is there any other kind? If there is, I've never been involved in one.

MADD and the others are getting together in an attempt to further reduce or change our current hos. They still think we are working too much.

There is nothing worse that being told when to sleep, to stay put in a bunk and not move the truck even though one is rested. It is matter of personal freedom, a matter of privacy. There is nothing in any statistics that proves the old split sleeper berth provision contributed to highway fatalities and likewise nothing that indicates highway safety has been improved by the loss of the split sleeper berth provision. Giving up freedom in the name of safety doesn't even apply here. There is no proof that the mandatory eight hour sleep break has done anything to improve safety. Being told when to sleep? That is the worst.

I think you will need to find more drivers who are willing to speak out.

This is America.

Of course, that could have the opposite effect in that it could push more for EOBR's. That is something most of us don't want.

I don't want one in my truck. There are people pushing these things for profit. That is where a lot of the problem lies.

The ATA is pushing for the EOBR's and speed limiters. If you want to be successful you will also need to get the legislative branch (congress) involved. I think you could gain support from independents, smaller carriers and some owner operators. Many will be cautious since they are afraid that we may wind up with something that is worse that what we have now and will further inhibit our ability to make a living.

yes

Most people have adjusted to the current hos.

Most people may have, indeed.

Few men have.



stonefly

[Rev.Vassago]

Most people may have, indeed.

Few men have.

Successful businesspeople learn to adapt to their surroundings.

[GMAN]

I have been around this business for many years and seen a lot of changes. We have a lot of issues confronting us which requires the ability to deal with those challenges and adapt or learn to use them to our advantage. Most of us have gotten used to the new hos rules. I think it does encourage people to push their limits at times. That being said, we have more pressing issues with which to deal right now. We are facing the lowest freight rates than I have seen in a number of years. The availability of freight is also somewhat limited. Drivers have to decide what they must do in order to survive. They can run their authority, lease to a carrier, become a company driver or get out of the business altogether. Having learned to use the old hos I can be sympathetic to what you would like to accomplish, but most owners that I know seem to be more concerned about survival than pushing for another hos change. It has always been a challenge dealing with logs and the dot. I don't expect to see that change. We are seeing many more laws and regulations thrust upon us. It seems that the government at all levels see this industry as a cash cow that can be tapped any time they have a shortfall. In some respects, the current hos are easier to use as far as making addition mistakes. Under the old hos we needed to be careful to not miss a 15 minute break or driving time when we added up our time for the day. It could be easy to miss one if you were a bit tired and perhaps made several stops during the day. In that respect the current hos rules are easier to use. I think the 8/2 sleeper rule is the most difficult for some to understand. For that reason, most seem to just take the full 10 hour break at one time rather than take a chance on having a violation.

[golfhobo]

It could be easy to miss one if you were a bit tired and perhaps made several stops during the day.

Now, GMAN.... you KNOW that under the old "anything goes" rules, where REAL MEN were allowed to take a SHORT nap and keep pushing on (hoping to deliver early so they can get another load and make more money,) this could NEVER happen!