8 Hour Berth Rule....

I have been doing the log section of the High Road training. I still very confused with the 8 hour sleeping berth rule. I have almost complete the entire HOS section and still just don't get it. Any suggestions?

Let's say you get up after spending 10 hours in SB. You now have a full 14/11 hour clock. Then you go on duty..the time of day is irrelevant. So you go on duty and spend .5 hour doing your pretrip and then you start driving. You drive for 6 Hours and then stop. You have now been ON DUTY for 6.5 hours and have DRIVEN for 6 so you have 7.5 hours left on your 14 hour ON DUTY clock and 5 hours left on your 11 hour DRIVE clock. Now, if at this point you go into SB, both of your clocks STOP, and as long as you remain on SB for 8 CONSECUTIVE hours, you will still have 7.5 and 5 hours left at the end of 8 hours, which means that you can continue to drive for another 5 hours. Now once you use up those 5 hours you have to STOP driving. Your 11 clock is done, BUT you still have 2.5 hours left ON DUTY in case you have to do something else. At this point you MUST now spend at least 2 hours in SB to complete your 10 hour requirement. Once you have done that your ENTIRE clock resets and you have all of your daily hours available once again. One thing that sometimes confuses people is the 2 hour requirement to complete the rule..there is NOTHING in the rule book that says you have to spend ONLY 2 hours in the SB mode, you can spend MORE but you cannot spend LESS than 2 hours..hope this helps clarify this a little..if not let me know and we can try and do a tutorial via email.

Roadkill, I think you are confused, just a little. Once 14 hour clock starts it does NOT STOP, unless you spend eight hours in the sleeper berth. I will NOT get into split sleeper berth here. If, for example, you went On Duty at 6:00 a.m. You would NOT be able to drive past 8:00 p.m. (14 hours from coming On Duty). So if you were On Duty for 6.5 hours and drove for 6 hours, you would only have 1.5 hours of drive time remaining, because of the 14 hour rule.

If you wanted to get the 5 hours back more quickly, you could go into the sleeper berth for 8 hours. I'll let others explain how the split sleeper rule works.

Dave

Roadkill, I think you are confused, just a little. Once 14 hour clock starts it does NOT STOP, unless you spend eight hours in the sleeper berth. I will NOT get into split sleeper berth here. If, for example, you went On Duty at 6:00 a.m. You would NOT be able to drive past 8:00 p.m. (14 hours from coming On Duty). So if you were On Duty for 6.5 hours and drove for 6 hours, you would only have 1.5 hours of drive time remaining, because of the 14 hour rule.

If you wanted to get the 5 hours back more quickly, you could go into the sleeper berth for 8 hours. I'll let others explain how the split sleeper rule works.

Dave

Sorry, roadkill, I just got up and misread what you wrote. You wrote .5 hours, and I read 6.5 hours.

Dave

This rule can be very confusing. I suggest you work your way back through that section again. I want to say that I did that section something like three times. I've found that there are very few drivers on the road that even know the rule exists, much less how to properly benefit from and utilize it. When I was in driving school I asked my class-room instructor about it when we were learning about logs because I noticed she had completely ignored discussing it during her lecture. She told us the reason she didn't try and teach it to us was because "it was too damn hard to understand" - which said to me that she didn't understand it either. She told us that there was no reason to use it anyway unless we were driving team. Well, she was wrong - I use it fairly often, and if you get the hang of it you will be able to accomplish more than your peers.

Here's an example of a recent success I had with using it. I got dispatched a load of plywood that had about 600 miles on the load and it was due the next day before 1400 (the receiver stopped receiving at 2:00 pm) Now, when I was getting unloaded earlier in the day I had to sit at the receiver for about three hours so I allowed about thirty minutes of on-duty time to be burned up and then I put my clock over to sleeper berth just so I would be conserving my seventy hour clock. (this took place before I even knew I would be dispatched on the plywood load) Then when I sent in my empty call an unusual thing happened in that I didn't get dispatched for about two hours. Usually I've got a load waiting on me, but this day it didn't happen. When I did get my load order I had to drive about an hour to get there. I had also driven about an hour that morning, so If I'm explaining this well enough you can see that I have used up about seven hours of my 14 hour clock by the time I got to the shipper of the plywood. Well when I get there I see a long line of trucks waiting to be loaded, and there are three other drivers from my company ahead of me, and there ends up being another three behind me shortly along with other drivers also from various companies. It takes us about four hours each to get loaded. This plant could only load one truck at a time. After I had been waiting in line for about twenty minutes I went ahead and took myself off duty and set my clock onto sleeper berth. We were at least an hour away from the nearest truck stop, so I took a precaution that none of the other drivers had considered and I stopped just down the street at a convenience store that had a vacant building next door and asked if they knew if it would be alright for me to sleep in that parking lot next door. Fortunately their response was "sure, we own that building and we allow drivers to sleep there if they like, plus we serve a really great breakfast if you are interested in the morning" - Well I wasn't so interested in his breakfast and you'll see why in a minute.

What I did was slip right over to this place to sleep without it being far enough to change my clock back to the drive line. Now what the other drivers from my company did with their clocks I don't know, but I do know that the three drivers behind me in line all drove right past me sleeping in that vacant parking lot and still chose to go the nearest truck stop which set there clocks back on the drive line. Now they've got to wait either eight or ten hours before they can start up another 14 hour clock depending on how they have managed it thus far. But since my drive line hasn't been activated I'm still on sleeper berth and can have a fresh fourteen hour clock in about four hours. I had calculated the numbers and realized the only way I could get this load delivered on time was to leave no later than one in the morning. Well, due to being prudent with my clock earlier in the day it was going to be a little after midnight when eight hours had gone by from the time I had set it to sleeper berth while waiting to get loaded at the plywood plant.

I hope I'm not confusing you more, I thought maybe a real life example might help, but I realize it's a little hard to follow. The bottom line is that I left that vacant lot around 12:30 that night and when I was finished getting unloaded at the receiver he asked me if I knew where his other truck loads of plywood where - he said "I ordered seven truck loads and you are the only one that showed up." I also got a nice little message on the qualcomm from my dispatcher telling me that I was kicking ass out there and really showed everybody up on that last load. But for me the real benefit is that I was ready for another load long before the other drivers had even gotten to the receiver. That is how you make money doing this stuff. I hear drivers moan and groan all the time about not making any money, but they don't take the initiative to do what it takes to excel at this stuff, they would rather complain that the dispatcher took so long to dispatch them and the shipper burned up all their time so that now they can't make any money. Well the truth is that they are the ones in the drivers seat and they control their own destiny.

Keep at it, because understanding this stuff will definitely help you. Brett did us all a great service by making that section so thorough. I didn't understand it very well when I first started, and you probably won't either, but as time goes by and you experiment with your time management it will begin to come clear.

Thanks.... I am still completely clueless of the split berth rule. I keep playing with it and try to understand it but it is kicking my arse. Anyway, I don't leave for school for to weeks so I got time. Thanks for all the help.

Ok, so from what I am understanding....

Say, you come off a 10 hour off duty status. You drive 8 hours and stop for 1 hour. So, your 14 hour clock is at 9 hours. You have met your 30 minute break rule. So at this point you have 3 more hours to drive and 5 more hours on your 14 hour clock. You drive down the road 30 minutes to get loaded. With driving to the shipper and getting the paperwork done, let's say it was a total of an hour on duty. That means now you have 2.5 hours remaining to drive and 4 hours on your 14 hour clock. Well, low and behold the shipper says they can't get you loaded quickly but does not mind if you stay on the lot for 8 hours. You hop in the sleeper berth. As, faith would have it, they got you loaded and ready in 8 hours. So, during that 8 hours, you figured out you could roll into a truck stop in 2.5 hours. Lucky you, you got have 2.5 hours remaining to drive. You fire up the truck and drive 2.5 hours. When you hit the truckstop, you have no more drive time and 1.5 remaining on your 14 hour clock. You use that 1.5 time to refuel and do your post trip and pre trip checks. Then you hit the sleeper for 2 more hours.

This means your 14 hour clock now starts at the time the first 8 hour break ended, correct? So you have 8 hours left on your 14 hour clock? You have only driven 2.5 hours during that time so you have 8.5 hour that you can drive? Did I do this correct?

The easiest way I have been able to remember & benefit from it is if I have about 6 - 8 on my 11 that I will gain by splitting, then I will do that.

Just realize the 8 hours must be sleeper berth in order for this to work.

Hope this little tidbit helps with how it works/benefits you the driver.

Ernie

Thanks ,old school that real life example is very useful. I am about to get my CDL .So I am trying not to confuse myself with anything else . Concentrating on my double clutching and the pre-trip. I need a 90 GPA to get the job I am hoping to get.your description of clock management skills gave me some useful visuals.Even if I Still don't fully understand at least I know it's possible and it is always here when I am more able to understand it.As a "Lurker" I just want to say, Thanks to you all. We are here and you are making a big difference in peoples lives.

Lets say you end your day with 9hours left on your clock.

If I put myself on sleeper berth with 9 hours left on my clock and I stay on sleeper berth for 8 hours then I'll get back the clock that I had when I started my sleeper berth. ( in this case 9 hours I'll get back).

So if I put myself on sleeper berth with 5 hours left on my clock. Then on my 8th hour of sleeper berth I get back 5 hours on my clock. Finish out that 5 hours and put yourself on Off Duty and you'll get more hours back.

Upon completion of 8 consecutive hours of sleeper berth I'll get back the exact hours that I had when I first started my sleeper berth. Finish out those hours and put yourself on Off-Duty for 2 hours and you get more time back.

It really is that simple. It's not something you'll be using often.