Driver Off Duty Wants To Personal Conveyance Home

I have a driver that will be a couple hours from home when he hits running out of hours for the day (70 hrs, not daily 14) He will be unloaded and not currently hauling anything for my company. I have offered to buy him a hotel room for tonight for him to finish up tomorrow morning. He is a hotshot driver. Ram 3500 and 40 ft trailer so there is no sleeper. If I have performed my duty as the business owner i.e. offering to pay the hotel and he is finished working for me for the day and unloaded, will I get in trouble if he decides to drive on home tonight?

I have a driver that will be a couple hours from home when he hits running out of hours for the day (70 hrs, not daily 14) He will be unloaded and not currently hauling anything for my company. I have offered to buy him a hotel room for tonight for him to finish up tomorrow morning. He is a hotshot driver. Ram 3500 and 40 ft trailer so there is no sleeper. If I have performed my duty as the business owner i.e. offering to pay the hotel and he is finished working for me for the day and unloaded, will I get in trouble if he decides to drive on home tonight?

Howdy, Crystal ~

This is such a touchy subjct; always is. Did you use our search bar above, or our 'tags' function to search within this forum?

Also; here's another link:

Personal Conveyance

Theoretically, he 'should' stay at a hotel on the 'way to' his home or the next 'shipper' if there is one. My husband's company often allows him to use PC to drive the last hour or so home (because it IS on the way to his yard from his last stop, and not out of the way.)

Best of luck; let us know what y'all decide(d!)

~ Anne ~

Where would he be dispatched for his next load from? If it is home then he can't use PC. If he goes from home to a dispatch point, like a terminal or customer, then he could PC home and drive on duty out. If he is driving a company vehicle you can require him to stay in the hotel. If he didn't run his 70 out to quick he may have recap hours coming back at midnight.

Hope that helps. There is a lot of grey in the PC law.

Crystal, I am late to answer this and it is probably already resolved at this point, but I wanted to give you some information from the FMCSA website. There is a lot of confusion over this provision, but it really isn't that difficult. In the scenario you described, your driver is perfectly legal to go home under the PC provision.

Here is a quote from the FMCSA's site...

A driver may record time operating a CMV for personal conveyance (i.e., for personal use or reasons) as off-duty only when the driver is relieved from work and all responsibility for performing work by the motor carrier.

You made this comment in your description of what was going on...

He will be unloaded and not currently hauling anything for my company.

That comment certainly sounds like he is "relieved from work and all responsibility for performing work for you."

I apologize for missing this earlier, but hopefully the information will help you, and/or others, at a later date.

I agree with old school I made delivery lumpers ran my clock out dispatch said I’m empty and goin on home time p.c home I was 200 miles away I had no problems I just got dot inspected the other day no probs

Crystal, I am late to answer this and it is probably already resolved at this point, but I wanted to give you some information from the FMCSA website. There is a lot of confusion over this provision, but it really isn't that difficult. In the scenario you described, your driver is perfectly legal to go home under the PC provision.

Here is a quote from the FMCSA's site...

A driver may record time operating a CMV for personal conveyance (i.e., for personal use or reasons) as off-duty only when the driver is relieved from work and all responsibility for performing work by the motor carrier.

You made this comment in your description of what was going on...

He will be unloaded and not currently hauling anything for my company.

That comment certainly sounds like he is "relieved from work and all responsibility for performing work for you."

I apologize for missing this earlier, but hopefully the information will help you, and/or others, at a later date.

Thanks for getting back to me everyone. Both of his unloads Friday were super quick and he actually made it fully home with 30 minutes to spare. We live in a small town in OK so everything coming or going is minimum around a 50 mile dead head. His last stop this time was Rogers, AR so a fairly decent dead head but I was trying to get him home for Easter. I would actually allow him to take the truck and trailer home, but he lives in a small neighborhood in town with no where he could possible park it. What he does is drives about 10 miles out to my house out in the country, then gets in and heads to his first load from there. So any time he is coming home, technically he comes to my house first (which is also the business address) then heads home. Although I can see this definitely happening again in the future.

It's all in the details...

What he does is drives about 10 miles out to my house out in the country, then gets in and heads to his first load from there. So any time he is coming home, technically he comes to my house first (which is also the business address) then heads home.

With that extra bit of information, your driver's PC use now falls squarely in the "not allowed" category.

1- Continuation of a trip beyond DOT hours to reach a terminal is forbidden. Your house is the terminal.

2- Continuation of a trip to reposition equipment is forbidden.

3- Enhancing the operational readiness of the equipment is forbidden. By bringing the truck back to the origin of dispatch, he is doing just that.

No gray area here, in my opinion. In your scenario, he would only be allowed to PC from your house to home, and back to your house.

@Turtle - See that was my original thinking on the subject as well. But how do I keep him from coming home if he is that close and bound and determined to come on home?

I also found out from my ELD company Monday, that when the truck is home to just unplug the ELD. It is a Ram 3500 and I was trying to setup myself and my Husband as drivers in the system but exempt for logs as we do not need a CDL to operate when taking for oil changes, etc when it is not hooked to a trailer. In their software, the exempt option was greyed out, and when I called them about it, they said when it is on Personal Conveyance, or we are driving, etc to just reach down and unplug the ELD. That felt sketchy to me, but if I don't, there will be events in the system with no driver to assign them to. Which did occur Monday because I called the ELD support Friday and they did not get back to me until I called again Monday.

My driver is 45 with well over 20 years experience, but this is his first time running electronic logs. The last several years he's either been running wreckers or dump trucks locally.

Crystal, be aware that you can not just unplug the eld. The eld will continue to log if it's not plugged in or not.

If you're the administrator, you need to look for "unidentified time" and the driver has to claim it and it will automatically insert it into his log.

If your eld is telling you to unplug it, that's not a good sign, make sure they are approved by the fmcsa.

If you're the administrator, you need to look for "unidentified time" and the driver has to claim it and it will automatically insert it into his log.

This is correct. With the gig I run we have mechanics and guys that drive it to the on-site fuel island after I've logged out and went home for the day. In the system it flags that the truck has unassigned drive time. Someone in our office goes through every event and marks the reason for it. There have been a couple times where it picked up movement but my logs didn't kick over to driving immediately. The next day or so when they reviewed unassigned drive time that movement was edited into my logs which I needed to approve.