Would I Get In Trouble For This?

Yesterday I stoped for the night with only 2 hours left on my 70 hour clock. I had a delivery about 100 miles away from the TA where I stopped and would be getting a little over 5 hours back at midnight, so i figured I'd do 10 hour break there and start in the morning again. I started driving at 5 in the morning and got to my delivery at around 7 (there was a lot of construction and speed restrictions along the way). I had 5 hour of driving time left on my clock and i got a load sent to me with a pickup that was 65 miles from my location and then 545 miles to the delivery. So I pick up the load and started driving. I stopped with 34 minutes left on my clock and 385 miles to the delivery location. The delivery is due at 4:20 in the morning at a Walmart Distribution Center and I won't be able to start driving until midnight when I get 11 hours back on my clock. I contacted my DM to let him know that i wouldn't be able to deliver it on time due to not having enough hours on my clock. He then asked me why i didn't reject the load if i didn't have time on my clock. I've been driving solo for less than a month after finishing training and wasn't aware that company drivers could reject a load, so that's why I didn't reject it. He told me he would try to get it repowered so i could be delivered on time. I worried if this would count against me and i could get in trouble. What do you guys think? And also does that mean I won't get paid for the miles I drove today for this load?

Shouldn't get into much trouble at all I would think. You are new and learning your clock, plus you immediately contacted your DM when you realized there would be a problem. The DM is there to work with you to solve hiccups such as this and most companies expect a rookie to have a few ooopsie mistakes your first year. Sounds like you handled it right to me.

Trouble, in my mind, would be refusing loads all the time, getting into crashes because you weren't paying attention, abandoning the load because you are mad, or heck even just delivering the load because.....just because..... and thus getting a HoS violation. Make sense?

If I were you I wouldn't worry about it too much unless its brought up again, heck I even had to request to have a load repowered (and I told my DM that up front) three days ago, because I clearly would not have had the legal hours to deliver it. The load started in Lathrop, CA was due to be in Portland 600 some miles away by 1700 the next day! That day i had already been running recaps and was due for a 10 hr break, even after that I was only getting 9 hours back, still would not have had enough time to make it legal to PDX for online.

That is what your DM is for, to support you and work with you to serve the customer.

Hope it helps.

Yesterday I stoped for the night with only 2 hours left on my 70 hour clock. I had a delivery about 100 miles away from the TA where I stopped and would be getting a little over 5 hours back at midnight, so i figured I'd do 10 hour break there and start in the morning again. I started driving at 5 in the morning and got to my delivery at around 7 (there was a lot of construction and speed restrictions along the way). I had 5 hour of driving time left on my clock and i got a load sent to me with a pickup that was 65 miles from my location and then 545 miles to the delivery. So I pick up the load and started driving. I stopped with 34 minutes left on my clock and 385 miles to the delivery location. The delivery is due at 4:20 in the morning at a Walmart Distribution Center and I won't be able to start driving until midnight when I get 11 hours back on my clock. I contacted my DM to let him know that i wouldn't be able to deliver it on time due to not having enough hours on my clock. He then asked me why i didn't reject the load if i didn't have time on my clock. I've been driving solo for less than a month after finishing training and wasn't aware that company drivers could reject a load, so that's why I didn't reject it. He told me he would try to get it repowered so i could be delivered on time. I worried if this would count against me and i could get in trouble. What do you guys think? And also does that mean I won't get paid for the miles I drove today for this load?

Hello. This is part of the learning process of what companies expect and allow. My FM sometimes has me pick up loads knowing I don't have time but plans to repower it. Dispatch can see what hours we have on our 70, but just as new drivers are still learning, so are some of the new dispatchers. Someone could have screwed up, heck it could even be a test by a dispatcher to see if your are on the ball with your HOS.

Will you get paid for what you drove? Yes. Will you get fired? Doubt it. Now you realize you are expected to reject the load if not enough hours, to trip plan as soon as you get the load and message any issues.

Jay, I was in a similar situation several years ago driving for Swift. Like you, I let my DM know. She said "ok". Like you, I pulled in to a truck stop when my clock ran out. My intention was to simply keep going when my time came back after 10 hours.

A few hours later a Swift bobtail showed up and told me to pull out of the trailer. There next day I simply got a new load and got on with my life. No harm, no foul.

If you are running out of hours to drive, especially if your ELD says so, there's very little your company can "do" to you. Sure you could reject the load, but being new, I suppose you weren't sure just how that worked. And you didn't want to appear "picky".

I bet you'll be ok.

Thanks for the replies everyone. I just got a message from my DM saying that requested a re schedule so I'll still be able to deliver the load.

Thanks for the replies everyone. I just got a message from my DM saying that requested a re schedule so I'll still be able to deliver the load.

A reschedule! Which means u will probably sit on the load for 2 days!

I just posted in my diary about this sort of thing happening. I ended up 45 minutes late to the receiver, they rejected the load and said it would have to wait til monday. Unlike the smart thing to do though, I didnt call my DM when I guessed I would be late. I gambled and lost. My 10 hours off put me unable to drive til a half hour before my appointment and I shut down about 20 minutes away from the receiver.

My DM was very understanding though, I dropped the load at our terminal , so Ill effectively get paid for the load, since its 14 miles away and got assigned another load. He said to make sure to call him and let him know in the future. Our planners and DM's have access to our ELD and plan loads based on our HOS left, but its still up to us to make sure it works.