34 BECOMES 42

On July 1, new laws went into place regarding truck drivers' hours of service configurations. One of these additional hoops is a requirement that on a "34-hour restart", two consecutive periods from 1am to 5am off-duty must be achieved to reset the 70-hour work clock. If you are an outsider to the trucking industry, I challenge you to look it up and attempt to comprehend it. 

When I completed my work shift on Wednesday, it was 1:45am. We were squeezing virtually every minute out of our 70-hour clocks.  I had less than 30 minutes left when I concluded my on-duty status. When Mr. H departed the truck stop, in Hesperia, California, he had just barely enough time to make transit to the customer, then back over the Schneider terminal. I'm sure that if a supervisor analyzed how close we cut this one, he would shoot us a genuine
frown. I acknowledge that I do take bold risks sometimes. 

Just before noon today, Thursday, we had plans in full-ingnition to start moving on a load to Memphis. My supervisor called me to tell me that my 70 hour clock had not been reset. He was as baffled as I was at this, since I had verifiably achieved 34 hours off duty. Then, he realized that the new HOS laws were the cause of this surprise. If only I had quit driving an hour sooner on Wednesday, we could be rolling now. It was a truly frustrating realization for both of us. He had to remove the load assignment from our itinerary. Mr. H will achieve a lawful restart Friday morning at 5 o'clock. Hopefully they will have something good lined up for us then. This means that by the time we will get rolling, we will have sat for about 42 hours. This is a blunt reminder of how crazy & numerous the government's laws are becoming.

In the meantime, our tractor is getting routine maintenance.