My Trucking Life

When you first start driving you will hear some experienced drivers talk about running more than one log book in order to stay compliant with the Hours Of Service rules. They did this in order to run more miles and disregard the required sleep time you are supposed to have. I don't recommend it. The penalty is too great if you are caught with a fake log book.

This won't be a complete tutorial on the log book. I'll let your instructors do that. I will hit some of the hot spots about keeping a log book and how to maximize your miles and hours. The Hours of Service rules have changed since I last drove and you have plenty of hours to drive.

I know drivers who would run one or more days ahead of their actual log books and try to cover it with a fake book. Personally, it takes up too much time for me to try to keep track of which book I'm using. What a nightmare that would be. The problem is that most truck drivers are money oriented. There's nothing wrong with that. It's just that the rules can sometimes weigh in against you.

For example, drivers know that unless you are an hourly driver, and most long haul drivers are paid by miles or percentage of the load, if the wheels aren't turning, you're not making any money. Technically, if you sit at a dock for four hours waiting to be loaded or unloaded, you have to put it down in your log book as "on duty, not driving," even if you were asleep in your berth. For those of you who are new, on duty, not driving subtracts from your drive time.

You start out the day with 14 driving hours you are able to use.That's a lot of hours. After this you have to take an 10-hour break resting in your sleeper. This drive time can be broken up if you want to take a rest break, but the rest break needs to be at least 2 hours long. For example, you drive for 3 hours, get tired and want to sleep. Hit the sack for two hours. This leaves you with 11 driving hours remaining. That's a lot of time. Plus, you have a mandatory 8 hours of rest after you finish the 11 hours. That's the bare bones of it. It can get a more complicated. | Click here for the official Hours of Service rules. |

Here is something interesting that can get you a speeding ticket. Lets use the Knoxville to Baltimore example again. You pick up your load in Knoxville at 7 a.m. and head to Baltimore. You're running pretty good. On your log book, which you must update at each pickup and every stop, but did not because you were in a hurry to beat the traffic, you didn't enter any pickup time. You head out I-40 East to I-80 West and head into Virginia.

At Roanoke, Va, there's a nice, big weigh station that is nearly always open. You decide to stop at the truck stop at the exit before the scale to get a cup of coffee and bring your log book up to date. Rather than showing you picked up your load at 7 a.m. you want to show that your moving pretty good and that you picked up and departed at 8:30 a.m.

The weigh station near Roanoke is one where you can weigh in motion. But today they are doing some random checks and you get pulled over. The officer checks your lights, your horn, your wipers, your air brake warning alarm, and does a visual check of your vehicle and thumps your tires with a baton. Takes about 10 minutes and there's no problem. Then he asks you to bring your log book and papers inside the station.

Once inside he sees your shipping manifest is in order and that your log book is up to date since your pickup and recent stop. He asks if you stopped anywhere prior to the weigh station and you say you only stopped at the truck stop just before the weigh station, which you've show on your logs as a half-hour stop. He then checks the mileage from Knoxville to the truck stop location. He comes up with 265 miles. He looks at the time. It's 12:30 p.m.. He then proceeds to write you a speeding ticket.

Why? you ask. Because you got to the weigh station in about 3.5 hours, minus the half-hour stop at the truck stop.. If you divide 265 by 3.5 you come up with your speed: nearly 76 miles per hour. That's way in excess of the speed limit. Most of the time if the DOT runs the miles you have completed by hours you have driven and it comes up faster than 62.5, in an area that has a 65 mph speed limit, you will get a speeding ticket. And they can do this for all your log book pages that you previously entered.

For that reason and to maximize your earning power I suggest you run your log book about 60 miles an hour.Let me show you what I mean. Take the You are supposed to use real time entries, but to maximize your profit while maintaining the air of legality, run your logs around 60 miles per hour Knoxville to Baltimore run again. Instead of putting 3.5 hours of driving, take the miles you have driven so far, say 265 and divide by 60 mph or even 59.5 mph. You come up with about 4.75 hours. That's what you log at regardless of how much time it actually took you. Few of you will actually make it to Roanoke from Knoxville in 3.5 hours.

There will be days when you are lucky to average 45 miles an hour because of traffic congestion, heavy load going over high mountains or inclement weather. In very inclement weather you can extend your driving hours by two hours. But if a load took you 9 hours to get to the receiver when in reality it should have taken 6 hours, you have lost 3 hours of driving time.

But a lot of this depends on you and how tired you are. If you're tired, pull over at a rest area or truck stop and sleep. That's the best medicine to help you recover. Remember, long-haul truck driving is a life style, not a job. You will find that you most of your time is spent, driving, sleeping and eating and trying to find something interesting to do during your mandatory off time, which will probably occur when you are hundreds of miles away from home.

Department of Transportation Hours of Service rules can get complicated. There are many who suggest just reading the regulations for yourself, which you eventually will do, or going to the scale house near you - in a POV - and ask an officer to explain the regulation to you. Most will be happy to help. Despite what you have heard DOT officers are not the enemy.

However, I urge you to go to a truck driving school, no matter what some drivers may tell you, and get the training. I have listed some places where you can get free training. The schools have experienced instructors there who can explain the ins and outs of truck driving.