Federal hours-of-service (HOS) regulations are often an area of concern for both individual truck drivers and motor carriers. This has been especially true since the Federal Motor Carrier Administration (FMCSA) introduced multiple significant changes to existing rules in September 2020.
The regulation changes in 2020 shifted the landscape of the average driver’s day-to-day routines. Those changes included:
The 30-minute off-duty break changed from continuous, on-duty hours to a 30-minute interruption of drive time when total drive time reached 8 hours
Revisions to the split sleeper break for property carrying drivers
Changes to the adverse driving condition and definition, and
Easing of the short-haul exception qualifiers allowing a 150-air mile radius and 14-continuous shift hours rather than 12
Those updates came on the heels of the “light enforcement” period associated with the ELD mandate. While the updated regulations have now been in effect for almost four years, Richard Malchow, a transportation industry business advisor with J. J. Keller & Associates, Inc., reported that customers continue to have questions about HOS rules frequently.
He states, “HOS related questions remain about one-fifth of the total transportation questions fielded each month. Nearly half of the HOS questions relate to ELD use.”
Confusion surrounding HOS regulations likely contributes to the commonality of violations. During the last full calendar year (2023), HOS violations accounted for over 40% of the driver-related violations found during roadside inspections.
Most of those violations fell into one of three categories.
Log falsification
Prior to the ELD mandate, the most common HOS roadside inspection issues were “form and manner” violations. This type of violation could be issued if a driver failed to date their logs or missed a city comment, for example.
Since the implementation of ELDs, the number one violation has consistently been “log falsification.” The two primary reasons for this are officers’ new ability to electronically audit an ELD user’s current and previous seven-day records and improper use of the “personal use” driving categories.
Malchow states, “Educating drivers and carriers about the proper use of special driving categories of
‘personal conveyance’ and ‘yard moves’ is the simplest way to cut back on rampant log falsification violations.”
Each personal conveyance scenario will be reviewed by law enforcement based on at least these four primary points: the driver’s physical state, the driver’s off-duty status, whether or not the move benefits the business and the purpose of the move.
If a driver is using personal conveyance while clearly too ill or fatigued to safely operate a vehicle, that driver can be issued a violation. Likewise, if an officer finds that a driver is doing any work to support the business or making moves that advance toward their next business-related destination while claiming personal conveyance, that driver may also be issued a log falsification violation. The exception to this is when a driver advances toward their next business-related stop solely to seek the closest safe parking area.
Like personal conveyance, yard moves also fall into a bit of an enforcement gray area. Even though the term “yard move” was integrated into the ELD mandate, the FMCSA did not define it, resulting in confusion over when a driver could – or couldn’t – use the option.
The yard move special driving category is designed to record the operation of a commercial motor vehicle inside a “yard” as on-duty, but not as driving, significantly impacting a driver’s available hours.
For yard moves, the best practice is simply to only use the yard moves when operating off of a highway in order to avoid log falsification violations for improper usage.
Log falsification has a relatively high Compliance Safety Accountability (CSA) severity weight of seven. The CSA methodology weights violations from one to 10 on a severity scale. The higher the number, the more riskier the violation is viewed in regard to crash risk.
Form and manner violations
While they have moved down to second place, form and manner violations are still common among motor carriers.
When using an ELD, a form and manner violation is typically due to the driver not manually entering a required element. The missing element may be a trailer or a shipping document number.
For drivers exempt from the ELD mandate, the most issued violation from paper logs continues to be the driver’s failure to date the log, a missed city comment or a similar simple form-field requirement.
While the frequency of these violations make them important to address, they carry a much lower risk than the more common log falsification violations. Form and manner violations have a CSA severity weight rating of one. This means there is a low correlation between the violation and the risk of an accident.
No record of duty status
This type of violation is given to drivers who are not using an ELD to log their hours while also not being exempt from the ELD mandate.
Not using an ELD as the method to log when required has a CSA severity weight balanced at the center of a low to high risk of an accident at 5, making it a significant violation.
Lack of ELD use could be due to confusion surrounding requirements or willful non-compliance. Either way, fixing this issue and eliminating these violations simply requires using an ELD when mandated.
While it is easy to overlook HOS issues in the process of conducting day-to-day business, carriers should dedicate some time to better understanding current regulations, assessing their fleet’s compliance and providing training where necessary.
Malchow recommends “tracking and trending HOS roadside inspection data to identify high priority training needs and areas that may need policy review.”
HOS remains the number one area of roadside inspection violations attributed to the driver. To improve compliance and reduce liability exposure, HOS training and systematic log auditing are the top two areas to concentrate on.
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