A few nuances of using personal conveyance during trucking activities
Why does personal conveyance matter to commercial motor vehicle fleets? Because it’s all about money. Personal conveyance for owners-operators is a phenomenon outside the zone of influence. So you have to be careful with it.
FMCSA interprets personal conveyance as an operation with CMV for individual activity during non-working hours, including a trip to lunch, dinner, or breakfast from the truck parking lot. This blog post will reveal a little of the intricacies of such a concept as personal conveyance.
By the way, personal conveyance is easy to manage with EZLOGZ electronic logging device solution.
Personal Conveyance in Real Life
Many drivers, even those working in the transportation industry for more than a year, need help considering an example of personal conveyance. The good thing is that now it is much easier to do this with an electronic logging device than it used to be in the days of paper records.
Experts advise fleet management representatives to conduct a separate briefing on the personal conveyance for all inexperienced drivers. Also, Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration for personal conveyance devotes a lot of time.
It should be noted that the attitude to personal conveyance in Canada differs from that in the USA. It should be taken into account by those professionals who work in the two countries, regularly crossing their borders. Personal conveyance in America is only sometimes considered as such in Canada.
There are two main distinctions. First, a trucker should write down the odometer reading at the end and beginning for personal conveyance to apply in Canada. And the distance must not exceed 47 miles per day. In addition, no trailer must be attached to the machine, and there must be no cargo in the back. Finally, remember that a US Trucker using ELD may need to manually count his working time to ensure compliance with Canadian requirements.
What is Personal Conveyance, and What is not?
Personal conveyance is a part of the HOS regulations. FMCSA interprets personal conveyance in some cases due to many years of collecting various issues. To check, ask yourself two FMCSA questions. First, can you do whatever you want at the moment? Is the reason for moving the CMV personal conveyance? It would be a personal conveyance if you answered yes to these two questions.
It is not personal conveyance if:
- we see delivering cargo, delivering a load;
- CMV driver bypasses resting places to choose one closer motor carrier destination (motor readiness);
- it is a route between job locations;
- CMV drives with a passenger (but not with an off-duty co-worker);
- truck goes after iterating over HOS;
- carrier heads to the vehicle maintenance;
- truck returns to pick up one or two more loads after delivering the first one.
It is personal conveyance if:
- you drive somewhere to get something to eat on your break;
- it is way from home and from job to home;
- it is looking for rest in a safe place;
- it is CMV’s location change at the request of a safety official when you are off-duty;
- transportation of your property.
Fleet tracking should help to record personal conveyance on the fleet logs. One of some special statuses CMV truckers can log into is personal conveyance with an electronic logbook (elog). This off-duty fleet tracking status allows truck drivers to use their CMV for personal use. But there are some limitations to how and when truckers can use personal conveyance, says FMCSA manual for personal conveyance (as of June 2020). For example, truckers can operate personal conveyance in their free time. A trucker also can use the vehicle for personal conveyance when carrying a work-related load.
When Can you Use Personal Conveyance?
Personal conveyance rules are simple. A trucker can use personal conveyance from shippers-receivers to the nearest parking if he or she runs out of hours (check your ELD devices). It is the private conveyance, or in other words, personal conveyance. Personal conveyance begins when a driver is out of hours, but he or she leaves the property. You can use personal conveyance, so you don’t have to show violations to your closest parking option. That one-way personal conveyance is used for the average driver out on the road.
How to Use Personal Conveyance?
Personal conveyance rules say: personal conveyance (private conveyance) is the CMV trucking for personal use while he or she is not at work. For example, a truck driver may log truck tracking hours with a CMV for personal transportation as off-duty only when he or she is released from work and all responsibility for the performance. Personal conveyance is an operation with CMV for a trip to eat from the truck parking lot. And, of course, personal conveyance is a tool to protect drivers’ rights. Such a phenomenon as personal conveyance is outside fleet management influence.
Can you Use Personal Conveyance after 14 Hours?
Here is the question about personal conveyance and DOT. May fleet management use personal conveyance when trucking is out of on-duty hours? No, except for the one personal conveyance exception described in Guidance Question 26 to 49 CFR 395.8, where truckers that run out of HOS may drive parking, provided that the driver allows adequate rest time by daily minimum rest periods under the HOS rules before starting the job.
Personal conveyance (checked by DOT) can be the reason for penalties. A personal conveyance drive is when the trucker does not use their CMV for “On Duty” work and drives exclusively for non-business purposes. So that is a personal conveyance example.
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