![]() "So if the driver gets dispatched from the terminal but heads home on the way to wherever he or she is going and then continues on, that's not personal conveyance," DeLorenzo emphasized. However, things can get subtle with personal conveyance, and that's where some confusion arises - for instance, a trip home isn't always necessarily personal use/ conveyance. He explained that in that particular case, only the part of driving the truck from home to the terminal would be personal conveyance. "If the driver is operating at the direction of the motor carrier, it is not personal conveyance." That is, if a commercial driver is under dispatch, that's "on duty" time, not personal conveyance.ĭeLorenzo gave an example of a driver driving the truck from being off duty at home in to work at the carrier's terminal, picking up a load, then driving the load on to its destination. "I'll give you my common sense approach to personal conveyance," he said. Prior to FMCSA's guidance on the topic being issued, DeLorenzo discussed with the in.sight audience his own informal method of telling whether drive time is personal conveyance or not. ![]() showing the truck's location while the driver is off duty/ in personal conveyance. To allow some privacy around a driver's personal whereabouts, GPS data must be accurate only to within approximately 10 mi. indicating where a truck is while a driver is on duty. So, suddenly, we're getting a lot of questions about this."ĮLD specifications in FMCSA's final rule call for GPS data to be accurate to within 1 mi. "When you just put down 'personal conveyance' on a line in your log, there's no way to really tell - but now we're going to be able to tell. "Suddenly, this has become a big issue," he told listeners. It's just that prior to it coming up in new regulations - and becoming more measureable - with ELDs, no one paid it this much attention and it wasn't as scrutinized. "Personal conveyance," however, first has to be allowed by the motor carrier, and it refers to a driver doing things like taking the commercial truck to his or her home while off duty.ĭeLorenzo emphasized that personal conveyance isn't new. So "yard movement," which is more straightforward, is another special driving instance that could be selectable in an ELD and doesn't tick down a driver's available on-duty hours. An ELD is meant to capture all movement of a commercial motor vehicle and assign it to a driver - thereby recording when and how long that driver is behind the wheel - but there are exceptions, such as a truck being moved around a terminal's yard. ![]() Personal conveyance is one of a few special driving instances that don't count against a commercial truck driver's available hours of service. You can start by simplifying things and cutting some syllables: "personal conveyance" also appears in the ELD final rule more plainly as "personal use." But he also outlined a common sense approach to personal conveyance to help shed some light on the issue, and it's one that many fleets clearly have questions about. ![]() That information will not be included here. However, DeLorenzo asked that certain elements of the discussion not be published because they're being addressed officially in the coming, and not yet finished, guidance document. He said that's been in process now for some time and that he's "hoping within a couple of months we'll have something out there." "It's not really an ELD issue, but it does become an issue because of ELDs," pointed out Joe DeLorenzo, director of the FMCSA Office of Enforcement and Compliance, at one of the final sessions of PeopleNet's and TMW Systems' in.sight conference.Ĭoncerning that FMCSA announcement, DeLorenzo said that so many questions have come up from carriers about personal conveyance, the agency is going to release additional guidance on the topic. Note that the ELD mandate didn't create personal conveyance - the rule just brought it into the spotlight. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's (FMCSA) enforcement and compliance chief discussed the topic and made an important announcement in that regard. The 126 text-laden pages of the electronic logging device (ELD) final rule are full of specs and particulars, but the ones that consistently seem to raise the most questions with motor carriers deal with personal conveyance.
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