Webinar Replay #105: HOS Rule Changes for Split Duty Periods and Flexible Sleeper Berths Pilot

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Mark Rhea: Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the INFINITI Fast Forward webinar series.

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Mark Rhea: My name is Mark Rhea, and I’ll be hosting today’s event, and we have a fantastic topic. We’re going to exchange information with our industry spokesperson, Mr. Brandon Wiseman, on the pilot program for hours of service changes.

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Mark Rhea: Before we get too deep into this, if you don’t mind, if you’d get on the chat, tell us who you are, where you’re, dialing in from.

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Mark Rhea: And, we’ll set this thing into motion, so,

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Mark Rhea: Let’s just… before we get too far into this, I want to make sure that one of the prerequisites for your driving staff is to understand completely the existing hours of service rules and

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Mark Rhea: Infiniti has a complete library full of hours of service content that you can get out to your drivers this afternoon or tomorrow. We’ll have a free demo offer at the end of Brandon’s presentation, so keep that in mind. It’s very important that you understand

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Mark Rhea: the existing 14-hour rule and sleep or birth provisions before you can understand the changes, potential changes that are coming. So.

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Mark Rhea: With that being said, keep the… keep your chat coming in. We got people from Ontario and Pennsylvania, and Houston, and all over the United States.

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Mark Rhea: I think we as an industry have been long engaged in this never-ending debate between

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Mark Rhea: driver fatigue and productivity, and it’ll never stop, but it appears that our friends in the FMCSA are listening a little bit, and there’s some potential

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Mark Rhea: To improve both productivity as well as driver fatigue with some of these pilot changes that, Brandon will go over with us, so…

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Mark Rhea: With that being said, Brandon.

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Mark Rhea: Let me, let me introduce Brandon a little bit more thoroughly. He’s the owner and president of Truck Safe Consulting.

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Mark Rhea: and a partner with Childress Law, as well as a transportation attorney and very well-respected industry spokesman.

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Mark Rhea: He’s assisted some of the nation’s leading motor carriers in developing and maintaining compliant and cutting-edge safety programs, and has represented

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Mark Rhea: represented carriers of all types and sizes before FMCSA on matters. FMCSA matters such as safety rating, upgrades, and civil penalty proceedings.

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Mark Rhea: Through his consulting company, Brandon now offers carriers state-of-the-art compliance resources and regulatory training materials covering a wide range of safety-related topics.

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Mark Rhea: Brandon is a regular speaker at industry events and contributor to industry publications, and I hope he briefs us on the TruckSafe Live podcast that they’ve kicked off. So, Brandon, help us out.

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Brandon Wiseman: Alright, thanks, Mark. As always, thanks to the INFINITI folks for having me back.

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Brandon Wiseman: It’s always great to gather with you all, talk about the hot-button issues impacting fleets across the United States.

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Brandon Wiseman: This, for sure will be one of them, these hours of service pilot programs that the FMCSA announced not too long ago, still in public comment period at the moment, but, have had a lot of folks

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Brandon Wiseman: call me or email me and ask me what exactly is going on with these pilot programs, so it made sense to put one of these webinars together, and I appreciate INFINITI for hosting it. And, we’ll just dig into these two pilot programs, what they are, what they entail, how they will

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Brandon Wiseman: provide some relief to participants, and what’s all involved in becoming a participant. So that’s kind of the agenda for today. We’ll start off with kind of the regulatory landscape and historical context. As Mark mentioned, it’s kind of important that…

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Brandon Wiseman: you understand the backdrop of the hours of service rules that exist currently, so you know what will be changing if you happen to participate in the pilot program. So that’s… we’ll spend a little bit of time doing that, but if you want more details, as Mark said, be sure to

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Brandon Wiseman: check out their content that they have available on this. As we go along, if you have any questions.

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Brandon Wiseman: For me, drop them in the chat, and we’ll take them as we go.

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Brandon Wiseman: Alright?

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Brandon Wiseman: So, giving some backdrop here to these hours of service pilot programs…

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Brandon Wiseman: You know, the hours of service rules in general, a lot of folks don’t know, but the rules have been in effect in some form or fashion going back to the 1930s, when trucking first took root in the United States. We’ve had some form

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Brandon Wiseman: of driver hours of service regulations on the books. And, that’s not surprising, because as it turns out, and as many of you will know.

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Brandon Wiseman: Fatigue-related crashes are a significant contributor to the serious accidents that we see out on our nation’s highways, and when you have a fatigued driver operating these large trucks or buses, that usually does not end well.

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Brandon Wiseman: And so, to cut down on those fatigue-related crashes, that’s the whole point of the hours of service rules, obviously. And so…

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Brandon Wiseman: since the 1930s, we’ve had rules in effect. The rules have gone through changes over the years, as you would expect.

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Brandon Wiseman: And here’s just a brief timeline over the last couple of decades, what we’ve seen. Many of you were around during each of these years here, and will remember these, probably pretty vividly.

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Brandon Wiseman: 2003 was when FMCSA established the base hours of service rules that we know and are familiar with today, as they exist today. Those are primarily the 11-hour driving limit, the 14-hour on-duty window.

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Brandon Wiseman: the 60-slash-70 hour rule, and the 34-hour restart. Those are the rules for property carrying drivers. Rules, if we’ve got any passenger carrying

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Brandon Wiseman: folks on the line here, your rules are a little bit differently. I’m going to focus on the property carrying rules today, because I suspect most, listening in today are with property carriers, but, those are the rules that were established in 2003. Those are the main rules that we still have in effect today.

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Brandon Wiseman: Fast forward to 2011, FMCSA, at that time, put some, additional

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Brandon Wiseman: guardrails up, or they tightened their hours of service rules a little bit. Back then, this is when they established the

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Brandon Wiseman: 30-minute rest break requirement for most truck drivers or bus drivers that we know today. That rule is still in effect, although, as I’ll talk about in a second, it has been relaxed a little bit more recently.

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Brandon Wiseman: But 2011 was when they first put that 30-minute rest break requirement in place.

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Brandon Wiseman: Then fast forward to 2015, this was probably the most significant change to the hours of service rules in modern times, which was the implementation of the electronic logging device mandate.

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Brandon Wiseman: We are all now painfully familiar with the ELD mandate. This is the rule that requires drivers to keep track of their duty status, primarily through electronic logging devices that are integrally synchronized with their vehicle’s engines as a way to, cut down on

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Brandon Wiseman: log falsification, at least that was the hope for the ELD mandate. If we’ve got these devices in the trucks that automatically know when the vehicle is in motion, then hopefully we can cut down on instances of drivers fudging their logbooks, or nefarious carriers fudging logbooks.

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Brandon Wiseman: Whether that’s accomplished that goal is up for debate, but that’s the… that’s where we’re at now. We have the ELD mandate in place, and

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Brandon Wiseman: And it will be in place for the foreseeable future.

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Brandon Wiseman: 2019, fast forward to then, this was when we saw some FMCSA actually relaxing some of their hours of service rules. You don’t see this very often. Once a rule gets put in place, it’s very rare to see the agency come back in and implement some relaxation of those rules, but that’s what we saw.

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Brandon Wiseman: in 2019. This is when, you’ll probably recall, FMCSA expanded the short-haul exemption

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Brandon Wiseman: it harmonized. Before 2019, we actually had two separate short-haul exemptions. We had one for CDL drivers, one for non-CDL drivers. The air mile radius was different for those two groups of…

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Brandon Wiseman: Of drivers, as was the time limitation, and those were harmonized in 2019, so now we have the 150 air mile exemption and the 14-hour time limit for short-hauled drivers.

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Brandon Wiseman: Also, in 2019, that’s when FMCSA added some additional flexibility when it came… when it comes to the split sleeper option, which we’re gonna spend quite a bit of time talking about, so I’m not gonna…

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Brandon Wiseman: Dig into it deeply here, but they did add some flexibility back in 2019, and it turns out that with one of these new pilot programs, they’re going to be adding some even more, additional flexibility when it comes to split sleeper birth.

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Brandon Wiseman: And then also in 2019, the last big change was that they, made some modifications to that 30-minute rest break that was implemented back in 2011, namely,

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Brandon Wiseman: the FMCSA relaxed the rule. It used to be…

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Brandon Wiseman: Before 2019, that drivers had to, obtain a 30-minute rest break within the first 8 hours of coming on duty in a given day.

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Brandon Wiseman: That was relaxed in 2019 to say that drivers now only have to get a 30-minute rest break after having accumulated 8 hours of driving time in a day. So 2019 was when that change was made.

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Brandon Wiseman: So that’s been the recent timeline of events.

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Brandon Wiseman: Before we dive into what exactly the pilot programs are changing, let’s take a quick look, as I said, let’s kind of level set here on what the existing hours of service limits are, because these pilot programs will be modifying some of these limits.

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Brandon Wiseman: So again, these are the current hours of service substantive rules for property carrying drivers. That’s what I’m going to focus on here.

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Brandon Wiseman: There are essentially 5… Rules.

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Brandon Wiseman: kind of four rules, plus an off-duty break, which I’ll talk about here in a minute, but…

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Brandon Wiseman: four main rules that you need to be familiar with. Hopefully, you’re familiar with it if you’re dealing with

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Brandon Wiseman: DOT compliance at your fleet. First is the 11-hour driving limit. This rule says that regulated drivers may drive a maximum of 11 hours after each 10-hour… 10 consecutive hour off-duty break. So that’s a limit on the number of

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Brandon Wiseman: Hours a driver can physically drive a commercial motor vehicle in between those off-duty breaks, essentially in a day, if the driver’s working a regular schedule.

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Brandon Wiseman: Then you have a 14-hour on-duty window. Some folks don’t understand completely what this rule is doing, but it is an on-duty window. It is essentially saying drivers must complete all of those

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Brandon Wiseman: Driving activities that we just talked about with the 11-hour limit within 14 hours of the time they first come on duty.

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Brandon Wiseman: So, let’s say you come on duty at 6 AM in the morning.

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Brandon Wiseman: Well then, 14 hours later, by 8pm that night, you have to have wrapped up all of your driving duties. This is not a limitation contrary to popular belief, this is not a limitation on the number of hours a driver can work in a day. It is just a window of time

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Brandon Wiseman: within which they have to complete their driving activities for that day. They could conceivably keep working.

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Brandon Wiseman: after the 14 hours have expired, they just can’t be driving a commercial motor vehicle after that window has expired. Hopefully that makes sense. It’s a time window within which the driving has to be completed.

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Brandon Wiseman: Then you have your 60-slash-70 hour rule. Drivers are limited to 60 hours on duty, or driving in 7 consecutive days, or 70 hours in 8 consecutive days. It’s 60 or 70, depending on if your fleet

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Brandon Wiseman: has operations every day of the week. If you operate every day of the week, it’s not a driver-by-driver, it’s a fleet-by-fleet. So if you… if your fleet has operations every day of the week.

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Brandon Wiseman: then you’re entitled to take advantage of the 70-hour rule. But if you operate less than 7 days per week, maybe you are closed on the weekends, for example.

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Brandon Wiseman: Then you take advantage of the 60-hour rule. It’s essentially, you can kind of view it as a weekly limit, although it’s on a rolling basis, so it’s not technically a weekly, but that’s kind of a more intuitive way to think about it.

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Brandon Wiseman: It is keeping track of your driver’s total on-duty and driving time, and it’s constantly having them look back over the last 7 consecutive days or 8 consecutive days to see how many of those hours they’ve accumulated over that time. And let’s say you’re under the 70-hour rule, once your drivers have accumulated.

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Brandon Wiseman: 70 hours in an 8 consecutive day period, then they’re out of hours. They can’t drive a commercial motor vehicle anymore after that point, unless and until they get a 34-hour restart, which completely resets that time clock. So this is kind of a rolling look back of the last 8 consecutive days at your

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Brandon Wiseman: On duty and driving time.

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Brandon Wiseman: The 30-minute rest break, kind of already went over this, but just to reiterate here, drivers must take a 30-minute rest break. That rest break can be accomplished through either off-duty time or on-duty not-driving time. For example, if they’re…

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Brandon Wiseman: You know, working in a warehouse or something, in on-duty, not driving status, that can actually accomplish the 30-minute rest break. That was another relaxation that came in 2019.

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Brandon Wiseman: But they must do that after they have, accumulated 8 consecutive hours of driving time. So once they have accumulated 8 hours of driving time in a day, they have to have at least 30 minute, a 30-minute rest break.

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Brandon Wiseman: And then, lastly, this is not so much a rule as it is a way that drivers reset.

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Brandon Wiseman: Those 11- and 14-hour rules that we mentioned earlier, and it essentially says that drivers must generally obtain 10 consecutive hours off duty to reset that 11-hour driving limit and that 14-hour time limit.

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Brandon Wiseman: So, they go home for the evening, in a classic scenario, they get 10 hours off duty, completely relieved of all work responsibilities. Normally that 10 consecutive hours is what’s needed to reset their shifts for the next day.

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Brandon Wiseman: And that 10-hour off-duty break is crucially important, because if they don’t get the 10 consecutive hours off-duty, then they haven’t reset their shifts for the next day, and so their time that they incur driving the next day gets added back into the time that they accumulated the previous day, and that’s where you start to end up.

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Brandon Wiseman: with, violations of the substantive hours of service rules. You’ll see that a lot. Drivers, you know, maybe they missed their 10 consecutive hours by a couple of minutes, or maybe their 10 consecutive hours gets interrupted. Maybe in the first 5 hours, they have to move their truck.

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Brandon Wiseman: For whatever reason, and they have to go on duty to do so, and that interrupts that 10 consecutive hours, and so that blows up their break and screws them over for the next day. So that’s an important part.

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Brandon Wiseman: Of the hours of service rules, and it’s the one that really comes into focus when we start to look at particularly the second pilot program that we’ll talk about, which is the, split sleeper birth pilot program.

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Brandon Wiseman: Let’s see here, we’ve got a question, I’ll go ahead and take this. Willie’s asking, can a driver complete a 30-minute rest break while on yard move status? So, yes, so yard move status is essentially putting them in on-duty, not driving.

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Brandon Wiseman: Status, so yes, that can accomplish a 30-minute rest break under the more relaxed standards from 2019.

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Brandon Wiseman: Okay.

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Brandon Wiseman: So that’s a high-level overview of the current hours of service rules for property-carrying drivers.

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Brandon Wiseman: So, what exactly are we doing, then, when we are talking about these two new pilot programs? Well, these two new pilot programs, again, these are not in effect quite yet. They are not open for participation quite yet. They are still in a public comment period, and will be through…

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Brandon Wiseman: mid-November. But assuming they go into effect as they have been proposed, these rules are aimed at tackling the two

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Brandon Wiseman: rule sets that we’ve highlighted here. The 14-hour on-duty window and the 10-hour off-duty break is what, will be affected by these two pilot programs. So how so?

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Brandon Wiseman: Well, let’s dig in here. Let’s dig into the first proposed pilot program.

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Brandon Wiseman: Which is… A bit confusingly called a split-duty period pilot.

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Brandon Wiseman: That is the FMCSA’s name for it. And really what this…

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Brandon Wiseman: particular pilot program is aimed at is addressing a problem that drivers and carriers have been complaining about for many years, and rightfully so.

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Brandon Wiseman: Which is the problem of drivers incurring excessive detention time throughout their days.

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Brandon Wiseman: At shippers or receivers’ facilities, having to sit there for hours on end, waiting to get loaded or unloaded, due to no fault of their own in many cases.

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Brandon Wiseman: The problem with that is that that detention time under the normal hours of service rules that we just went through eats into the driver’s productivity.

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Brandon Wiseman: And really ties their hands in terms of their availability to continue to work after that detention time. And I’ll show you how that’s the case here.

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Brandon Wiseman: So you can see in this example here, this is just kind of a, you know, sample driver’s log here. This driver is in off-duty status until 6 a.m. in the morning, comes on duty at 6 AM, does some paperwork, pre-trip inspection, that type of stuff, in on-duty, not driving status, from 6 to 7.

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Brandon Wiseman: Dries 4 hours from 7 to 11, takes a 30-minute off-duty rest break from 11 to 11.30.

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Brandon Wiseman: drives for four and a half more hours until 4PM, and then is detained for 3 hours at a receiver’s facility, for example.

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Brandon Wiseman: You could see what that…

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Brandon Wiseman: 3-hour detention time did to this driver’s productivity for the day. It screwed him over, right? Because that 14-hour time window started when he first came on duty at 6 AM, and it closes at 8pm. That’s 14 hours after 6 AM.

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Brandon Wiseman: And you could see the problem here, that detention time

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Brandon Wiseman: cannot be written off, cannot… it does not extend that 14-hour time window under the standard hours of service rules. So it is essentially lost time.

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Brandon Wiseman: Now, the driver, under the current rule set, is unable to get that full 11 hours of driving time within that 14-hour time window because of that excessive detention.

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Brandon Wiseman: Let’s see, so they’ve got five and a half, six, seven, eight, nine and a half hours of driving time that they can get, whereas they normally would have gotten 11 hours. They would have had 11 hours of driving time within their 14-hour time window. Because of that excessive detention, it really tied their hands. They weren’t able to make full use of their driving time throughout that day.

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Brandon Wiseman: Hopefully that makes sense. That’s the problem.

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Mark Rhea: That 14-hour window is rigid. There’s zero flexibility today.

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Brandon Wiseman: That’s right. That’s exactly right. That’s the problem statement that this pilot program is looking to solve.

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Brandon Wiseman: Side note here, I mean, this isn’t on the slide, but this was a problem that the FMCSA considered tackling back in 2019 when they were making some changes to the rules to make them more flexible, and they had actually proposed

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Brandon Wiseman: something similar to what this pilot program will do as a rule that would be available for anybody, but that did not make it into the final rule in 2019, so here we are. We’re a few years down the road here, and folks are still having trouble with excessive detention time eating into a driver’s productivity throughout the day, so now the FMCSA

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Brandon Wiseman: Under the current administration is coming back in and saying, yeah, we acknowledge that that’s a problem, how are we going to deal with that?

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Brandon Wiseman: We’re gonna deal with that, at least at first, through a pilot program. So something to understand about pilot programs is this is a common way that FMCSA and other administrative agencies, try something out that they’re thinking about doing, and the purpose is for them to gather data.

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Brandon Wiseman: to see, in FMCSA’s case, to see, is this going to have an adverse impact to safety if we were to roll this out on a broader scale? These changes that will be available

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Brandon Wiseman: for pilot program participants. So that’s what the plan is, is, to address this problem of excessive detention time

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Brandon Wiseman: By allowing participants in this split-duty period pilot program to do something about that excessive detention time. And what is it going to allow them to do?

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Brandon Wiseman: Here’s what the split-duty period pilot program will allow participants to do. To pause their 14-hour rule once per day.

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Brandon Wiseman: For a period of between 30 minutes and 3 hours to extend that 14-hour time window, if they happen to get delayed for a period of 30 minutes up to 3 hours.

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Brandon Wiseman: That pause can be accomplished through either… Off-duty time? Sleeper birth time?

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Brandon Wiseman: Or on duty, not driving time, or any combination of the three, but it has to be a consecutive period of those three.

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Brandon Wiseman: So, let’s look back at our original example. It’s probably easiest to describe by looking at this example. So, same example here. Driver goes on duty at 6 AM,

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Brandon Wiseman: Works in the office or whatever, for an hour. Starts driving at 7, from 7 to 11, so 4 hours there, takes a 30-minute rest break from 11 to 11.30, starts driving again, then gets to the receiver’s facility at 4pm, and is detained again.

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Brandon Wiseman: for 3 hours.

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Brandon Wiseman: Remember, under the normal hours of service rules, that means that when the driver starts driving again at 7pm, the driver would only have an hour left to finish up their driving activities for that day, under the standard 14-hour rule.

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Brandon Wiseman: But under this, let’s say that this driver is now a participant in this split-duty period pilot program, you can see what has happened now as a result of the flexibility afforded by participation in this pilot program.

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Brandon Wiseman: That 3-hour…

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Brandon Wiseman: consecutive off-duty break that the driver had while being detained at the receiver’s facility, he’s able to extend his 14-hour time window by that 3 hours. So, up to 3 hours. And he has a 3-hour consecutive

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Brandon Wiseman: Off-duty break, that he can then extend his 14-hour time window by.

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Brandon Wiseman: So now… The driver gains an additional one and a half hours of drive time.

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Brandon Wiseman: due to their participation in this pilot program. Why one and a half hours and not three hours? It’s because he’s still restrained by that 11-hour driving limit. He still can only get 11 hours total of driving time

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Brandon Wiseman: within his extended time window. So he still bumps up against his 11-hour time limit, but it allowed him to get that extra hour and a half on the back end that he normally would not have gotten because of that 14-hour time window.

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Brandon Wiseman: Does that make sense?

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Brandon Wiseman: If not, throw a question in the…

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Brandon Wiseman: In the comments, or or the chat box, and…

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Brandon Wiseman: I’ll try another way to explain it. But that’s… that’s essentially what the Split Duty Period Pilot Program is allowing. That once per day.

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Brandon Wiseman: Extension of the 14-hour window by between 3 hour… or 30 minutes or 3 hours, given, you know.

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Brandon Wiseman: delays throughout the driver’s day. For example, let’s say that the driver didn’t have that

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Brandon Wiseman: 3-hour block, he just had that 30-minute rest break. Well, theoretically, he could then extend his…

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Brandon Wiseman: his 14-hour time window by that 30 minutes that he had for the rest break in the middle of his day. The point is, it has to be a break that you got, or that you had throughout your day that was between 3 hours, 30 minutes and 3 hours consecutive time.

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Brandon Wiseman: Alright.

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Lydia Wommack: We had a Q&A here from Kyle.

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Lydia Wommack: I don’t know if you can see it, but does the driver or carrier get to choose which period of time not driving is the time that’s paused, or is it just the first period of time that reaches that 30-minute threshold that gets paused regardless of the time length?

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Brandon Wiseman: Yeah, that’s a good question. I had the same question. I don’t think the rule, the proposed rule addresses it, but I gotta think that the answer is, they get to pick which… which one they use. In other words, because it’s gonna be inevitable, right, that the driver’s probably gonna get a 30-minute, at least a 30-minute break.

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Brandon Wiseman: At some point, so I don’t think they’re gonna be restrained to that 30 minutes. I think they’re gonna be able to choose which of their breaks within their 14-hour time window is going to be used to extend that time window, and…

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Brandon Wiseman: you know, inevitably, it’s always going to be the longest one, right? They’re always gonna choose the longest one to extend their 14-hour time frame to get the most productivity back.

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Brandon Wiseman: That they lost. So, I think that’s how it’s gonna work.

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Brandon Wiseman: Alright?

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Brandon Wiseman: So, who’s eligible to participate in the split duty period pilot? Well, according to the FMCSA’s proposal for this pilot program, here’s who’s eligible. First of all, there’s going to have to be an application process that folks who are interested in participating goes through. FMCSA hasn’t published this yet. Again.

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Brandon Wiseman: comments are still open on this through November 17th. So, once they open this up for applications, then there will be an application that they will publish, and then if you or your drivers are interested in participating, you will have to fill out that application.

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Brandon Wiseman: But there’s more to it. There’s quite a bit more to it, as you would expect with a pilot program.

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Brandon Wiseman: For one, there’s gonna be a hard cutoff on the number of drivers that can participate, and for whatever reason, FMCSA has set that number at 256 CDL drivers from

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Brandon Wiseman: Eligible carriers who are going to be, accepted into the pilot program.

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Brandon Wiseman: So, what is an eligible carrier? Well, FMCSA has set out some criteria where they essentially say that low-risk property carriers are going to be the eligible carriers whose drivers could potentially be eligible to participate. What does low-risk mean?

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Brandon Wiseman: There’s a formula that the FMCSA has published in their proposal if you’re interested in looking at it. I don’t have it open here, but it essentially comes down to your CSA scores. I think there are some limitations on… on what your CSA scores can be, and how many, and your out-of-service rates as well, and also crashes, I think, are the three components that play into whether you are an eligible property carrier or not.

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Brandon Wiseman: So 256 CDL drivers from one of those, one or more of those eligible, property carriers will be ultimately allowed to participate, assuming they apply.

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Brandon Wiseman: So beyond eligibility, what controls is FMCSA going to put in place once folks start participating? Well, here’s how they have this originally set up.

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Brandon Wiseman: This could change slightly, depending on the comments received, and if FMCSA makes any changes based on those comments, but here’s how they have originally proposed it.

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Brandon Wiseman: They propose this as a 4-month pilot program, where participants will follow the normal hours of service rules for the first month, kind of like a control.

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Brandon Wiseman: And then the last 3 months of the program, they will be under the… they will be allowed to operate under this exemption, essentially under the…

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Brandon Wiseman: modified 14-hour rule. So they will use that first month under the standard rules as a control to see how the safety data for those drivers compares

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Brandon Wiseman: To them operating, the last 3 months under the exemption.

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Brandon Wiseman: And FMCSA will be collecting data throughout this pilot program, in

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Brandon Wiseman: fairly invasive ways, more invasive than we’ve seen them do in other situations, but here’s what they are proposing. The drivers who participate in this program will be required to, have

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Brandon Wiseman: Particular apps on their smartphones, and also wear some smart watches to help measure their fatigue, is the idea.

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Brandon Wiseman: The mechanics of how that will work exactly aren’t set out quite yet, but we will get more details on that once the rule gets, or once the pilot program gets finally set up. But there will be pretty extensive data collection through the driver’s smartphones and smartwatches, also through the driver’s electronic logging device.

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Brandon Wiseman: And also through some alertness tests.

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Brandon Wiseman: The drivers who participate will be required to, on some cadence, do some alertness tests, probably on their smartphones, if I had to guess, where it will be testing their alertness. And also through SMS data. FMCSA will be monitoring the SMS data.

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Brandon Wiseman: Of the carriers whose drivers are participating. And they will be looking at all of that data, and gathering all of that data, and using it to inform whether they are gonna move forward with this as a broader thing that they’re gonna open up for all drivers going forward.

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Brandon Wiseman: Or whether they need to shut it down, or whether they need to make some modifications to it.

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Brandon Wiseman: So that’s how it will work in practice. I see several other questions here, let’s,

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Brandon Wiseman: Let’s see here, Scott’s asking, how does this differ from the Split Sleeper 7382? I thought that extended or paused the 14-hour day as well. You’re right, it does. But this is an even broader exemption. We’ll talk about the Split Sleeper here in the next, the next pilot program, but…

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Brandon Wiseman: To answer your question, this split-duty period pilot is broader, because it would encompass even drivers who don’t have sleeper berths.

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Brandon Wiseman: It would be available for any drivers who’s… who get detained at a shippers or receivers facility, for example, and they need to extend their 14-hour

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Brandon Wiseman: time limit, and they don’t have access to a sleeper berth to use the split sleeper berth provision. That’s essentially the difference. So this split-duty period pilot is broader than just a sleeper berth.

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Brandon Wiseman: provision.

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Brandon Wiseman: All right

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Brandon Wiseman: Colleen’s asking for LTL if a driver’s held up for an hour at two different customers. Can he only use this change for only one of the two customers, if I understand this correctly? Yeah, that’s an important point, and…

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Brandon Wiseman: You’re right, your intuition is right. They could only use it for that one customer, because remember, it has to be a consecutive period of time.

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Brandon Wiseman: of detention time that they had in their 14-hour rule that they can then use as the… as the basis for extending their 14-hour time limit. Presumably, in between your two customers, they’re gonna have… they’re gonna incur some other driving time, presumably.

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Brandon Wiseman: In which case, you no longer have consecutive time frames. So they would only be able to use one or the other, probably the longer one, as the basis to extend their 14-hour time limit.

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Brandon Wiseman: Tommy’s asking, does the 3-hour off-duty pause only apply to trucks with sleepers, or will it apply to daycabs as well? So I just answered that. So, this is the broader one that will apply to daycabs as well. That’s the benefit of it, that’s why it works more broadly than the, split sleeper berth pilot, which I’ll describe next.

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Brandon Wiseman: Jennifer’s asking, can this be used in conjunction with the adverse weather exemption? Yeah, it’s a good question. I don’t think FMCSA has addressed it in their

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Brandon Wiseman: In their proposal, I don’t see why it couldn’t be used in connection with that, although I will caution you on the use of adverse weather exemption.

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Brandon Wiseman: We’ve put out a lot of content on that exemption in particular. If you’re interested, I’d encourage you to check it out, because my experience, and a lot of our clients, motor carrier clients’ experience with the adverse driving exemption.

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Brandon Wiseman: is that the FMCSA interprets that exemption a lot more narrowly than a lot of carriers would want to use it for. To give you an example.

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Brandon Wiseman: The FMCSA, in their guidance on adverse weather, on the adverse weather exemption, the example they give of a legitimate use of adverse driving condition exemption is a landslide shutting down a highway because of the landslide. It has to be completely unexpected.

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Brandon Wiseman: can’t be forecasted weather events, like snowstorms or anything like that, and FMCSA gets pretty aggressive with that. So that’s my only caution to you, is be careful with the use of adverse weather exemption. It should be used sparingly.

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Brandon Wiseman: Couple more questions here, then I’ll move on to the second pilot program.

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Brandon Wiseman: Susan’s asking, how will the ELD process

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Brandon Wiseman: How will the ELD process during the pilot? Will it continue as normal, or will the manufacturers have to make a change in the program? That’s a million dollar question that I’m sure the ELD manufacturers are scrambling to figure out the answer to. I don’t know. I don’t know how FMCSA is planning to handle that.

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Brandon Wiseman: if the ELD manufacturers… you gotta think, if only 256 drivers are gonna be participating, I don’t know that that’s enough incentive

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Brandon Wiseman: to have the ELD providers making wholesale changes to their… to their platforms to accommodate that, so…

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Brandon Wiseman: If I had to guess, I would say they’re probably not going to make changes during the pilot program, but maybe some will, and maybe some will surprise me. So how do we handle it in the ELDs, assuming that the ELDs aren’t going to accommodate it?

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Brandon Wiseman: Fmcsa will have to provide some guidance on that. I suspect that they will require the drivers to make some annotations on their devices to accommodate.

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Brandon Wiseman: Kyle’s asking, does the pause only last for a maximum of 3 hours? That’s right. It’s only going to be a maximum of 3 hours per day, that they’ll be able to pause their 14-hour clock. Jennifer’s asking, we don’t allow adverse weather exemption, but this was a… oh, for your own personal knowledge. Yep, there you go.

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Brandon Wiseman: Alright?

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Brandon Wiseman: Thanks for all the questions, keep throwing them in there if you got them. We’ll move on, then, to the second pilot program, which is called the Flexible Sleeper Berth Pilot Program, and this gets into vehicles equipped with a compliant sleeper berth.

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Brandon Wiseman: So, the first thing to know is that the existing regulations include what’s called a split sleeper exception that I will tell you up front is confusing as hell.

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Brandon Wiseman: It remains… so we… at TruckSafe, we push out a lot of educational content on our YouTube channel, trying to break down some of the more complex rules. Our split… our video on split sleeper exception remains the most viewed

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Brandon Wiseman: video that we have on our YouTube channel with hundreds of other videos. I think we’ve got several hundred thousands of views on that video, and it’s no surprise, because

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Brandon Wiseman: The way that this rule is set up in the current rules is not intuitive at all. It is very confusing, and it leads to a lot of violations, because drivers and carriers just don’t understand how it works, and I can’t fault you for that, because the rule is written in a very confusing, convoluted way.

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Brandon Wiseman: And it’s difficult to get right under the current rules, but it exists. So here’s the rule in a nutshell, and then I’m gonna show you our video on Split Sleeper, because it’ll… it does a better job than me trying to explain it here live. So I’m just gonna show that video here after the fact, but…

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Brandon Wiseman: Essentially, here it is in a nutshell. Under the current rule, drivers may split their required 10 consecutive hours off-duty into two shorter periods in the sleeper berth.

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Brandon Wiseman: For example, a 7-3 split or an 8-2 split, and exclude both of those periods from the 14-hour time window in their weekly limits. As long as the long break, the 7 or the 8,

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Brandon Wiseman: is at least 7 hours, and the short break cannot exceed 3 hours. Both most… Total 10.

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Brandon Wiseman: So you can already tell that this is kind of a nightmare to administer and to understand, and so…

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Brandon Wiseman: That’s why I’ll show this video. It’s about an 8-minute video, but I think it’s important for people to understand how the mechanics of how this works, and I think this 8-minute video… 8-minute video does a pretty good job, of breaking down, so I’m gonna show that now. Throw your questions in the comments or the Q&A while this is playing, if you have any.

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Brandon Wiseman: Here we go.

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Audio shared by Brandon Wiseman: in the sleeper berth. So, in other words, you can’t have two separate 5-hour periods.

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Brandon Wiseman: Start that over.

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Audio shared by Brandon Wiseman: Hey everyone, Brandon here from Truck Safe Consulting. One of the more confusing aspects of the federal hours of service rules, at least for some drivers, is the so-called split sleeper berth rule. Used correctly, this rule offers some decent flexibility to drivers whose trucks are equipped with the sleeper berth.

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Audio shared by Brandon Wiseman: Particularly when it comes to times they are detained at a shipper or receiver facility. But the rule isn’t all that intuitive, unfortunately. So in this video, we’re going to try and break it down to understand exactly what it is, who can take advantage of it, and how it impacts your available hours. So stay tuned, and be sure to hit that like and subscribe button below to keep up to date on all of our new DOT-related content.

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Audio shared by Brandon Wiseman: Okay, so split sleeper, a topic that’s been a thorn in my own side for the past decade or so. You see, here at TruckSafe, we do quite a bit of third-party log auditing for our motor carrier clients, and I can tell you from experience that whenever you encounter logs, particularly paper ones, where drivers are utilizing the split sleeper berth rules, it can add a significant amount of time to the review, just making sure drivers are using the rule correctly.

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Audio shared by Brandon Wiseman: We’re also routinely hearing from drivers and safety teams alike that the split sleeper rule is overly difficult to understand and apply, relatively speaking.

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Audio shared by Brandon Wiseman: Now, that can be true, particularly for carriers and drivers who aren’t routinely taking advantage of the split sleeper rule, but I’ve found it’s one of those things where practice makes perfect. The more you encounter and utilize the rule, the more natural it becomes. So let’s take some time to break it down. First up, what exactly is the split sleeper birth rule? Well, first things first, you can’t really understand that rule without first understanding the broader hours of service rules.

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Audio shared by Brandon Wiseman: Now, I’m not going to discuss those in detail here, but suffice it to say, the rules generally set substantive limits on the number of hours that commercial drivers can drive within certain time frames.

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Audio shared by Brandon Wiseman: For example, under the federal rules, property-carrying drivers are prohibited from driving more than 11 hours between each 10 consecutive hour off-duty break. Essentially, 11 hours a day.

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Audio shared by Brandon Wiseman: But notice here that a 10 consecutive hour off-duty break resets the driver’s available hours. So once they get 10 consecutive hours off-duty, then they have 11 hours available to drive again.

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Audio shared by Brandon Wiseman: It turns out, it’s this 10-hour off-duty break that’s the key to understanding the split sleeper birth rule. You see, in essence, the split sleeper birth rule is a limited exception to the requirement that drivers obtain a full 10 consecutive hours off-duty to reset their substantive time limits. In other words, the split sleeper birth rule allows drivers to split up that 10-hour off-duty break in a couple of different chunks of time throughout the day.

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Audio shared by Brandon Wiseman: And still reset their substantive hours of service limits, even though those 10 hours off duty aren’t consecutive.

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Audio shared by Brandon Wiseman: Now, before we get into the nitty-gritty here, let’s talk about who benefits from this rule.

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Audio shared by Brandon Wiseman: Now, first off, as we said at the start, this rule only applies to drivers whose trucks are equipped with a sleeper berth, which obviously makes sense, given its title. But beyond that, the rule really works to the benefit of drivers whose schedules can’t really accommodate a full 10 consecutive hour off-duty break each day. The prime example is a driver who is detained at a shipper’s or receiver’s facility for long periods of time during the day, which necessarily cuts into his

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Audio shared by Brandon Wiseman: her available hours. Let’s say a driver starts driving at 5 AM in the morning. Now, under the substantive limits, that driver would normally have until 7pm, 14 hours later, within which to drive up to 11 hours before he or she would have to stop and obtain that 10 consecutive hour off-duty brick.

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Audio shared by Brandon Wiseman: But let’s say the driver arrives at a shipper’s facility at 11am and is detained for 3 hours while his or her trailer is being loaded until 2PM. So here, the driver’s driven for a total of 6 hours, from 5 AM to 11am, but because of the 3 hours he or she was detained at the shipper’s facility.

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Audio shared by Brandon Wiseman: Now they only have 5 hours left, from 2PM to 7pm, to use the rest of his or her available driving time before having to take that 10 consecutive hours off duty.

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Audio shared by Brandon Wiseman: That big chunk of detention time has eaten a significant portion of time out of that driver’s day, and will likely prevent him or her from taking full advantage of their available hours for that day. Why is that the case?

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Audio shared by Brandon Wiseman: It’s the case because the 3 hours of off-duty detention time is essentially lost time. It doesn’t do anything to reset or extend the driver’s available hours because it’s not a full 10 consecutive hours off duty. And therein lies the problem that the split sleeper birth rule seeks to fix.

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Audio shared by Brandon Wiseman: That rule allows drivers to use those interim off-duty breaks to their advantage by combining them with longer breaks to achieve the equivalent of a 10-hour off-duty break, and thereby reset their available hours. So here’s how it works. So Section 395.1G of the Federal Hours of Service rules say that a driver whose trucks are equipped with a sleeper berth can obtain the equivalent of a 10-hour off-duty break

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Audio shared by Brandon Wiseman: by taking two separate non-consecutive breaks that together equal at least 10 hours.

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Audio shared by Brandon Wiseman: Now, there are some limitations to this. First.

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Audio shared by Brandon Wiseman: Neither of the two periods that count towards this calculation can be fewer than 2 hours in length. So, in other words, if you have an hour-long break in the middle of your day, that can’t be used for this purpose. Each qualifying break must be at least 2 hours long.

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Audio shared by Brandon Wiseman: Second, the two periods together must equal at least 10 hours. So if you have a 2-hour break and a 7 and a half hour break, that’s not gonna work, because those only equal 9 and a half hours total.

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Audio shared by Brandon Wiseman: And third, the longer of the two breaks must be at least 7 hours long, and must be completed in the sleeper berth. So, in other words, you can’t have two separate 5-hour periods, since neither of those breaks is at least 7 hours long.

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Audio shared by Brandon Wiseman: So, essentially, we’re talking about off-duty breaks of 2 and 8, 3 and 7, or somewhere in between those two limits. Those are the types of breaks that will qualify as the equivalent of a 10-hour off-duty break, and therefore will reset your substantive hours of service limits. Now, I mentioned that the longer of the two breaks must be entirely in the sleeper berth, but what about the shorter of the two breaks? Does that one have to be in the sleeper berth?

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Audio shared by Brandon Wiseman: The answer is no. The rule says that the short break can be spent either in the sleeper berth, in off-duty status, or some combination of the two. So, for example, that shorter break can be spent in off-duty status, grabbing some lunch.

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Audio shared by Brandon Wiseman: and then taking a short nap in the sleeper berth. Okay, so now that we know that a shorter off-duty break of between 2 and 3 hours, and a longer sleeper berth break of between 7 and 8 hours can be combined to achieve that equivalent of a 10-hour off-duty break. But how does that actually work to the driver’s benefit?

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Audio shared by Brandon Wiseman: Well, that takes us to the important part of the rule, which is how we calculate the driver’s available hours when he or she takes advantage of the split sleeper birth rule.

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Audio shared by Brandon Wiseman: So the rule says that when a driver achieves the equivalent of a 10-hour off-duty break by combining two shorter breaks, the driver’s available hours are to be recalculated from the end of the first of the two qualifying periods, and the qualifying periods themselves are excluded from the calculation. Let me say that again, because that’s the critical part. When a driver achieves the equivalent of a 10-hour off-duty break through two qualifying shorter

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Audio shared by Brandon Wiseman: periods, the driver’s available hours are recalculated from the end of the first of the two qualifying breaks, and neither of those breaks counts against his or her available hours.

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Audio shared by Brandon Wiseman: So let’s go back to our previous example to see how exactly this works in practice.

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Audio shared by Brandon Wiseman: Recall that the driver started driving at 5 AM, arrived at the shipper’s facility at 11am, and was detained for 3 hours until 2PM. Let’s continue with that example to say that the driver now proceeds to drive for another 5 hours until 7pm, and then stops for his 7-hour sleeper birth break.

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Audio shared by Brandon Wiseman: Now, under normal circumstances, that 3-hour detention break would have been lost time. The driver would have had to stop for a full 10-hour break at 7pm in order to reset his or her available hours for the next day. But here, under the split sleeper birth rule, the driver can use that 3-hour break to his or her benefit as a qualifying split sleeper birth break, and combine it with the subsequent 7-hour sleeper birth break

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Audio shared by Brandon Wiseman: to achieve the equivalent of a 10-hour break. This means that his or her substantive time limits reset 3 hours earlier than normal, at 2AM the following morning, rather than 5 AM. And now we start our calculation at the end of the first qualifying break, or 2PM, right after the detention break.

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Audio shared by Brandon Wiseman: So what that means is that starting at 2PM, the driver now has 14 hours within which to drive 11 hours. And remember that neither of the two qualifying split sleeper breaks count against these available hours.

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Audio shared by Brandon Wiseman: So if we start at 2, and count up to the driver’s 7-hour off-duty break at 7pm, that means the driver’s driven 5 total hours and has used only 5 hours of his or her available time window. So once the driver completes that 7-hour break, he or she still has 9 hours left of his or her 14-hour window within which to drive 6 more hours on his or her 11-hour driving limit.

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Audio shared by Brandon Wiseman: Now, the magic really comes when drivers start to string several days’ worth of split sleeper berth used together by taking a short break, long break, short break, long break. The split sleeper essentially allows them to utilize the shorter off-duty brakes, assuming they’re at least 2 hours long, to their benefit, whereas normally that time would have been lost.

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Audio shared by Brandon Wiseman: So the split sleeper birth rule is extending their available work hours and increasing efficiency by taking advantage of interim rest breaks. And again, this is particularly useful when drivers start to string together multiple days’ worth of split sleeper use.

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Audio shared by Brandon Wiseman: We see this a lot with teen drivers who can piggyback off of one another’s split sleeper birth time and really extend their work availability day after day while still achieving the required rest breaks. So that’s the split sleeper birth rule in a nutshell. And as I said at the start, understanding the rule can be tricky.

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Brandon Wiseman: Alright, so thanks for sticking in with us there. I thought that would be the most efficient way to kind of break down the split sleeper berth rule in a nutshell to the best you can. Obviously, there’s a lot of, there are a lot of mechanics to that rule.

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Brandon Wiseman: And like I said, very confusing, very hard to audit if, you know, for auditors and internally at the motor carrier.

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Brandon Wiseman: But that’s… that’s the current rule in a nutshell. Couple questions here before I talk about what’s changing with that rule.

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Brandon Wiseman: Here with the pilot program. Nicole’s asking, how can a driver go off duty at a customer or shipper? Doesn’t it state in the regulations that if a motor carrier has instructed you to go to a location, you must be on duty? That’s the general rule, but there is also FMCSA guidance that says that if the driver is relieved.

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Brandon Wiseman: of work responsibility while they are waiting. In other words, they’re free to…

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Brandon Wiseman: go watch TV, or go to a restaurant for lunch, or whatever. If that’s the case, then they can log that time as off-duty, and that turns out to be a pretty common occurrence, particularly for drivers with sleeper births.

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Brandon Wiseman: Somebody else is saying line 3 would be at zero in this example, no. Yeah, my examples don’t… aren’t split out into the lines, obviously, so that makes it, a little difficult to see, but it was easier to put on the screen. I can’t remember which is line 3. Which one is line 3? Is that…

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Mark Rhea: Not on duty, not driving.

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Brandon Wiseman: On duty, not driving.

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Brandon Wiseman: So line 3 would be 0 in this example.

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Brandon Wiseman: I’m not sure I understand the question completely.

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Brandon Wiseman: The 11-hour clock would be at zero.

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Brandon Wiseman: Yeah, so the 11-hour…

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Brandon Wiseman: You may have to email me after the fact, so I can walk through that example with respect to your question, because I’m not following it, and I apologize for that.

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Brandon Wiseman: So, looking at participants of the Flexible Sleeper Birth Pilot Program, what exactly is this pilot program seeking to fix? What problem is it seeking to fix?

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Brandon Wiseman: Well, the existing split sleeper provision is too rigid. According to many drivers who use it, and many carriers whose drivers use it, it is limited to the 8-2 or 7-3 splits, or anything in between.

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Brandon Wiseman: And, some will argue that that has diminished its usefulness. And many drivers will argue that it doesn’t let them… doesn’t give them enough flexibility

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Brandon Wiseman: to get the rest when they need the rest. They would like to have more flexibility in how they split the rule. This was something else that the FMCSA actually considered, changing back in 2019, when it added some additional flexibility, was looking at different… allowing different ways to split

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Brandon Wiseman: the split sleeper birth, or the sleeper birth, requirement. And so, that never went forward, but now the FMCSA is revisiting it with this pilot program.

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Brandon Wiseman: So, under the proposal as it exists currently, again, this is subject to change based on the comments received, it would allow participants to split required off-duty periods into more flexible segments, namely 827364, or 5-5. So, all the way down to 5-5 is going to be allowed

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Brandon Wiseman: for participants of this pilot program. And I’ve listed those out for convenience, but it obviously could be the interims between those different, you know, thresholds. So, you could have

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Brandon Wiseman: 5.5 and 4.5, and that type of thing, but 82736455 will be allowed. And the rationale that the FMCSA has pitched in its proposal is that there are a number of studies that have been conducted over the years that purport to show

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Brandon Wiseman: the recuperative value of these different splits. In other words, drivers who get these different… get rest via these different splits, tend to show, evidence that they are well-rested, just as if they had got it with an 8-2 split or a 7-3 split. So that’s the rationale.

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Brandon Wiseman: So who’s gonna be eligible for this one? Well, eligibility is going to be the same for this program as it is for the split duty period pilot. Sorry, that title didn’t get changed up there at the top, but this is for the… this is for the,

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Brandon Wiseman: the Split Sleeper Birth Pilot Program, the eligibility criteria is the same. It’s gonna also involve an application and approval process. It is also going to be cut off at 256 CDL drivers from eligible carriers, and it is also only going to be available

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Brandon Wiseman: To drivers of so-called low-risk, property carriers.

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Brandon Wiseman: Same safety controls as well as with the prior pilot program. 4-month pilot program, 1 month of control, 3 months of testing under the exemption, same type of data collection to make sure that

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Brandon Wiseman: participants in this program aren’t more fatigued than they would have been otherwise with smartphones and smartwatches, ELDs, alertness tests.

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Brandon Wiseman: tests, SMS data, and all of that fun stuff.

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Brandon Wiseman: Public comments, again, for this one are open through November 17th in that docket number if you have anything to say about it.

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Brandon Wiseman: Alright, so that’s the sleeper birth pilot program that is being proposed.

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Brandon Wiseman: And that is the end of all of the materials I had prepared for this. Yeah, so apologies to the person asking about the on-duty time, that I wasn’t able to answer that, but I don’t see any other questions. If you do have any other questions.

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Brandon Wiseman: throw them in the, in the chat or the Q&A box. One of the things I did, in the chat was I put a link to our article on the split sleeper birth rule and our video to it, so that one that I just showed, if you’re interested in watching that again.

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Brandon Wiseman: That link is in the chat, you can just click on that and access it.

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Brandon Wiseman: I think the INFINITI team will also be sending around the slides from this presentation, and also a replay of it, so you can go back and watch.

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Brandon Wiseman: Let’s see here, we’ve got another question, couple questions coming in.

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Brandon Wiseman: Courtney’s asking…

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Brandon Wiseman: Are they using the same drivers for both pilots, or is it 256 for one and 256 for the other? The,

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Brandon Wiseman: the… I think it’s 256 for one and 256 for the other. That was the… that was how I read these pilot programs. It’s gonna be a separate group of drivers.

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Brandon Wiseman: Scott is asking…

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Brandon Wiseman: Gonna answer this off-air, but can the driver use the current split sleeper on their last day of driving back to the yard? Can the driver use the current split sleeper on their last day

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Brandon Wiseman: Of driving back to the yard when they’re going to be home that night off duty.

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Brandon Wiseman: Yeah, so they’re gonna get a full break when they’re coming back. The question is, can they use that split sleeper the day before when they’re anticipating getting a full rest break? Yeah, as long as they meet the criteria for that.

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Brandon Wiseman: they could use it. They would still have to have…

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Brandon Wiseman: that shorter break and the longer break, that would be qualifying breaks to take advantage of it, but yeah, I don’t see why they couldn’t use it on that last day coming home, even in anticipation of a full 10-hour break coming up.

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Brandon Wiseman: Let’s see, Teresa’s asking, would the 6-4 or 5-5 split must be done in sleeper, or can they use the off-duty status?

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Brandon Wiseman: That is a good question. How do the splits have to break down under the pilot program?

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Brandon Wiseman: Particularly the 5-5 split. Obviously, you don’t have a short and long one there, you have two equal ones. I don’t know if FMCSA has addressed that in detail. It is something that they will have to address, eventually before they roll this out, but I don’t know that I have a good answer for that. I don’t know that I’ve seen the answer for that. I would suspect…

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Brandon Wiseman: that it would work the same. In other words, if we got a 6-4 split.

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Brandon Wiseman: The 4-hour could be accomplished. Sleeper birth.

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Brandon Wiseman: or off-duty, and then the longer one would have to be sleeper birth. But yeah, what about when you get the 5-5? How does that work? Probably what FMCSA will say is that one could be a combination of off-duty and sleeper birth, and then the other would have to be fully sleeper birth. That’s my guess, is how it will work, but I don’t know that for sure.

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Brandon Wiseman: Somebody in the chat’s saying…

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Brandon Wiseman: Yeah, 6.4 and 5-5 were acceptable 20 years ago. DOT changed that based on studies. I question the support for these changes for the long term. Yeah, I’m there with you, Eugene. That’s right. The different splits were acceptable in the past, and then they got…

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Brandon Wiseman: The split sleeper berth got narrowed back in, whenever the rules got narrowed, I think that was 2011 or something.

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Brandon Wiseman: And so, yeah, whether the studies support opening that back up or not, I’m not completely sold, but I guess we’ll have some more data once participants start, submitting their data through this program.

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Brandon Wiseman: I still don’t understand what is the difference between 5-5 and 8 and 2. I mean, fundamentally, the difference is that you’re able to accomplish that 10-hour break with more flexible splits now. So rather than having to accomplish your 10-hour break with a…

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Brandon Wiseman: One period that is 8 consecutive hours, and one that is 2 consecutive hours. Now, it’s giving you more flexibility to get that same… to accomplish that same result.

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Brandon Wiseman: with a 5-hour break, and then another 5-hour break with some, you know, driving time or on-duty time in between them. So it’s not as rigid. You don’t have to get a… at least 7 hours on one end. You can get 5 hours on one end. Hopefully that makes sense.

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Brandon Wiseman: George is asking, with the split duty period, does it still require the full 10 hours off after completing the day?

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Brandon Wiseman: If I understand the correct… the question correctly, no, that’s not what it requires. I mean, that’s the point of the split, is that it allows you to achieve the equivalent of that full 10 with your splits.

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Brandon Wiseman: So, you get your splits, and then your calculation point starts at the end of that first split that you got. You don’t have to get… you don’t then have to get another 10 consecutive hours. You could conceivably continue doing the splits day after day after day. In fact, as we said in that video.

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Brandon Wiseman: That’s the real… that’s where drivers start to see the most benefit from the split sleeper birth rule.

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Brandon Wiseman: is when you start stacking them day after day after day. Conceivably, you could go for years without ever getting a full 10 consecutive hour break, as long as you’re satisfying those splits day after day after day.

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Brandon Wiseman: Kyle’s asking, if these changes were to go into effect, do you have a guess on when that would happen? Well, the pilot program should go into effect, if I had to guess, maybe December or January. Probably early next year was when the pilot program, and then it’s gonna be 4 months of pilot.

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Brandon Wiseman: So that would take us into mid-2026, when the pilot would end, and then the FMCSA is going to have to do some analysis on the data that they gathered through the pilot programs, and then evaluate whether to open that up to the general public.

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Brandon Wiseman: But to open it up to the general public, they’re gonna have to go through a rulemaking process again, where they propose the rule more broadly, they open it up for public comments, and then they…

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Brandon Wiseman: pass a final rule. So, if I had to guess, I don’t have a crystal ball, but it’s not gonna happen in 2026, when they would open that up for the public. It would probably be 2027, would be my best guess.

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Brandon Wiseman: Nicole’s asking, if you are using Split Sleeper, don’t you have to go into the sleeper berth at the end of that day’s shift?

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Brandon Wiseman: How could you use it if you are going home at the end of your shift?

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Brandon Wiseman: Oh, I see what you’re saying. Yeah, to qualify for that split sleeper birth provision, the longer… the rule says the longer break has to be in the sleeper birth.

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Brandon Wiseman: And if it’s not in the sleeper berth, if it’s in off-duty status while you’re at home, then yeah, that does not qualify. That part of the break does not qualify, but assuming you got 10 hours off-duty at your home, it doesn’t matter, because then that’s your 10-hour off-duty break.

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Brandon Wiseman: So you’ve… you… your time clock then starts at the end of that off-duty break, that full 10 hours off-duty you got. But you’re right, that does not… that would not qualify. If you only got 8 hours off-duty at your home.

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Brandon Wiseman: in off-duty status, not sleeper birth, it would not be able to be added to a previous, off-duty break that you got, because it wasn’t sleeper birth. You’re right with that.

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Brandon Wiseman: George, to clarify, I was referring to the split duty period, not the split sleeper.

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Brandon Wiseman: I apologize, George, I already forget what your question was, so thanks for the clarification, but I forget what the question was.

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Brandon Wiseman: Is there any limitation on how often the driver can use the split sleeper berth, or can the driver always drive on combinations of

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Brandon Wiseman: 7382, yeah, I addressed that previously, but yeah, you could theoretically stack those from day to day. And one more, sometimes the PC option, which records as off-duty, interrupting the second qualifying break of split sleeper berth.

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Brandon Wiseman: Because it should be on sleeper, and the driver needed to take… yes, the… if you use personal conveyance.

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Brandon Wiseman: In the middle of your longer sleeper birth provision, that is going to cut you off from using the split sleeper, option in that case, because it took you out of, sleeper birth status and put you into off-duty driving status, essentially. So yes, that would… that would blow up your use of the split sleeper.

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Brandon Wiseman: I see we’re out of time here, let me try and get these last two.

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Mark Rhea: Yeah.

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Brandon Wiseman: Sorry, 5-5 break was very advantageous. Okay, that looks like just a comment, and then Teresa’s saying…

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Brandon Wiseman: With a split sleeper, you only receive the hours that you didn’t drive off your 11-hour clock, but to receive the full 11 hours of drive time is to take a 10-hour break. Yeah, more of a comment than a question. Alright, I’ll turn it back over to you, Mark. Sorry for going over.

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Mark Rhea: Okay, that was a… well, as they say, you gotta swing at a pitch to get a hit, so the pilot program will be going forward, and I think it’s imperative, and this certainly looks like an opportunity to have a few discussions with your drivers. What is their understanding? And if we got a poll here, if you want to

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Mark Rhea: participate or take our offer on a free demo. We can certainly get some,

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Mark Rhea: Hours of service content out to your drivers this afternoon, and before,

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Mark Rhea: And I think this is a great opportunity to have a discussion on what your driver’s input would be on these potential changes. And if you need a certificate, press the yes on the poll, and before we get too far, if…

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Mark Rhea: Listen, if you’re still on chat, give a big thank you to Brandon for being our industry spokesman on this and many other issues. He represents our industry most professionally.

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Mark Rhea: And I think it’s an opportunity to thank him right up front, and… and also, he has a… a… is it a monthly? Is Trunk Safe Live monthly?

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Brandon Wiseman: We do it whenever I have time to do it. It usually ends up being monthly, yeah.

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Mark Rhea: That’s a new, that’s a new program, so, send in a thank you. I would also get a quick promo next Thursday, November 6th. We’re gonna have a…

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Mark Rhea: webinar on telematics and data overload. We all experienced that November 6th at 2 p.m. Brandon, thank you for what you do. Thank you for our… representing our industry on these most important topics, and we’ll meet again. Thank you very much.

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Brandon Wiseman: Thanks, everyone.