There was nothing scary or confusing about this.
And if all you are looking for is "scary or confusing," that would be the end of the story and everything would be wonderful. But there is more to the story. And to be fair to all truckers, the whole story must be told, not just part of it.
Truckers of all kinds are affected by this rule change in ways expediters do not experience. Some (not all) expediters who ran differently under the old rules are now compelled (unwillingly) to run differently now. For some of us at least, there is more to this than adjusting your schedule for convenience and making your log book look good for the scale cop. The consequences of the new rules go beyond that.
No matter how you slice it, the new rules reduce a 14 hour on-duty/driving window to 13.5. The drivers and carriers who will feel the effects most are those who made productive use of that time before. You cannot reduce the productivity of the industry by 30 minutes without seeing impacts at some point. Those impacts may not be immediatly evident to many expediters but, rest assured, they are being felt in some quarters.
For our part, a one-truck expediter team, Diane and I have been affected negatively by the new rules. It is not scary or confusing, but it is unwelcome.
On two occasions, we were forced to take a 30 minute break that we otherwise did not want, need or would have taken. The result was less sleep for us in a non-moving truck because we were delayed 30 minutes by the mandatory break from getting to a place where such sleep could have been had.
Twice under the new rules we have found the new 34-hour reset rules to be a mobility killer. Before, one of us could start the reset at the end of one's shift while the other driver completed the delivery, drove to do errands, drove to a parking spot, etc., and then started his or her own 34-hour restart clock. At the other end of the restart, the first driver would be free to move the truck while the second completed his or her 34 hours of off-duty or sleeper time.
That freedom and mobility is gone under the new rules. Now, the requirement is for both of us to include in the 34 hour restart period two periods of 1:00 a.m. to 5:00 a.m. That means both of us cannot complete a restart until 5:00 a.m. It no longer matters what time we start the restart period. Both of us must go to ground for 34 hours ending at 5:00 a.m.
Doing rolling restarts where one of us would end at 5:00 a.m. one day and the other would do so the next day may be possible in some circumstances, but the effect of that would be to take a full day out of our work week in which we would be eligibile for team loads.
We have yet to find ourselves in a spot where the new rules prohibit us from taking a nice team run but I fully expect that to happen once in a while. Even if it happens only three times in a full year, how many times do you want to give up a $7,000 run, how many times can you afford to give up a $7,000 run, because the new rules prevent you from taking it?
The new rules may not be "scary or confusing" to some, but to those of us who made very productive use of our time before, and who have access to great runs that make it possible, the potential loss of tens of thousands of dollars of revenue per year is discomforting at best.
