Today's edition of the Overdrive Radio podcast runs through the variety of hours of service issues addressed yesterday in the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's third Q&A relative to the changes put in place as of Sept. 29. One particular question addressed a subject we've taken up before -- namely what happens if you need the 14-hour-clock pause value of a berth period to avoid a violation and you're inspected before you can pair that period with another berth period to complete the split.

FMCSA Enforcement Director Joe DeLorenzo noted, and he has also said in the past, that officers are trained to the assumption that a second split will be completed, yet are assumptions enough to go on? You can always verbally make clear to an inspector your intentions to split, yet a contemporaneous annotation of any off-duty period you intend to begin a split pair could further underly those intentions, in my view. If you’re inspected prior to the next qualifying pair, it would give the officer something other than just your word and his own assumptions to go on.

Hear much more about particular situations pertaining the short-haul and adverse conditions exceptions' expansion, the 30-minute break, and the new sleeper splits in this edition.

Download the presentation FMCSA used -- including some logbook examples among other detail -- via this link: https://www.overdriveonline.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2020/12/HOS_QA_Webinar_12.17.20-2020-12-18-11-33.pdf

More hours of service resources are available via http://OverdriveOnline.com/tag/hours-of-service

Subscribe to Overdrive's daily newsletter for trucking news, views and analysis geared toward current and prospective owner-operators: http://OverdriveOnline.com/newsletter-signup