The Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance indicates it will once again seek a limit on the use of a truck for “personal conveyance” purposes. CVSA has twice in the last four years sought a mileage or time limit on personal conveyance from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, both times to no avail.
Personal conveyance is an off-duty driver’s use of the truck to seek food, lodging or entertainment or to find a safe place to rest after leaving a shipper facility. It is not intended for business purposes, whether positioning the truck closer to the next load, returning to a motor carrier facility, or traveling to/from an owner-operator’s home for business. Personal conveyance is meant for personal purposes.
FMCSA hours of service rules do not currently put a time or distance limit on the proper use of personal conveyance. Federal rules do allow a motor carrier to place personal conveyance restrictions on its own drivers, trucks or types of loads.
CVSA says that 41,000 recent roadside inspections have revealed 38% improper use of personal conveyance. CVSA believes crash risk increases with the improper use of personal conveyance as it extends a truck driver’s hours behind the wheel.
At the same time, trucking and law enforcement would agree that not every “improper” use of personal conveyance increases crash risk. For example, a truck driver must log as off-duty before using the truck for personal conveyance. Failure to do that could be an HOS logging violation, but not necessarily a crash risk danger.
Similarly, the federal personal conveyance rules allow an out-of-hours driver to log as off-duty and then leave a shipper’s private property for the nearest safe place to park and rest. Is the place chosen by the truck driver really the nearest available space? Does it possibly position the truck closer to the next day’s load, in potential violation of the existing personal conveyance rules? Either way, it may not increase crash risk.
CVSA says it will likely petition FMCSA for a two-hour limit on personal conveyance in the U.S. By comparison, in Canada the daily limit for personal conveyance is 75 kilometers, about 46.6 miles. Also in Canada, the vehicle must be unloaded, and any trailers must be unhitched for legal use of the truck as personal conveyance. Canadian rules say that personal conveyance means treating the truck like a personal car, and nothing more.