The other day, I used my adverse weather extension. Once or twice a year, I have used it. Most of my runs can be completed within 11 hours. That is under normal weather conditions. When you live in Wisconsin you're going to have to deal with snow. That was the case this day. It started out pretty good. There was a nice new wagon available at the terminal. It is about 20 miles from the terminal to the customer. It was scheduled to be a live load. On Sundays, that process can vary from 30 minutes to 3 hours. It depends on how many are in front of you in line. When I got there, my load had been pre loaded on a different trailer. That made for a good start.
We were expecting a couple of inches of snow. Not that big a deal and I was hoping for “just” rain once I got to about Chicago. Unfortunately about 80 miles into my run there was a string of accidents near Slinger, WI. That included someone rear ending a Wisconsin State Trooper. The accident shut the road down for close to an hour. I walked around a little. Played on the computer and then proceeded. Unfortunately the snow delays continued through about Lafayette, IN. I figured that the snow delays had cost me about 90 minutes. I made the decision to use a 2 hour extension.
We have a new ELD, one that knows the rules better than I did. I had 145 mile to go. 87 minutes of drive time and 112 minutes of duty time left on my 14. Figured, no problem. I put the adverse weather (snow) extension into my ELD. I figured that I would have almost 3.5 hours left to drive. I was wrong. The 2 hour driving extension is limited by the 14 hour rule. I guess over the past 12-13 years I had violated the 14 hour rule a few times while improperly using the adverse weather extension. When I started driving back in the 80s there was no real time limit. You had 10 hours to drive and theoretically 15 hours to do it in. Now, most operator out of service issues don't come from the 11 hours of drive time, but the 14 hours of on duty time. So, basically the 2 hour adverse weather extension is pointless.
We should change that. The purpose of the 2 hour extension is two fold. One is safety. You don't want the driver hurrying in adverse conditions. The second is to maintain the predictable movement of freight. By not extending the 14 hour rule in adverse weather conditions, you nullify the purpose of the rule.
As your future FMCSA Chief – I believe that the logical thing is to have the adverse weather extension also apply to to the 14 hour rule. As a driver, I am going to write my representatives to change the rule. I encourage you to do the same.