It's OK. So we're going to go into the second module here, and hopefully I won't mess up the tech again. So the question here is, first thing is, who needs a DOT medical? And the second question is, what are the duties of a commercial motor vehicle operator? Because FMCSA is telling, is, has fewer and fewer rules, it's more and more important, I think, that you understand the duties of a CMV operator. It's not just driving. There's a whole bunch more to it. And I've really expanded this section of our, of the program. So keep in mind that when you have an FMCSA medical, even though the guy comes to your office and says, I only drive the church bus, the 14-passenger church bus to pick up kids for Sunday school, that person is allowed to take that same medical card and hop in the triple combination and drive that cross country. OK. They're seeing the presenter view, which is apparently not good. We need to, we need to mirror that thing, not this thing, the camera. OK. And so, so when you, whenever you certify somebody, I don't care what they do now, you're certifying them to drive the biggest, nastiest, hardest to operate vehicle in the least safe part of the country. So keep that in mind. Someday they might let us make it employer specific, or they might allow it to make us job specific. But as of right now, there's only one kind of medical certificate. If you have one, you can drive it. OK. Sorry, guys. I'm working on it. Well, on some employers, even though they don't need a class A, and CEO, they want the class A, even though they're not driving like they need it because of their insurance. So all of their drivers have class A's, their insurance costs are less. I actually don't know that, but if all their drivers, I'll make sure this is run the other way. What she said was if everybody has their class A, that makes the insurance costs less. I don't know that that's true. But if everybody has their medical card, that's, yeah, because class A, class B, class C, class D has to do with the size of the vehicle you're driving. And there is a place where they have to indicate what they drive, but then it has no relevance to your certification decision. Because they can come to you driving a pickup truck that delivers acetylene to construction sites when you think one level of thing, and go drive that triple combination. So a couple definition words. So interstate commerce means trade, means the thing is being moved between two states. Okay? Not necessarily the driver, but the stuff. Intrastate commerce means that the stuff is being moved within a state. Okay? And it's the stuff, doesn't matter if it's the people in the back, the whole, the plastic widgets, whatever it is. So those are different. And some states have laws for intrastate commerce that are different from the interstate commerce federal rules. And interstate would also include if you went through another state to get to where you were going. So like I live in Morgantown, West Virginia. People, some people know that West Virginia has northern panhandle. But to get from where I live to Wheeling, you drive through Pennsylvania. That just became, even though it started in West Virginia, it's ending in West Virginia, it drove through Pennsylvania, that's interstate commerce. So when you need a medical. So if you're going to drive an interstate commerce, if you, this is for everything you do in interstate commerce. If you have to have a commercial driver's license to drive the thing, whether it's because of size or hazmat or something else, you have to have a medical. If you, if the gross vehicle weight gets over 10,000 pounds, you have to have a commercial, you have to have a medical card. If you're driving something that transports more than eight people for compensation or more than 15 people without compensation, you need a medical card. And if you're using any sort of, moving any sort of hazmat that requires a placard, you need a medical card, even if the vehicle doesn't require a CDL. Okay. This, I'd know this, I'd want to know this list if I was getting ready for a test. So in trustee, there was a question. Was the compensation mean the drivers get paid or they have to pay to go somewhere? The question was asked whether the compensation means that the passengers are paying or the driver's getting paid. I think if money changes hands, you're now a commercial. So, so if that church driver was driving, getting paid by the church to drive home, then that's commercial. He absolutely has to, has to cover it. But if the church, so if you ever look at those church vans, the churches so loved to buy to send the youth group places, they always buy the 15 passenger vans. And because there's usually, you know, the, when, you know, some parent is driving the youth group someplace, that's no money change chance. So you're okay. They can have a 15 passenger van. I thought it was right. I found it amusing. The hospital used to work at, they had all this, they, they ran out of parking for their employees, kept adding towers to the hospital and they didn't make the parking lot any bigger. So they put, I had all these satellite parking things and they kept saying, we have 14 passenger buses. We don't have to have CDLs, we don't have to have medicals. I'm like, you're getting paid. And like, yeah, then you do medicals. Okay. Cause there's people, even though you don't pay, I don't like each person doesn't, you know, give the driver $2 and they go on the bus. Cause it's, it's just taking their own employees from a remote parking lot into the hospital. There's money changing hands and the drivers still need to be certified. Taking out that last row of seats. So it's less than four 15 doesn't fix that problem. Okay. So intrastate commerce, remember it says anything that's not interstate commerce. Some states have rules. If your state has rules for intrastate commerce, you need to learn what they are. We are not going to cover those in this class. Although they typically parallel the federal thing, but sometimes you find something that's a little different. Um, and some states will let you drive with things that the feds won't. Um, Wisconsin forever and ever was allowing people in insulin to drive with a, with a monitoring regime. And it was actually their data was the driver for the federal system. Um, because they had, they had like 30 years of data of what happened and where the problems were when they use that to craft the federal requirements. Um, and, uh, some, many states have special rules for school bus drivers. So you are aware of that. Um, and, and again, if you're going to do school bus drivers, make sure a, you know, their school bus drivers, because typically a regular old ordinary CDL may not be adequate to be a school bus driver. So they, they have to tell you it's a school bus exam. That's not, they can't just take any old CDL medical and drive school buses in most states. Um, when do you need one? So these are extra times you need to be, to have a recertification. So return to work from an illness or injury that interferes with his ability to drive. Okay. Even if their medical certificates not expired. Now, the way I think of this is this is not, so the key word in this sentence is the injury or illness that interferes with the ability to drive driving ability. So if this person had a stroke and they're hemiplegic, they need a new exam. Okay. If somebody broke their pinky and you know, they were not driving and they're in a cast for a little while, and now they're coming back to driving, they really don't need a new medical exam because that pinky fracture didn't interfere with their ability to operate the motor vehicle. That's the way I think about it. Um, and if they've had a major thing go on medically, then they probably need to be reevaluated, not necessarily for, you know, the other gallbladder out. I don't know. I don't think I need a reexam because they could still drive. You wouldn't, you wouldn't think about that. That's the way, that's the way I interpret that. I'd love to see everybody back and some employers do that, but it's, but not everybody, um, whenever the driver's employer asks you to do one, it's the right time and the driver, the employer is allowed to say, you may not drive to get a new medical. They're allowed to do that. And again, hopefully they would catch that hemiplegic stroke and send them to see um, whenever they don't have a current medical certificate, that's easy. Um, or if they need to go more often because they're in a waiver exemption program. So if they have a waiver that says they have to have an exam once a year, it's once a year, and sometimes they'll put actual dates on those waiver letters. And some of the waivers have to be renewed with the, get a new date for next year, just be, you know, that's not something you have to do with something the driver has to do, but just be mindful that we have to read the dates on the letter because they may not be good forever. Um, there's some special weirdnesses in the thing you can drive in an exempt inner city zone, which we, which has been on the form for a long time as a box you can check. Um, and this is a, so this is somebody, um, I have a better definition of this later, but they drive totally within an exempt or city zone. Those are defined by the government, not by us and not just because the city does not mean it's an exempt inner city zone. The government has defined these. Um, and they, it has to do with a medical condition and we'll get this more in a few minutes, which is medical condition that hasn't changed since like the late eighties. Um, when they wrote this thing, they, and it was basically, I think for some of the big cities, when they started putting regulations in place and like half their trash truck drivers have been, the guy's been driving with one arm for the last 30 years, he can keep driving his trash truck. That's really what it was intended for. Um, and there's, there's more definitions later in this talk, I think. Um, so what's a commercial motor vehicle? Well, everything on this page could be a commercial motor vehicle. So the big trucks and buses we all think about, um, if it's being moved for pay, even some things like Winnebago's and like motor homes, like the one, the motor home that Taylor Swift is using to go between her venues for her concerts. That's a commercial motor vehicle. Okay. Um, some, in some states, school buses, dump trucks, little buses, big buses. Um, there's lots of different configurations. Are you, are you with me? Okay. One question. I was asking the health center, the drivers of their mobile medical. Are they getting paid? Does the thing weigh over 10,000 pounds? Okay. If it weighs over 10,000 pounds and they definitely need a medical card. Okay. If it is over 26,000 pounds, then they need a CDL. Okay. There's no exemption here for nonprofits. That's not one of these or for that's not. And let now, I should say, are you part of the government that, cause that is an exception. Okay. If you're not part, if it's not a, it's not run by the state health departments. Yeah. The answer is yes. You can get met. If it's over 10,000 pounds, you do medical it's over 26,000. They need a CDL. They come in lots of combinations. You can Bob tail, you can more school buses, double-decker buses. They, all of these things would be different variations of commercial vehicles. Is the Bob tail? What that combination weight was. Yeah. That was any, anything is the combination weight is it's a total vehicle gross weight getting over twice over 10,000 or 26,000 are the cutoffs. What does combination weight mean? Add it all together. It would be, it's the trailer and the tractor and the stuff in the track and the trailer, and it's the gross. So it's the most it's allowed to weigh on the road. I'm 99% of the time in the United States, it's 80,000 pounds. There are some very small exemptions for that. West Virginia, we have some roads. We're allowed to go up to a hundred thousand with some of these coal trucks, but only on very specific roads. And the coal trucks pay to rebuild the bridges on those roads. Cause they will trash them. Um, in weird in West Virginia, there's a road you're allowed to drive with 280,000 pounds vehicles on this one road, because it's between parts of the steel. They built the road, they've maintained the road and they got a special exemption just to drive between two different parts of their steel plant because the ingots weigh that much sometimes. It's, but again, very special, very, very special waivers. Um, so 20, anything over 26,000 pounds needs a CDL, um, vehicles, more than 15 passengers or eight passengers. Remember think regulatory stuff. This is, I think there's been a lot of questions about this kind of stuff. Um, and then if you have to placard anything, and so a little bit of hazardous materials may not need to be placarded because we have a lot of hazardous materials when it gets placarded. Um, yeah. Over 75 year old. Um, if you can do that, that would be awesome. The other thing I'm looking at, there was a question that says over 75 year old driving class B passenger. So the answer is sure. Age is not a restriction in any, in any part of this. Um, uh, the, okay, thank you. Um, so, um, and does any supply to farm equipment? Yeah, there are special exception standby. I've got, I've even got pictures. Um, so vehicles where we don't need a CDL, we still do medical card. They're the people in the 10,000 to 26,000 pound range. Um, the ones I think of that are in this is like those big utility trucks that like work on the telephone poles and stuff, those are often in that range. They need medical cards, but they don't need a CDL in your state. And this varies somewhat by state. They might need some sort of a weird driver's license. When I was in Missouri, they had a chauffeur's license that you had to have, if you were getting paid to drive anything, um, which you just had to apply for, you didn't have to do anything. Um, and, but some states for these guys will have some sort of a special classification. Um, but that's that don't worry about that too much. The box delivery trucks, that kind of stuff is what would be in this range, um, where they still need a medical, but they don't use CDL. Okay. Um, exempt from CDL requirements. So this varies a little bit by state or the department, the agency they're working for, um, people driving things with, with flashing lights on them. Um, especially red and blue lights, um, or red, white, and blue lights. Um, you typically do not need a fire truck to specifically exempt, um, nationally. Although a department for insurance purposes may choose to have their people get CDL, um, they may not need a fire truck to specifically exempt, um, CDLs or CDL medicals. Um, I, I know several, I haven't seen as much in West Virginia where I am, but in Pennsylvania, I live like three miles from the borders, maybe somewhere in Pennsylvania, in Pennsylvania, if you say all of our drivers have had their CDL, get CDLs and other CDL medicals, your insurance costs for your fire department dropped significantly, um, and it was worth their trouble. Um, school buses are a specific exemption. Um, again, some, a, a, an agency or a state may choose to have people get CDLs. That's a question they do locally. Um, and municipally owned or state or county owned vehicles like snow plows are actually exempt. Um, I'm in West Virginia. Um, when I first started doing these exams, nobody for the highway department got a CDL. Um, and then they said, oh, we decided because their trucks are pretty, some of those trucks are pretty big and then they they'll tell a, like, like a, a, you know, a big bulldozer behind the thing. So they've got a combination that's, you know, 70,000 pound combination. And they didn't make them get CDLs. They said, you go to our driving Academy and they'll, they, they gave them their own certificate to drive a big truck for them, which the law allows. Um, then they said, no, no, once you get CDLs and we want you to get your, you to go get medicals and you know, what happens when you take somebody that's getting paid $27,000 a year to drive and now they've got a CDL and a medical card, they don't work for the state anymore. They just, I mean, they didn't need that anymore. So they undid that they have. They recently now they're back to, we'll give you a certificate. Let's you drive our, you come to our driver Academy and they, they train them up to drive the trucks and train them how to plow snow and all that kind of stuff, and then they don't do CDLs anymore. Cause they, they, they were, their attrition rate became way too high. Um, other exemptions. So any, uh, vehicle used to transport, uh, school children and our staff between home and school, federal, state and local employees, uh, people transporting corpses and sick and injured people. So some ambulances at the very end of my EMS career, I know we were over 10,000 pounds for one of our, one of our vehicles. Um, and I know my, my current County, they have a bariatric transport ambulance that has a crane in it and a, and a hoist and stuff to get a, you know, a 900 pound patient into the litter into the ambulance without hurting people. That's way over 10,000 pounds. You don't need to, you do not need medicals for those. Um, and fire rescue already talked about, um, other things that don't. So these are weirdo special ones. So. Propane. If you're transporting propane, winter heating fuel and responding to an emergency condition requiring immediate response to, uh, due to a storm or flooding, it's pretty specific. I'm going to a pipeline emergency. Um, a private motor carrier of passengers for non-business purposes. So I think that's the church bus. That's my best interpretation of what they're going at there. Well, for non-business purposes, but it says a passenger, so I don't know. So that's a very specific one. And if you're transporting migrant farm workers or migrant workers that they're, that would, they're, they're not protected, um, and now here's the farmer one, cause that was what he asked, what was asked about. So if you're a farm using custom harvesting or farm on a farm, uh, to transport machinery and supplies, um, or to take stuff to market, um, beekeepers. And then the, the thing is that these things have to be controlled and operated by the farmer. So if I'm a contract hauler, I'm going to go pick up grain at a farm and take it somewhere I need a CDL. If the farmer himself or herself is going to take their, their trailer and take, you know, their big pickup truck and 20 cows, then take them to market, they can do that without a CDL. Cause they're doing it themselves. And that's to say within 150 miles of the farm and they can't do anything that's placarded. Um, I don't know, in, in the flat parts of the country, you often see the trailers with those, there's big ammonia tanks on them, they, those ammonia tanks are placarded, that would then need to be, they can't, they can't do that under the exemption. Um, so what do you do if somebody doesn't need a CDL? Um, they work for an exempt employer. They're not old enough to get a commercial driver's license. Um, they don't drive for work. Um, they don't have a driver's license. Give them a card if they meet the standards. Um, and you can, this, this can apply to, um, remember I mentioned deckhands when I, when I did a customer, I did, I was doing on-site exams. Most of the people were driving oil trucks, but some of the people were, were helping out on the barges and they needed them. The one guy said, I don't have a driver's license. I'm not allowed to have a driver's license for the next three years. He must've had, he had some trouble with the law, let's just say. Um, but he needed it to be a deckhands. And that was an adequate medical for him to be a deckhand on his boat, on the boat. Um, I, the youngest one I've ever done was three and a half. Um, she met the standard. She got her driver's license. She got her CDL medical. Um, she can get a driver's license. That's some, that, that's not for another 13 years. Um, her parents, employers, they were being deployed overseas and then wanted a standardized exam across the whole country. And the way they did that was by having them get a CDL medical. Cause it's the same exam everywhere. And she left with a medical certificate. Yes, sir. And they don't have to be us. They don't know. They just have to be physically present in your space and you have to always communicate with them well enough to take a history. Yes, ma'am. So the question was, would you do anything with the FMCSA? I would, I would go into their website and I would put them in. Cause there's a place where you indicate whether they have, whether there's CDL or commercial learner's permit and there's a yes or no. And I would indicate, no. Um, I would put them all in the database cause that way they're there. Is there another question over here? Okay. Um, but I would, if they want to, if they want to CDL medical, they can have a CDL medical if they meet the standards. Don't don't, you don't, it's not our deal, whether they really need one. It's not our deal, whether they ought to, you know, whether they, they're kind of driving these one or not. Now I may point out to an employer. If they don't understand the employment, I understand that, that, that, that 10,000 pound, 26,000 pound thing has a lot of employers mystified. And so you can help them understand the rules, but don't worry about the individual, they show up and they pay, they can, and they meet their standards. They can have medical certificate. Um, any questions about any of that so far? And if you're online, you can type stuff in. I can see that now. Um, okay. So the next thing we're talking about is the duties of a commercial motor vehicle operator. I'm going to stay traditional here. We're going to talk about people that drive tractor trailers. I'm a little bit about people that drive buses. There are many other kinds of commercial motor vehicles. Um, there, some of them are pretty esoteric and I'm not going to get lost in those. Um, so it's just, the whole thing is safety sensitive. The basic deal is that when you divide truck drivers up into kind of, when you taxonomize them, there's the truck, there's people driving big trucks. And some of them go over the road. They pick something up in New York and take it to Los Angeles, right, or anywhere in between. Um, there's people that drive regionally, and sometimes the stuff may be going from New York to Los Angeles, but in some companies, their drivers get to stay at home most nights. The guy from New York will drive the thing to Ohio about five hours away, and then he'll pick up a load going the other way, and he'll drive back and stays in his own bed in New York that night after he gets his 11 hours of driving. And that's what I call regional, they may cross state lines, but the guy or gal ends up back at home, and they may shuttle stuff, or maybe they only drive all within a couple miles of each other. You can drive just local, and are they home every night or not? That sometimes is important for some medical conditions. Again, you can't restrict the medical certificate, so you can't say, well, he can only drive if he can be home every night to be where CPAP is. That's not a thing. Do they hook and drop, or do they have to load and unload? Hook and drop is it's already packed up, they just have to back under it, crank up the wheels and drive off, or do they have to go and load them? I've had drivers that I've interviewed where they'll get there and they'll go, you've got your reefer trailer, and he'll say, yep, I got my reefer trailer, and they'll go, great. You see over there, there's 36,000 turkeys, they need to be in your trailer before you leave. He's carrying turkeys one at a time into his trailer and loading them, because they don't want to be responsible for loading the trailer, they want him to load it, so he's responsible for the load. It was frozen turkeys, and as I said, it was thousands and thousands of them that he had to carry one at a time to load his truck. If they're doing buses, we're back to that kind of local, regional, long-haul, most long-haul buses actually now are tourism. Other than that, they usually trade off the drivers. You drive from New York to Columbus and change drivers, and then that guy will drive back to New York next, and the special vehicles, we won't talk about a whole lot. There are a lot of things that are in the tasks of a driver. There's some difference between short-haul and long-haul, and you get a regular work, you have a regular work, regular eating, and we'll blow into this in a little bit. You have to deal with the fact that road conditions can change. We get ice, we get snow, it rains, it gets foggy, there's wrecks, you have to be able to deal with all that stuff as it comes along. Cognitive things might be important. An Alzheimery person that it took them five calls to your office to find their way into your office might not be okay to drive. This is a start of the list, and this is, again, I'm seeing it as a traditional tractor trailer driver. They have to plan the route, like where am I going? Pre-trip to inspect the vehicle, and we'll go through all these things with more detail in just a second. They have to make up a goal of lading, and those are usually computerized now, except if you're going and picking stuff up, if I go to Liz's factory and get five pallets of stuff, and I go to Naomi's factory and get three more pallets of stuff, and I go to Lance's factory and get two more pallets of stuff, they have to keep adding stuff to the goal of lading because there's more stuff on the truck. I deliver something, I have to cross it off. They have to be able to do that kind of work. I have to hitch up the trailer, to crank up the landing gear. I have to load the trailer, maybe, or fill up the tank with whatever I'm transporting, and then secure everything. I have to drive. I have to keep track of the road and conditions outside. I may have to modify my route on the fly. I have to keep my logs, mostly computerized now, almost all computerized now, except for very small drive in companies. I have to talk to dispatch, maybe the shipper, maybe talk to law enforcement. I need to unload my trailer, which maybe I have to get a big hose out, I have to hook up my hose, I have to minimally back up to the loading dock, crank down the loading gear, and unhitch the trailer. All those different things. Crew trip inspection. They're not super heavy, but you've got to have enough, you've got to reach up high enough to be able to pick that up and pull down the hood on the vehicle, so you can see all the insides, and make sure that the fluid levels are where they need to be. You need to be able to close that hood and push it back up so that it'll latch in place. At the back of the trailer, I'm not going to talk about the details of the driving task. I have to back up under the trailer, go crank up the legs, and we'll talk about that in just a second, climb up between the trailer and the cab to hook up, at a minimum, the air hoses for the brakes, and maybe the electrical, for the lights, and sometimes for the refrigerator and stuff like that. Back down to the ground, and then I have to walk around the trailer, and what they call pre-trip it. I have to hitch my trailer. To hitch a trailer, I've got to reach under this trailer, I've got to pull that handle. You can see in the upper left-hand corner, I then have to back it under, and it'll latch onto the trailer. Then I have to hook up some hoses, and you can see in the upper left-hand corner, it shows where they are between the truck and the tractor, and then down at the bottom right-hand corner, those are the quick disconnect air hoses. Those are designed so that if you forget to disconnect the hoses, they'll pull off, okay? I have to crank up the landing gear, and has anybody ever had to do this, where you had to crank up the landing gear on a truck? How was it? All grease you do with one finger? Not if it's loaded. Not if it's loaded? Well, it shouldn't make any difference once you've picked it up. If you have to raise the trailer after it's loaded because your tractor is an inch higher than the last guy's tractor, that is a problem. What about just even ignoring it being loaded? Could you do it with one finger? Well-greased? Greased, you can. Maybe. Most of them are poorly greased because it's down in the zone where all the salt and everything is going to get on it, so it's probably rusty. I don't know what the percentage is, but a third of them, a quarter, are bent. So you're trying to get something to retract into a thing that it doesn't fit in because one of the parts is bent. So it's a lot of work sometimes to get those things to go, so you've got to have at least one shoulder that will support that level of effort. And then you hook up the little handle there. This is actually off the OSHA website, this picture. They are now recommending, because people get hurt doing this, so they're recommending that they have power, power, power, well, no, no, no, no, just power landing gear. It does eliminate the hazard. We've engineered it out of being a problem. So I'm still doing my pre-ship inspection. I need to go around and make sure all the valves are closed the way they're supposed to be in their proper position. I will go back to where the tires are, and you'll use what's called tire billy. The problem is, if you've got two dually wheels, two wheels, you've got to hit them with something, each of them, to make sure that they're both inflated. Because when you're just walking around, the one looks good, and the second one, they won't look good. One's full of air. The other one's full of nothing. You won't know. So you whack them. Usually they'll have a little billy club, or sometimes they'll just use the back end of a big metal flashlight. But you've got to walk around and do all that to kind of assess where the vehicle's safe. You'll fill out your bill of lading, and as you add and subtract stuff, this will change. Some level of facility with writing is important. One of the things with the CDLs is, the CDL exam can only be taken in writing, in English, and that's to make sure that the drivers possess the sufficient written capacity to be able to keep their bill of lading and their logs. So that's not something we have to assess, but it is kind of built into the system. They have to secure the load. So you want the stuff to stay where you put it on the truck. If it starts moving, it can go badly. It could include one of these chain binders. They could have the big straps that go over everything. You can put the bars in. You have to be able to lift all the stuff into place to put it in. Not super light. Those hand-cranked straps are the best thing since sliced bread. It will hold stuff down. Or maybe you need to tarp a load, which you'll see in the lower right-hand corner. When you don't do this well, it goes badly. So if you notice, I mean, the brick truck is kind of, the cinder block truck is kind of a, you know, an obvious problem that they didn't secure the load. The whole thing just fell over. This one here had these concentric pipes inside. And the key thing to notice is that, you know, they just kept, they slid forward when they tried to brake really hard or hit something. And what you'll notice is that there's a tarp or a body bag just in front because this did not go well for the driver. You need to plan your route. And you can start paper maps. A lot of people use GPSes now. There are special GPSes you can get that you tell it what size vehicle you are, and it will route you only over bridges that will manage the weight you've got. And with underpasses, you know, with underpasses of the right height and stuff, they're more expensive, but they do exist. And there are both apps and physical GPSes that'll do that for you now. You have to be ready to operate all the things. And the cab, some of them have a bazillion switches and knobs and gauges and buttons, and you have to be able to interact with that stuff. So you'll be able to see it and be able to manipulate the switches. When you're driving, it's kind of busy, your left foot, because most, not all, commercial vehicles are still manual transmission. So you have to be able to operate a clutch, so your left foot's got to work, your right foot for the gas and brake. Your left hand is the steering wheel, and your right hand is the gear shift lever. And it's usually, it's not the gear shift lever you're used to, typically 10 to 12 gears. So there's both the move the knob thing around, and then on the side of it, there's one or two little levers to get you into other gears. You can see on the one on the right, those gray and red levers on the side are necessary to access, depending whether you want the top gear or the bottom gear in that corner, that quadrant. So it's really, you've got to have pretty good manual dexterity with your right hand to be able to do that and get the thing actually in the gear where it needs to be. You do have to watch traffic. Traffic will stop. You will have all bad weather. Roads are closed. You have to be able to adjust that. So again, there's a cognitive component as well. All these things are weather-related problems. You need to keep a log. This is a computer-generated log. Whoops, sorry. This is a computer-generated log. You can also, you can keep this on paper. As I said, some very small carriers are still allowed to do that. Most carriers have had to go to electronic logs in the last year or two, or maybe it's next year, it's around now, but they had to switch over to electronic logs. And it just has to do with whether you're on-duty, off-duty, driving, or none of the above. You have to keep in touch with dispatch. A lot of different ways to do this. There's radios, there's telephones now. Some trucks still have the satellite things in them that they can use satellite messaging. Any of those are okay, but you have to be able to do it so dispatch knows where you are and they can reach you if they need to. When you're done, you need to go outside, crank those legs back down with the bent parts, disconnect the airlines and electrical, climb back to the ground, climb back to the ground, reach, climb under the trailer. Remember that handle I showed you that was kind of sticking out from the fifth wheel? Well, that's now like two feet under the trailer. So you've got to climb under there and kind of pull that handle to get it to release the fifth wheel so then you can pull the tractor out. You have to do emergency activities. If your vehicle breaks down, you may have to put up, if the weather gets bad, you may be doing snow chains, triangles. So you have to be able to walk 250 feet behind your disabled vehicle to put your triangles out. Those are the two numbers. That's the furthest walk. So if the person with limited aerobic capacity, that may be a problem. And if you're in a busing situation, especially with kids, you may need to help the kids get out of the vehicle. So there's lots of different, so the long haul and over the road drivers have some other things they do. So here's the key question. Where do they sleep? Some people sleep in the cab. They'll be in the passenger seat just falling asleep and trying to do that while the other person's driving. Probably not ideal. Some of them will lean back a fair amount, but still probably not ideal. Are they in a sleeper cab? Or do they stop at a truck stop and stay in their own sleeper cab? But it's one single driver and they just pull in, when they run out of hours, they'll just pull into a roadside rest area or a truck stop, just get where they can stay overnight and just park. Some people do that. That is a way to do longer drives and with less expense. They might stay at a motel. They might stay at home. FMCSA's current rule requires people to be at home from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. for two nights in a row every six days. Used to be you could drive about 10 days if you're driving team before you'd run out of hours. And that's now been cut back to six days. And this doesn't say you have to be at home. It just says you have to be able to sleep in a bed and be off duty for that 30 whatever that is hours. So some companies will just say, when you're gonna drive to name some town in Montana, you're gonna stop, you're gonna have the day off in between, and then you can keep driving. That is a way to do it. And when I used to work in the compressed gas industry, we got liquid helium from out in Wyoming. And what we would do is we would have people drive out and to fill the liquid helium container took about a day. And so they got that day off. That's how they've satisfied this requirement. That would reset their time, their clock, so they could then drive back to the East Coast, with their liquid helium. Yes, ma'am. You require to sleep a total of eight hours and 48 hours, correct? Well, so if you read it carefully, so it says that what you have to do is, I have to start them at, if I start them at 1 a.m., right? Sleeping. Sleeping. I can't put them back on duty until 5 a.m. the next day. They're off work for 30, no, 27, 28 hours. Oh, I thought it meant you had to sleep during the middle of the night, two nights in a row. True. Every six days. Correct, but I have to give you, but you get the whole period off. So there's a day off in between. You still have it, hours they're allowed to drive each. No, I think this actually, I don't think they're allowed to drive between those two periods. I don't know, but people want to be in the middle. Once they get to 5 a.m. the second night, they can drive for 11 hours. 11 hours. It's 11 hours of real time every day. Seven day a week. This gets standby here, okay? But then, well, let's just go to the next slide. The question was, is that 70 a week? And so maximum per 24 hours, 11 hours of real time, 15 hours on duty, 70 hours in seven days of on-duty time. So on-duty means you're responsible for the load or you're working. It does not necessarily mean you're driving. So if I'm doing all those things that talk about as a tractor trailer driver, I go into the yard, I get assigned a truck, I plan my route, all that counts. As soon as I drive through the gate, I'm on duty. If you're responsible for the load and you stop to get lunch, you're still on duty because unless somebody else takes over responsibility for the load. So if you pull in and you're in the lot owned by your company, you're on company property and somebody else is responsible for the load and they're not gonna call you if there's a problem, you're not on duty. If you just stop at some greasy spoon along the way, you're still on duty and this has on-duty hours. And then there's 34 hours off duty with the one to five, 8 a.m. So this is the 34 hours in a row is the big, this is the big part. You can't drive the day in between those two. You have to have one day off. Does that make sense? I hear you guys are asking questions. Let's make sure that we're matching everybody's questions. Wait. Yep. Well, 1 a.m. on Wednesday till 5 a.m. on Thursday, right? Cause it's 24 hours plus those extra four. So I guess that's 28 hours total is the bare minimum. And what we wanna do is give the driver the chance to recharge, get two decent nights sleep at least once a week and the day off in between. So if they wanna sleep in that day, they don't have to be anywhere. That's the whole idea. Does that kind of make sense? Team driving, they often do six on, six off. You can do that for about, you used to be able to do it for about eight days in a row, but you're gonna run into this six hour thing. And eventually you're gonna have to stop driving team for, to get that day off. You're saying six day thing, not six hour thing. If you do six hours on, six hours off, then you'll, if you kind of do the math here, six on, six off, which should mean theoretically I'm driving 12. If you and I are driving team, I'm driving six hours, 12 hours and you're driving 12 hours, right? Driving means that things move in, but I'm only allowed to drive 11. So you actually have some off time. You can't drive literally straight through. And you can only do that for six days. You can only do that for six days. Well, because this cutoff, that's what put an absolute end to it. They wouldn't run out of hours doing this under the old system until like, you can do it until like seven and a half days. But when they put the six hour requirement, the six day requirement in, that ended it. And because you have to stop and buy fuel. You have to stop and get food every once in a while, but you definitely have to stop and get fuel. The truck will eventually get thirsty. And so that's why it's that way. And while you're fueling the truck, you're on duty, but you're not driving. So this is Home Sweet Home. They have all different configurations, these things. Some of them have refrigerators, some have coffee makers, some have microwaves. You can have all sorts of nice of stuff back there. Sometimes just sideways. Most of them seem to go sideways, but they can be very, it can be very pleasant, but it can be a little bumpy. The ability to sleep, one of these things is a learned skill. But some people, if they're driving solo, some people will just drive. They said they'll get to a truck stop or they'll get to a rest area and they will go and park their thing and then they'll go back and sleep. That's not uncommon. So what about job description things? Position descriptions? Well, so an employer, I always say this, if you've got a CDL, you can drive any commercial motor vehicle anywhere in the country up through triple combination. But the employer can add restrict requirements. Now that won't change whether they get a CDL medical or not, but it may change whether they can work for that employer or not. We have to have a lifter requirement, have to be able to drag a hose that weighs 200 pounds. That would be separate from the CDL medical. The one thing that I say is, and your employer can drive this if they so choose, you might do your CDL medical at the same time you do this fitness for duty exam, the lifting test or the dragging the hose or whatever you're gonna have them do. And the employer may say, if he doesn't pass my extra things, don't give him his medical card. That's fine. He's paid for it. If the employer paid for the exam, that's fine. But he still made, and I'll tell him he met the criteria, but he just won't give the thing to the driver. Right? So that's just, I would still put it in the database though. But so you're in this little weirdness because the driver didn't pay for it themselves. It's not really their exam. But that is an option. They can add stuff, but they can't say, don't let them pass CDL if they can't lift 200 pounds because that's not a thing. So, and they might, this could happen. We have to, as I said, work this out with the employer ahead of time because you don't wanna, you don't wanna get the employer mad with you. So there are some things where you can do driver self-certification. One of the things they have to tell you is what kind of things they drive. Again, they're required to tell you it has no, it should have no impact on your exam. Whether they're accepted or not accepted for interstate or intrastate driving. And it has some impact on whether they need a CDL and whether they need a medical card. But if they want medical card don't get lost in this because you can make your head hurt. The exemption for the inner exempt inner city zone driver. So, this is a better explanation for it. So, if they were operating a municipality in a single municipality were exempt inner city zone. They have a one year period ending in 1988. Okay, that's a long time ago. There's probably people in this room that were born after that. And they meet the requirements of the standard and they never leave the exempt inner city zone. They don't transport has hazardous waste, and they've got a stable medical condition that would make them ineligible but they did it for a year before 1988. They can keep driving. That is, it's not quite the thing in the tax code that says, you know, if you were born in this county on this date in 2000 and 1943 you've got some special tax law it's kind of like that. I mean, that's 1988 was a long time ago. Okay. And there aren't probably that many drivers who are driving in the exempt inner city zone for one year prior 1988 they're still driving, but if they wanted to, they can keep driving their trash truck or whatever. I'm older drivers are somewhat at risk. I'm not trying to be a just here. There is increased risk, it does require increased vigilance it's for all industries and all occupations. What I do is I quite honestly probably I pay more attention to the 15, 16, 17 year old that are trying to get a CDL medical and probably a little bit less attention to the 21 year old. Now I'm still looking for obvious fails, but unless you know you don't they didn't have nearly as much time to accumulate a history that's gonna make me concerned. So, there's there's been some recent changes the medical review board has some has a bunch of recommendations. The one that we always think about is sleep apnea and obesity, and they're the MRVs recommendations progresses slowly, and they in 2013 they told us we have to do this differently. So, just best medical practice hold on we haven't gotten to the breathing system yet. Yes, ma'am. We have refresh. Okay, they're working ahead. That's fine. Okay. So we'll do, we'll do that at the end of this module. We'll stop for a brief break. So hours of service I think we've talked about this mostly before the weekly thing. There's either a 70 hour eight day cycle or 60 hour seven day cycle. That's why I was, I was being. That's why I was hedging when you asked about a week and this is, these are the two choices, and the eight day cycle that that extra day that seems to be included, is that is that night off. That's why that's that's how that all works out. And it's because you need you because you still need this this reset 34 hour reset period within the seven day cycle, or the eight day cycle. And I presented these hours of servicing. Just so you understand kind of how driving works there I don't think there'll be detailed questions on this on the form because that's really not our area. But I just want to understand from the context of what are the expected duties of a driver, 11 hours of real time something I would know 15 hours of do something I would know this whole thing about weekly resets is more for education. There is a get home exemption, where you can drive for up to three more hours. If you're less to get home. If you stay within your 14 hours on duty told yesterday question, so it's 15 hours on duty or 14 hours on duty. They do know it's 11 hours of real time. The 1514 they keep they've changed it I actually don't know. I'm just gonna say I don't know. It used to be 15 hours of duty 10 hours of real time. And I think what they did was they increase the real time and decrease the on duty time. And then I think they went back, and I don't follow this I don't drive, I'm not a commercial motor vehicle company operator, you know, driver company leader. So, there's this little thing about three extra hours to get home as long as they within your on duty time. And, and now this is intended just so I've said this ahead of time. This is intended as a rare occurrence. One day you got stuck in the horrible traffic jam in Toledo, and you were there for an extra three hours and the question is, do we steer out of that drive real time hours. Do I make you just pull over on the side of the road in Youngstown, and then go to put you in a hotel. We let you drive home. Their answers will let you drive home. This is not a, I can plan on 14 hour drive real day, real time drives and schedule 14 hour drives at the schedule them for 11 hour drives maximum. And if it ends up a little longer one every once in a while, it's okay. But it better be the rare and the exception not the normal. And there's this weird 16 hour haul store haul exemption. And I will let you read, it's, it is rather circuitous, you can only use it every once in a while, it's let you do a bit longer drive that you've done otherwise. But you can only do it every so you can only do it like once a week. The theory is that if you drive too much you get fatigued, which I think is probably correct. And keep in mind that delay if bad react slow reaction time will will make everybody less safe. And I said there's the rules, and I said there's a 60 to 70 hour a week limit and it's, I don't want us to get lost in all those details. There are penalties to the driving time hours. If they get over the 11 hours. So, I mean, and this is for the drivers if they get over more than three hours over the 11 hour limit so that's the, the limit, plus the get home exemption, they can get the company and pretty expensive trouble. So, today, the way this works is if you have a CDL medical, you have to take your medical CDL, it's take your medical over to your state drivers license people, and they will want some part of that, and they will put into their computer somehow or another. That's how this works today. This is all supposed to be automated and computerized and just all the computers will have a love fest and we won't need to give out paper anymore. Started in 2015 we're not quite the 10 years we're getting there. So that's what's supposed to happen. And like in West Virginia if you get that they'll give you three months without asking, like they give you the automatically your three month exemption. So you can't drive. But if you, but when you're three months late, they'll send you a thing that says hey your, your medical expired three months ago. And if you don't get us a medical within the next three months, we are going to downgrade your CDL. Every state could state the licensure is done on a state by state basis. Every state has different levels of compassion. Being totally fair to the driver. If this person was a CMV driver and they're competent and they're doing really well for 20 or 30 years, and now they get cancer and they can't do the medical thing right now. And now their cancers, their treatment is, they've ended their treatment, they've rehabbed, they're back to full strength and want to go back to driving. Some states will make them start over completely. And, you know, take the written test, take a driving test, all that stuff. And different other states may give them credit for some of that that they've already done, and just kind of reinstate their CDL. And they said, all 55 of our driving entities in the United States probably do it a little bit differently. In West Virginia, you can go and you have to ask, if you contact them and ask, they'll give you a year to get a new medical. But you get three months automatically, and you have to ask beyond that. And if you don't ask, they will downgrade you. If you ask, say I have a medical condition that I expect to resolve, and it's just like two check marks on a form and you send it in, they'll give you out to a year before they downgrade your CDL. You still can't drive, but at least they don't make you start over again and take the written test and do the driving and all that kind of stuff. So, State Drivers License Authority, they're supposed to update within 10 days. And then place restrictions on the CDL using the restriction code V, and then downgrade within 60 days if not medically certified. And again, every state does this a little differently, and you see where it says State Drivers License Authorities must? Okay, if you go back and look at the Constitution, the word driver is not, driver's license is a state thing. And when the feds try to tell the states what they must do without sending money, they don't do it so well, and they didn't send money. So, they kind of do what their legislature passed to do. They don't really care what the feds think. That's true of most of the states right now in this arena. So, immuno-carriers, this is different, because they are under the regulation of the federal government. They have to verify the medical status on this STLA record, put a copy of the driver's qualification file, and then they have to, if there's any medical variance, have to keep a copy of that, and then perform the verification when they hire somebody, and then at least annually that they still have a valid medical. These are all things they'll do if they ever get the STLA medical system and the CDME system to talk to each other. A little bit about drug screening, because this didn't really go. Okay, wait a minute. Employer with other requirements. So, you would enter that he passed in the CDL database, but not pass them for that specific employer test. And so, the answer to your question is yes. If I was doing it, I would put them in the CDL database, because they passed their CDL medical, but they don't get the actual certificate to take with them, because they didn't pass the rest of their employer thing, if that's what the employer wants you to do. Because the employer paid for the exam. And unlike other kinds of exams where you can't have, where you're limited how often you do the exam, like on the FAA side, you can't get a new exam every three months. On the CDL side, you know, Joe's Trucking doesn't want to pay for the guy that failed their pre-employment physical for a CDL medical, they don't let him either pay for himself or let Bob's Trucking pay for it. They don't want to pay for the CDL medical that he's going to use at Bob's Trucking, because if he failed the pre-employment, he can't work here. But I don't want to pay for, I don't want to supplement my competitor. I kind of understand what they're trying to do there. Because I couldn't figure out where else to put this, I've got a little bit here about drug screening, as far as your job as a CDME. So all these things, so you got to have an operator's license, got to have a medical certificate, and you got to be part of a drug and alcohol testing program to operate a commercial motor vehicle. Okay. There's some walls that go up there and that's what I put in the purple. So, getting an operator's license has to do with your ability to control the vehicle, nothing else. Right. And demonstrating that skill. We're the middle part. So we have something to do, we do the medical exam. We have, we get, we have something to do with the SPE process, the skills performance evaluation, and we may be involved a little bit in the waivers. Okay. The drug and alcohol thing, unless they tell me they're using, I have nothing to do with. Okay, now if I, and I've had one driver that said oh yeah I use. I have a medical marijuana card and I'm like, this is a problem. Okay. How often do you use that and what's it for and all that kind of stuff and then you didn't leave with a certificate, because that's actually that's a hard fail. Even if it's legal. Even if it's legal, because federally marijuana. As of today. It may change tomorrow but as of today, marijuana is still a class one for status schedule one drug for federal purposes, and I don't care if it's legal where you are or not. That's a fail you can't have it like a card for interstate commerce can have a federal card. So, I'm really responsible for this part, and the other parts are kind of optional. I think we've got like, I think there's just three or four more slides here. 45. Yeah, we'll be out. So, there were some tests and changes in the in the MRO stuff, the random UDS rates when are still 50% they went down for a little while when we were using less drugs and they went back up now that we're using more drugs. So we're still testing random rate is 10%. This is how many what percentage of the employer of the drivers have to be tested every calendar year on a random basis. And they this final interim rule. I'm not going to worry about too much the details that the big thing they said, if you're if you are a MRO, you know that we used to test the 6am or six, ma'am, was only tested for people that had a positive opiate because we're looking for heroin versus codeine and or morphine, and that's not part of the program for everybody, everybody gets a test. I still don't know I still don't I still don't like their science, but it's new part of the program. They harmonize the drug schedule so I said, the schedule one drugs now include heroin, all the marijuana things. XSC a bunch of the amphetamines PCP quaaludes LSD, all that kind of stuff. And they may, they may want you to take those calls at your office. That's okay. I mean, that is the one that goes in a medical chart and medical people think about it and look at them and make determinations. That's okay. Any questions about that? Yes, ma'am. That I'm on Vicodin every night for back pain. Yep. So he now knows that. Yep. Can I drive or do he send me to a medical person to determine? Okay. So the law doesn't address how they figure that out. The right answer. So the question was, if I, if, if you're driving, if you're taking Vicodin every night, and your employer knows that, can you drive? And the answer I would say, if you follow the words on there. Okay. That's a controlled substance. And I would need to let my medical process, evaluate that, whatever that process is to determine, I should stand you down right now, right now, right now. And then I'll let my medical process determine, right. If you can keep driving or not. Now, this is why they want that medical process to be pretty fast. Because I don't want, I, if she's my driver, I don't want to be stuck on the side of the road for four days. I want to get that answer back. And, you know, I want somebody on the phone within an hour. So we can figure out if maybe she's not safe and that's fine. Or maybe she's perfectly safe. And then we'll make that determination as well. I have a lot of people go ahead. Go ahead. Would you certify? So, so, so this is so the question was as an examiner certified. So I'm going to change your question a little bit, or make it more complete. As an examiner would I certify somebody who uses Vicodin, one Vicodin every night to sleep? Is that your question? Yes. My answer actually is no. And the side, because I intermittent periodic and narcotics terrify me from a driver impairment perspective. If that person was on. Why methadone is a bad example because you can't certify methadone but that person was taking was taking this stable constant stable dose of MS content. I would certify them. Because that's actually what the science says, because it's a longer I think stable dose doesn't change. And after you get past three months as people aren't impaired. There's actually science for that. They've actually done the studies. Yes, ma'am. Yeah, I just want to piggyback on that. There is science that says, if someone's on long term use stable dose. But the person who decides I'm going to take a bike even because my back hurts. There's a risk because they're PRN people terrify me because like, you know, I mean I don't. But I mean I don't, I don't, I don't regularly use any narcotics. And if you gave me a dose if you give me a Vicodin, I wouldn't be safe to drive till tomorrow. Okay. Whether I'm safe whether I'm safe tomorrow is a different question, but it's just, it would definitely impair me in my ability to drive safely and PRN narcotics terrify me. And, and you have to write these down, like for real write them down. And is you know if that person uses like two a year for their migraine headache. And there and they they they self take themselves off the road for a day or two, we can talk about that, but it's not using it regularly PRN that terrifies me. I said I've certified people that are on constant stable doses suboxone I think it's not methadone. And they're unstable doses for a long period of time doing well in their program, normal drug testing. I'm actually okay with that. For my purpose of the exam. Yep. So schedule ones and methadone. And methadone is a specific one listed in the code. And the last member of the federal government takes forever to write stuff. And then because of that methadone when they wrote this reason methadone was the only treatment for drug abuse was only long term medication assisted treatment. And we thought forever they were going to add suboxone to this list but they never did. And I, given the way they've been going the last couple iterations of our guidance I don't think they ever will. It's not soon. So let's stop here. Let's take a 15 minute break.

commercial motor vehicle

FMCSA regulations

DOT medical card

pre-trip inspections

interstate commerce

intrastate commerce

CDL requirements

Hours of Service

driver fatigue

drug and alcohol testing

safety regulations