Many of our clients contract to government entities – which means additional scrutiny from the Department of Labor. If you have drivers that fall under the Service Contract Act, you are required to comply with the Fair Labor Standards Act. We have seen increased DOL audits with our clients, and more companies are using LoadTrek to create work plans and monitor compliance with established plans.
A key provision is the creation and monitoring of authorized break periods – and the rules that stipulate whether or not these breaks should be compensable.
Many employers assume that, when an employee stretches a 15-minute break to 25 minutes, the FLSA does not allow the additional 10 minutes to be treated as non-compensable time.
On the contrary, the Labor Department’s internal enforcement manual takes the position that unauthorized break extensions need not be considered work time, so long as the employer has expressly and unambiguously told employees that:
- authorized breaks may last only for a specific length of time;
- any extension of those breaks is against the rules; and
- any extension of those breaks will be punished.
Remember that many states impose rest-break rules of their own. Employers must also be aware of and comply with whatever the applicable obligations are.
For purposes of what is and is not FLSA worktime under Labor Department interpretations, it can be useful to view scheduled breaks as falling into essentially three categories:
- Meal breaks, which are typically noncompensable time
- “Short” rest breaks of “about 20 minutes” or less, which the Labor Department says are typically compensable time
- Break periods which are neither meal breaks nor “short” rest breaks, which might or might not be compensable time.
We recommend that routes are created with break times and locations built into the route. These break locations should have instructions that explain the nature and expected duration of the break.
By Steve Hardy, Dallas Fire Department
When you are on the road, sooner or later you’ll be one of the first to arrive at an accident scene. What should you do? What should you not do? Here is how you can help us, as emergency responders, save lives and minimize injuries.
Park safely and use your rig to shield the accident scene from oncoming traffic if necessary. Quickly place your flares or triangles – you don’t need a second accident. If you see bystanders who are helpful, appoint a traffic guard to slow and divert traffic.
Call in the accident. Report the location with highway number and mile marker or intersection. When you call in the accident, we need to know who to send, how many to send, and what type of equipment to send. How many people are involved? What is the extent of the injuries? Are people bleeding and breathing? Are they awake? How many vehicles are involved? How serious is the damage to the vehicles? Are there fatalities? These answers will tell us if this is a “heavy rescue” requiring another truck, if we need to send additional MICU’s, if we need to send the Chief or an EMS Supervisor, and if we need to preserve the scene for a police investigation.
Go to the patients. Are they awake? If so, talk calm and slow. Do not give them anything to eat or drink. Assess their orientation. Ask questions such as, “Who is the President?” “What happened?” “Where are you?”. Ask what hurts. If you need to hold them still, use both hands on both ears, and hold the nose even with the belly button. If a motorcyclist is involved, do not remove the helmet and do not move the motorcycle – unless it’s on the patient.
When we arrive, we need a place to park that provides a safe triage/treatment area. Tell us exactly what you found and what you’ve done. Ask us if we need you to do anything. If not, leave and get out of the way.
When we arrive, we will ask the patients questions to assess their level of consciousness. We are looking for concussions, and behavior that is inconsistent with our original assessment. We attempt to collect personal items in the vehicles and keep them with the patient as they are transported.
We are responsible for site clean-up – but we need to determine if this is a possible crime scene. Fatalities, road rage incidents, suicides, homicides, domestic calls, or assaults require police investigation, and we must preserve the scene until the investigation is done. We clean up spilled fluids, debris, and take care of any hazardous material spills.
Your first response to an accident scene is critical. Someone needs to be in charge of the scene until we arrive. Unless someone else is there who identifies themselves as a trained medical or law enforcement professional, we need you to take control.
A Fleet Telematics System (FTS) allows the information exchange between a commercial vehicle fleet and their central authority, i.e., the dispatching office. A FTS typically consists of mobile Vehicle Systems (VS) and a stationary Fleet Communication System (FCS). The FCS may be a stand alone application maintained by the motor carrier or an internet service running by the supplier of the system. The FCS usually includes a database in which all vehicle positions and messages are stored.
Digital maps are often included which allow visualization of vehicle positions and traces. Communication with the FCS is realized by trunked radio, cellular, or satellite communication. Positioning of vehicles is usually realized by global satellite positioning systems and/or dead reckoning using a gyroscope and odometer.
Usually, the VS is equipped with a simple input device allowing drivers to send predefined status messages. Drivers may add simple content, e.g., numeric values, but usually cannot enter arbitrary text. Besides the messages sent by drivers, some VS can also automatically submit messages, e.g., the vehicle’s position, data from sensors in the cargo body, or vehicle data from the CAN-bus.
In 2002, major European commercial vehicle manufacturers, namely Daimler Chrysler, Scania, DAF, Volvo, and Renault, agreed to give third parties access to vehicle data using the CAN-bus as a connection. The Fleet Management Standard (FMS) is an open standard which is dependent on the vehicle’s equipment, with access to such vehicle data as fuel consumption, engine data, or vehicle weight.
Coca Cola Refreshments USA, Inc. faces a corporate responsibility challenge after Corpus Christi jury awards in excess of 21 Million Dollars in a cell phone distraction injury case heard in the County Court at Law No. 2 in Nueces County, Case No. 10-61510-2.
Two law firms came together to bring the cell phone distraction case to a jury after it was discovered in the lawsuit that Coca Cola had a vague and ambiguous cell phone policy for its delivery drivers, according to court documents. The jury was to decide whether or not Venice Wilson’s injuries were caused by a distracted Coca Cola delivery driver who was on a cell phone.
The law firms handling the trial, Hilliard, Munoz & Gonzalez through its lead lawyer, Bob Hilliard, and Thomas J. Henry Injury Attorneys, through its lead lawyer, Thomas J. Henry, discovered flaws in the Coca Cola management cell phone policy which allowed its employees to operate company vehicles throughout the United States while using a cell phone, according to court documents.
According to court documents, the jury heard overwhelming evidence of how Coca Cola knew of the dangers of using a cell phone while driving, including having a cognitive distraction of 37% while on a cell phone. The jury heard that Coca Cola withheld this information from its employee driver, in addition to the data on the numbers of deaths and injuries arising from cell phone use while operating vehicles, according to court documents.
When asked about Coca Cola corporate governance, Bob Hilliard, a lead trial lawyer in the case said this: “Today’s verdict I hope sends a message to corporate America that you can’t have employees on a cell phone and endanger the motoring public.”
When asked to reflect on the jury’s award, Thomas J. Henry of Thomas J. Henry Injury Attorneys, a national law firm, stated: “From the time I took the Coca Cola driver’s testimony and obtained the company’s inadequate cell phone driving policy, I knew we had a corporate giant with a huge safety problem on our hands. I also knew that taking on Coca Cola’s policy that affects hundreds of thousands of its employees would require assembling a trial team with the horse power necessary to fight and win. More importantly, I knew Mrs. Wilson deserved justice, and the rest of the motoring public deserved safer drivers; so, Bob Hilliard and I decided to put our law firm litigation teams together to shred Coca Cola’s policy.”
When asked if he thought the jury connected with him during his closing argument, Bob Hilliard said, “I knew looking into their hearts and minds, after hearing days of trial testimony, that they knew cell phone use while driving was deadly and harmful. The jury knew I gave them evidence to change Coca Cola’s policy, and I knew the jury would do justice, and they did. We now have a safer community, state, and country and now Coke gets to join, against their will, other Fortune 500 companies who volunteered to have a “no cell phone” use policy while operating company vehicles.”
Trucking Industry Insights
