Fact Check: When Drive Time Counts as Paid Hours

The Portal-to-Portal Act (29 USC §254) excludes ordinary home-to-work commute. IBP v. Alvarez (546 U.S. 21, 2005) established the continuous-workday rule — once a principal activity begins, all subsequent travel is compensable. Morillion v. Royal Packing (22 Cal.4th 575, 2000) applied California's broader "subject to control" test to mandatory employer-provided transit.

29 CFR §785.35 — "Normal travel from home to work is not worktime" — applies to employees who work at different job sites as well. The Portal-to-Portal Act at 29 USC §254(a)(1) is the statutory authority for the exclusion.

29 CFR §785.38 — travel from a mandatory meeting place (where the employee receives instructions, performs work, or picks up and carries tools) to the work place is compensable. The article's mistake #1 — "Mandatory yard time without paying the yard-to-customer drive" — anchors to this regulation.

Same 29 CFR §785.38 mechanic applied to a service-business scenario. The article's mistake #1 names HVAC, plumbing, electrical, and locksmith as the affected trades. Tool pickup at the yard is the canonical "principal activity" that starts the continuous workday.

IBP v. Alvarez established the continuous-workday rule: once an employee's first "principal activity" begins, all subsequent travel between work locations is compensable. 29 CFR §785.38 specifies that site-to-site travel during the workday is part of the day's work and must be counted as hours worked.

Each named example is a "principal activity" under IBP v. Alvarez. The article's mistake #4 calls out this pattern explicitly: "A home-health nurse logs into the EMR before driving to the first patient; a delivery driver receives the route on the dispatch app before leaving home; a salesperson syncs the CRM at the kitchen table. Each of these is a 'principal activity' under IBP v. Alvarez, and the time AFTER the login becomes compensable."

Morillion v. Royal Packing (22 Cal.4th 575, 2000) held that mandatory employer-provided transit is compensable as "hours worked" under California IWC Wage Order No. 14-80's "subject to control" test, with no Portal-to-Portal Act exclusion limiting state-law claims. Overton v. Walt Disney (2006) provided the narrow safe harbor for genuinely optional transit. California Labor Commissioner DLSE opinion letters since 2018 have extended Morillion to parking-lot shuttles when the lot itself is mandatory.

Direct operational restatement of the Morillion rule. California's "subject to control" test applied to mandatory employer-provided transit means the ride time is compensable as hours worked under the IWC Wage Orders.

IBP v. Alvarez continuous-workday rule applied to the home-health EMR-login scenario from the article's mistake #4. The login is the first principal activity; the drive that follows is part of the same continuous workday.

Direct application of the post-2018 California Labor Commissioner DLSE opinion letters extending Morillion to parking-lot-to-building shuttles when the lot itself is mandatory. Overton v. Walt Disney provides the narrow safe harbor only for genuinely optional transit, not for "voluntary on paper, fired in practice" policies — which is the article's mistake #2 framing.

Anderson v. Mt. Clemens Pottery (328 U.S. 680, 1946) burden-shifting rule applied to GPS-vs-time-record mismatch. When employer records are inadequate (or contradicted by vehicle telematics + mobile clock-in geolocation), the employee can establish unpaid hours by "just and reasonable inference." The article's mistake #5 names this exact pattern: "When records show the truck was at customer sites at 8am and the employee's first time entry is 9am, the employer's 'we estimate the drive time' testimony loses."

The article opens with this range as the framing for California travel-time class actions. The federal-vs-California exposure delta is anchored in Morillion + DLSE opinion letters + California's broader "subject to control" test and Wage Order 14-80 framework.

Synthesis of the article's through-line. "Back-pay across two or three years" tracks the FLSA 2-year statute of limitations (3 if willful per McLaughlin v. Richland Shoe). "Doubled in federal court" tracks FLSA §16(b) liquidated damages. "In California a class action measured in tens of millions" tracks the article's $10M–$50M California settlement framing anchored in Morillion + DLSE opinion letters + IWC Wage Order 14-80.