A Rohrerstown Road trucking firm and its owner were charged Monday with scheming to hide their drivers' illegal work hours.

D.A. Landis Trucking Inc. and its owner, Dean A. Landis, were accused of ordering drivers to falsify their daily work logs.

The ruse made it look as if the drivers' illegally long hours were within federal limits, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office in Philadelphia.

Both Landis Trucking and Landis were charged with one count of conspiracy and 10 counts of making false statements.

Federal prosecutors allege that the defendants directed the milk-hauling firm's drivers to prepare two sets of daily logs.

One set, to be shown to government inspectors, was falsified to portray the drivers as complying with regulations.

The second set showed their actual hours worked and hours on break.

The defendants also dispatched drivers on trips that they knew would require excessive driving hours, the prosecutors said.

The alleged scam ran for nearly three years, from January 2007 to November 2009.

A 19-page charging document detailing the accusations does not disclose what alerted authorities to the alleged ruse.

The U.S. Department of Transportation sets maximum driving hours for truckers and minimum break hours in the interest of safety.

For instance, after a driver accumulates 10 hours behind the wheel, he must get eight hours off-duty before he may get back behind the wheel.

Truckers are required to keep track of their hours in a daily log in their own handwriting.

These logs are subject to review by DOT's Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.

According to prosecutors, the bogus logs were used to conceal the fact that drivers "were routinely exceeding" allowable hours on the job.

In the charging documents, prosecutors gave 10 examples of different drivers, identified by their initials, falsifying their logs.

Separate actual logs were labeled "Not 4 DOT," "NO DOT" or otherwise, to alert management to file them in cabinets that were similarly labeled.

Landis Trucking serves 700 dairy farms in southeast Pennsylvania, hauling milk to processors, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.

The company, which previously was on Greenfield Road, employs about 70 drivers and posts annual revenues of $6 million.

If convicted of all counts, Landis Trucking faces up to a $5.5 million fine and five years' probation.

Landis, 45, of Willow Street, faces up to five years in jail and a $250,000 fine.

Landis could not be reached immediately reached for comment on the federal charges.

According to the Landis Trucking website, the firm provides trucking, vehicle maintenance, warehousing, and roadside repair and towing.

tmekeel@lnpnews.com