Profile For Cantankerous Amicus

Yeah, the newer trucks are awesome. I have an older one though.

However, the numbers of our particular trucks aren't really the point. I am wondering if a vehicle can legally tow a trailer that is rated higher than the towing capacity of said vehicle so long as the actual weight of the cargo and trailer together don't exceed the towing capacity of the vehicle as stated by the manufacturer. Let's assume for the time being that the trailer's GVWR is under 10,000 lbs so that we aren't falling under commercial driving regs.

This isn't really CDL territory, but I was hoping the pros here could clarify the legality of towing a trailer with a higher GVWR than the towing capacity of the truck, but keeping the combined trailer and cargo weight under the truck's maximum rated towing capacity.

I have a Ford F250 that has a towing capacity of 7600lbs and all the trailers I'm finding have a GVWR of either 7000lbs or 8000lbs, none at 7600lbs. I'd like to have the option of towing up to the full capabilities of the truck so long as I am not going afoul of the law.

For example would I get in trouble for hauling an empty 8000lb GVWR trailer that weighed 2500lbs when the trucks stated towing capacity is 7600 lbs?

I hope that's all clear and thanks in advance.

Interesting discussion.

I’m an emergency nurse who has worked through covid since January of last year. The current “surge” is real. At this point, I’ve treated patients with and without the jab; the sickest patients are those with comorbidities (e.g., diabetes, dialysis, heart failure, obesity, COPD), regardless of vaccine status.

My advice? Keep your weight down; take your vitamins; get exercise and good sleep; manage your medical issues with medications as prescribed by your doctor; eat a balanced diet. (Buttttt….y’all already know all of this, right???😊)

On the topic of mandated vaccinations for covid: I am leaving nursing (with bachelors degrees in nursing and cell/molecular biology, ER nursing certifications) in part due to the pressure placed upon me to obtain my covid vax. I am happy to hear there are trucking companies who respect my freedom to choose.

(I look forward to trucking and making connections here!)

Be blessed.

By the way, Lulu, I am not a lawyer, but if you haven't already resigned you might want to talk to one about your options. It might be more beneficial to you to force them to fire you for not taking the vaccine with them giving the reasons in writing. That way you might have recourse in the future when the tide hopefully shifts.

I just dusted off my account to reply to this thread. I hope it doesn't get deleted because I found it to be informative and helpful. Perhaps there are others who also found it useful but haven't commented.

I made the move back to the US recently, but with all that's happened in the last 18 months I thought that trucking might have gone through some significant changes in a far stricter direction, especially regarding requirements to get one of the COVID shots. I am glad to see that at least some companies are leaving it up to their drivers.

I thought each hole on trailer tandems was 350 lbs? Wouldnt one more hole have given you 33810 on the drives and dropped trailer to 33670?

Just been working through the weights section. Would you have been over on length if you had gone one hole farther back on the tandems? If not would the weight change really have been more than 540lbs? What about fuel burn-off?

Seems the corona virus is jamming up the freight. There are 90+ OTR drivers stuck here.

Is anyone else here also noticing a slowdown in freight? If China is on lockdown, truckers would be among the first to feel the effects of it, no?

Does this mean Old School shall be henceforth addressed as Sir Dale?

Good article, Kearsey. Your trainee's situation closely resembles mine - only that I haven't started at a company yet. Good food for thought.

Congrats to the new mods and congrats to Old School! Although Old School should know that I will be gunning for that same honor at whichever company I hire on with once I get rolling. If I end up driving for Knight, then look out! 😎

I'm not telling anyone they should run recaps or resets. Just looking at the math of the situation here:

11x62mph =682 miles per day.

Your math is way off, and the compared distance between the two ways of running is going to much closer in the real world. You'd be lucky to get even 600 miles everyday running your full 11 hours.

Being lucky is not the point here. The point is which method of managing the clock will get you more miles on average. You would be equally lucky to get 477 miles every day running 8.75 hours. These are theoretical examples. We leave out the largely irrelevant minutia so as to make the example easier to understand. As far as the claim that Turtle's math is way off... It's really not.

Traffic, terrain, weather, shippers and cons, and timing and mileage of the runs themselves are all limiting factors.

But these are not limiting factors if you run recaps?

Three or four consecutive days of 525-600 miles will often mean using almost all of your 14 hour clock, unless your company somehow has loads that are 600 and whatever miles on a daily basis that all pick up and deliver perfectly with your ten hour resets.

Why do the loads have to pick up and deliver so perfectly?

The advantage to doing 34 hour resets and just running your clock to the max for six consecutive days is you don't have to worry as much about on duty time eating into your drive time. Running recaps, on duty time can end up costing you the drive time you need to get to a destination that day. So you're off duty a lot more running recaps, if you want to turn miles and earn that is.

This is true by the same token that it's inefficient to take multiple breaks throughout a driver's driving hours. We will leave the actual time stopped out of the equation, but when the driver makes more stops, looks for a place to park, gets back on the highway, etc. he spends less time driving the maximum allowable speed as a percentage of his driving hours, and thus doesn't turn as many miles. Running recaps means more stops as a percentage of driving time. 8 stops per 70 hours versus 5 or 6/70. Just this point can add up to a monthly phone bill or a decent dinner somewhere. Some people might want the extra money and run resets, some people might want the extra time off every day and run recaps. That's up to them.

I have run mainly recaps since going solo on February 20th, 2019. I just hit 120,020 miles on January 28th, 2020. My fellow classmates running weekly with resets are 10000-30000 miles behind me. I'll post my paychecks and miles to date within the next week for people to get an idea of your first year. This is with roehl but other companies should be similar.

I don't think this is likely to be an apples to apples comparison. Those other drivers could have driven fewer miles for any number of reasons. Boiling it down only to recaps vs resets isn't likely to be accurate.

Another advantage to running recaps in my opinion is you expose yourself to more load availability. You're available while the guy doing a 34 misses out. Also, you're staying in dispatches mind because you're running more often through more shifts and they know you need miles and are willing to run.

But he is available during some of those 15.25 hours that you must be off duty. Say he finishes delivering at hour 9 on his 11-hour driving clock and another load is available nearby. You are already out of hours for the day. Who is going to get the load?

Believe it or not, you actually sit more on recaps when you add up the hours. Some time ago, I wrote something that explains in detail the differences between the two methods. I'll dig that up in a little while when I have more time.

I would be very interested in reading more on this. From my textbook understanding of HOS, the most time driving per week would be achieved by doing only split sleeper berth and taking 34 hour resets. (This eliminates the 30 minute break requirement as the break is subsumed by the 2 hour break in the split sleeper provision.) Of course, each real-life driving situation will dictate how a driver should manage his hours, but in a laboratory setting under perfect conditions, this would be the way.