Reefer Is More Night Driving?

I usually like to run 3am - 3pm. It makes for a crazy schedule, but there is pretty much always parking available. However, like it's been said, it all depends on the load

I despise night driving but I found a happy medium. Start early morning, say 230-3am. You'll be done before the afternoon rush hour and all the truck stops will still have tons of parking available.

Here is what my day today has been for reefer.

Wake at midnight to start rolling at 1 to get to recievers at 1:15. Now there are issues with sales so we didn't really get unloaded until 7:30. Then head north fir our next load arrive 14:30, and we are still sitting here waiting to get loaded.

What I have seen is the times are all over the board depending on the customer. Most places want delivers at a certain time, and with reefer most times your product is very sensitive and needs to be delivered asap.

As for the driving I have found if your running coast to coast the days your not at the shipper/receiver you can choose how you want to use those hours as long as you get to each location in time.

I drove reefer and now am in dry van. I did a whole lot of night driving in reefer and have generally open pick up and deliery schedules in dry van and most of our customers where I am at are not open for delivery at nights so it's mostly day driving for me except the occasional 3-4am start

But I just got matched up with a partner at my team job that I don't continuously want to burry in a Shallow Grave ⚰️☠️ Hahaha

Hey, that's great news! I know you weren't getting along at all with the last guy.

I know someone who owns 50 reefers and he told me that the reasons reefers run mostly nights is because back in the day when the drivers were sleeping the competition will go and mess with their thermostat so that their load will go bad making it difficult for you to get loads from the shipper allowing them to bid for your which is why companies like running their reefer loads at night so that the driver is awake and no one can mess with his truck in the dark. He told me that a lot of companies used to play it very dirty back in the days to eliminate competition. He personally lost a lot of loads of Strawberries through those dirty tricks. That is why companies have stuck to run reefers mostly at night from what he says

I drive reefer and by preference drive from 05:00 to about 15:00. I rarely drive before that except for the occasional late pickup, then just go back to my regular schedule the next day. Of course you also have the occasional 04:00 delivery, but that just means your day is over sooner as well.

Only very rarely do I start driving before midnight and by the next day am usually back on my regular schedule.