What Is The Best Practice For Getting The Most Out Of Your HOS?

Just as the title says. Is it best to drive your 11 if you can or is there some kind of golden secret formula guarded by Buddhist trucking monks in some far away land that must be earned through deep dedication and tragic sacrifice?

Most folks will say to plan on being "On Duty" an average of 9.5 hours a day (combination of On Duty Driving and just plain on duty) and you won't run out of hours on your 70.

Remember that we deal with THREE CLOCKS here. And there's no great Buddha Belly Rubbing sooper sekrit squirrel magic trick to it.

You run, what you need to run - to get where you need to go - ON TIME (remembering EARLY IS ON TIME - ON TIME IS LATE and LATE IS SCREWED).

Trip Planning tells you about how long it's going to take to get there, where you're going to want to plan to stop and when.

You have 14 hours (actually 13.5 - because you have to take a 1/2 hour break at some point) from the time you FIRST GO ON DUTY - to use your 11 hours drive time.

Most folks will say - all things being equal (traffic, weather, etc.) - you can try for 5-600 miles in a day - leaning more towards the 500 - or even less if you're running in NE traffic, or in the current weather scenarios of everything pretty much north of Florida & Texas.

Deep Dedication & Tragic Sacrifice?

Oh - you're talking about EXPERIENCE...

Once you get out there - you'll figure out how you like to run. Whether you run your 11 every day and end up having to do a 34 hour RESET once a week - or get stuck waiting until midnight to get back a few hours on RECAP of your 70 hour clock.

The first key grasshopper - is to understand how the 11/14/70 clocks work. The next is to understand how you and the road work. Then how to make them work TOGETHER.

Rick

Great reply rick. I just figured the company would tell you when to run when to stop and where. (I knew about the 11/14/70 a little from random reads

ON TIME (remembering EARLY IS ON TIME - ON TIME IS LATE and LATE IS SCREWED).

Hahaha. So true. There is almost never a situation where arriving early is a bad thing. You never know when you can get squeezed in and get out of the shipper early by just trying. That behavior alone can win you dozens of extra runs over the course of a year resulting in thousands of extra dollars in earnings. On the other hand, showing up late can (and often will) screw up a whole week.

Great reply rick. I just figured the company would tell you when to run when to stop and where. (I knew about the 11/14/70 a little from random reads

Company gives you appointment times, routes and fuel stops. Some companies strictly enforce routes and fuel stops - others, they're a suggestion. As a company driver, especially a newbie - you pretty much want to stick to their suggestions.

You are ON YOUR OWN out there otherwise. They don't set an alarm clock for you or lay your clothes out on the bed. You're expected to make your appointment windows ON TIME - or have a good explanation and make it FAR ENOUGH IN ADVANCE that they can decide whether to get someone else to grab the load from you (REPOWER - someone that HAS TIME on their clock to get the load there on time).

Now - with E-Logs - the company sees how much time you have to run - and "typically" won't give you a load you can't make on time. But, if your trip planning, looking at clocks, weather, route and other factors tell you the run CANNOT BE DONE ON TIME - SPEAK UP RIGHT AWAY. If you're running in a "tight window" and the shipper screws you over and leaves you sitting for 10 hours longer than your appointment time - COMMUNICATE when you send your "Loaded Departing Shipper" message, that you might not be able to make the drop on time, because of the delay at the shipper. Actually, in this scenario - you got a 10 hour break in, if you went off duty when you arrived at the shipper - but if you DIDN'T SLEEP during this 10 hours - you're going to be too tired to drive a full shift.

The BETTER YOU COMMUNICATE - the MORE YOU STAY OUT OF JACKPOTS.

It's easy to armchair quarterback this stuff on paper - but you really figure it out once you get out there and live it.

Rick

One thing I don't see here (I scanned the answers quickly) is the use of off duty time. That's what will stretch out your 11.

At a shipper , once you have enough time On Duty for your backing up and your paperwork, and you are sitting, waiting for the next thing, go to Off Duty. At a truck stop, after fueling and you need to go inside, hit the Off Duty button.

Always allow On Duty time for your pick up + drop off, but the rest of your time should be Off Duty, or Sleeper. This could stretch your available duty time till it even bumps into the 14 hour limit.

Detention: detention pay is often less than you make per hour driving 60mph on the interstate. You must be logged in On Duty for that. Your choice: $20/hr sitting for detention, or $24+ of driving 1 more hour towards your next stop?

Actually, getting there too early can hurt you in some ways. If your clock is already running it's really no big deal and not much you can do about it anyway. If your just starting up, clocking in too early to get there too early will eat up your 14 hr clock effecting how far after or even if you can pickup your next load.

JJ

Actually, getting there too early can hurt you in some ways. If your clock is already running it's really no big deal and not much you can do about it anyway. If your just starting up, clocking in too early to get there too early will eat up your 14 hr clock effecting how far after or even if you can pickup your next load.

JJ

Then we get into split sleeper and other advanced topics.

Every day, every situation is going to vary. Unless you're doing a "milk run" (fixed route dedicated) and you know you're going to be drop-n-hook and everything pretty much runs according to schedule - every day is going to be a different scenario.

One of the reasons why people enjoy the challenge of OTR once they get it figured out. There's as much ART as there is SCIENCE to it. The SCIENCE is the REGULATIONS - the ART is how you maximize the miles you can run within the science.

Rick

split sleeper! split sleeper! split sleeper! split sleeper!

LMAO @ Erroll! I'm not really sure how it works or if swift even let's us use it fully. If I go 8 hrs in sleeper my hrs will reset to where they were before clocking out. But going into sleeper for just two hrs doesn't seem to do anything at all.

JJ