Miles, Miles...miles?

Starting a new thread because I didn't mean to hijack the other one.

For most of last year I averaged around 1700 miles a week. Then during the last quarter, the busiest time of year for freight, it (I know you're expecting me to say "went up") actually went down. And yet, I am constantly doing 34s because I'm out of hours

Ok, everyone else in the country can run about 3000-3500 miles per week before running out of hours on their 70. What is going on with your logging that you're out of hours half way through the week? And how can they give you more miles if you're out of hours, right? So there's no way you can say it's 100% the company's fault that you're not getting miles if you're running out of hours after 1700 miles. You're not doing something right on your end either. And there's a good chance your dispatcher may feel you can't handle any more miles or you don't want any more miles because nobody runs out of hours after 1700 miles.

Guyjax nailed it - it's time you have a talk with dispatch and maybe someone a little higher up to see what can be done. But I can tell you one thing in no uncertain terms - there isn't a dry van company in the nation that can pay their bills on 1700 miles per week. So the idea that all of the drivers you talk to are getting around 1500 miles per week at one of the largest trucking companies in North America doesn't add up. I promise you there are plenty of drivers cranking out 3000+ miles per week. You just have to sit down with dispatch and management and figure out why you're not one of em.

Actually Brett, I wish it could be something as simple as me screwing up my logging that's causing the problem. And if anyone can explain to me what I can do to keep from wasting the equivalent of 35 hours a week, I'd love to hear it. I've been wracking my brain for a year trying to figure out how to make this work. But I've gone through the High Road training stuff (Which I can't praise highly enough!) about hours and logging and I've read Brett's book and I've taken lots of tips from here and from other drivers and tried to use them and can't come up with some magical thing that can double my miles. I sweep trailers off duty. I do my paperwork off duty. Many of my conversations with my DM are off duty. I do routine truck maintenance off duty. I go to off duty when I pull into a truck stop and only go back on duty for as long as it takes to fuel up. I hit off duty any time I think I can get away with it. And even sometimes when I know I shouldn't. I've taken my 30 minute breaks sometimes while doing drop and hooks just to save hours and avoid HOS violations. I've gone off duty during live unloads when I was short. If Swift knew how much time I spend logged off duty when I technically should be on duty they'd have a fit. I've gotten faster at all the things truckers do (except going down the highway - can't get past the 62mph governor) and none of it is helping my miles. Anyway, tell me all the ways you suspect I'm losing hours on my logging and I promise you I'll tell you if I'm doing that and put any good tips to work for me.

(Cont...)

To answer Guyjax, no I'm not saying that I'm sitting around so much that I'm getting in 34s. It was like that a lot in the beginning, but I'm actually pretty busy since I came back from surgery at the end of September. I almost always have a load lined up before I finish the one I'm on. But my hours are getting wasted all over. I can promise you that since I started here there has only been one day that I could keep rolling on hours I got back at midnight, and then the next day I had to take a 34. But that really isn't the point. I was just pointing that out to show that I'm working (or waiting around on someone) a hell of a lot, but not getting any driving in. Taking a day off for a 34 is not costing me 1300-1800 hours a week. It really comes down more to the 14 hour clock. If I logged everything as either driving or off duty I still would not get anything like 3000 miles a week. I've been hearing that 3000 a week is about average since I started researching truck driving. But honestly, working here, I cannot see how that's even possible for a solo company driver. Solo, company drivers cannot expect to get long haul type miles at this company on a consistent basis. I asked my DM (who was a planner with Swift before being a DM) why it was that every time I got a load over 1000 miles I always had to deliver it a day or day and a half later than I could get it there or I only got long loads with plenty of time on them when I needed a 34. She told me it's because those loads are considered team or O/O loads. The only way I ever got them was because they had plenty of time on them. Solo drivers are usually planned on loads that are a day's drive or less. So, whenever I've gotten any longer loads I've either had to take a 34 in the middle or just sit around for a day because they never let me deliver early, even if I'm sitting on the street in front of the customer for a day and a half. Lately I've even had a few loads that are 600ish miles with 2 days from pickup to delivery. Live at both ends, firm delivery times. Lots of sitting around because I always drive as far as I can get just in case something happens or by some miracle I can deliver early.

So, where are the hours going? First of all, every load is going to have overhead. You have to pick up and deliver, which isn't driving. More shorter loads means more overheard. And since the vast majority of my loads are live on both ends, there's a lot of overhead. If I deliver a load in the morning, go to the next load, pick it up, and then deliver that day I'm looking at 6 hours easy of sitting around not driving. If things go smoothly. Which they don't do.

Right now I'm sitting here (off duty, thankfully) waiting for a message to come in verifying I can take the trailer I'm attached to. I was told I'd get that message in a couple minutes. That was 1 1/2 hours ago. If this were during my 14 it would be purely wasted time. After sitting around earlier waiting for a load to be ready that got cancelled 2 hours after I was supposed to pick it up, I got this hot load going to Indy. I dropped it at Costco and asked which trailer was the pallet load I'm supposed to be picking up and taking back tomorrow morning. I hooked up to it, sent in my loaded call, and got a message back saying this trailer was already assigned to a different load. I checked and there is no other pallet trailer and won't be one. So, over an hour wasted trying to get this fixed and I still don't know if I'm OK to take this trailer in the morning. It's very likely I will have to give up this trailer, grab an empty and lose this load. Time from pre-trip to going off duty today: 12 1/2 hours. Time on duty: 8:15. Time driving: 6:00.

Yesterday I delivered a load to a Costco in Detroit. I drop the trailer, pick up my empty, send in my empty call and get the all-too-familiar "Invalid trailer or wrong location" message. I can't leave until this is fixed or else it screws things up and creates a lot of work for someone back there. So, I send in a message with the trailer number and VIN for the trailer to show that yes, this trailer really is here. 40 minutes later my empty call is fixed and I can leave for my next load. Wait, no I can't because I haven't been dispatched and sometimes you end up losing a load you've already accepted. I've been burned heading out to pick up a load I ended up not getting and wasted a lot of time and driving. Anyway, 45 minutes later I finally get someone to dispatch me. Drop and hooks are planned as 30 minute operations. I spent over 2 hours here. Shouldn't happen like that, but it does constantly. Logging off duty (which I did) does not keep me from losing the loads I do frequently because problems like this keep me from getting to them on time.

I just got my next load after this one. I was planning on leaving with this one as soon as my 10 is up. But now I can't do that because if I do I'll run out my 14 before I can get tomorrow's load delivered. I have to sit here at Costco a few more hours (5 or 6) so I can deliver this load just before I pick the other one up. I know they can't plan everything perfectly, but it's just more hours I sit around instead of being able to drive.

These are things I go through regularly.

Last week just before I was due home time I went to pick up a load. 40 miles to load, live load, 60 miles to drop and hook. I get there and tell the guy which load I'm there to pick up. He tells me he would rather I take another load that's also going to the Costco DC and has been sitting a week. I say I have no control over that, he'll have to talk to a CSR. He calls my bluff and does that. Half an hour later he tells me the CSR says, "Sure, give the driver the other load." Took me over half an hour (not Swift's fault at all) to get backed in because there is no room, no staging area between the two companies and 5 drivers all needing to be in the same place at the same time. Hour and a half to load. I can't leave yet because they had to cancel the first load and completely build this new load up from scratch and they still haven't gotten it done. Finally I'm told by my DM that the CSR says go ahead and try to deliver this load tonight. My DM tells me she knows they won't take it and she's worried I'm going to get stuck sitting on this load over hometime and miss the load I'm planned on tomorrow before I go home. Long story short, Costco refuses the load, everyone who knows what's going on has gone home and I spend 3 hours jumping through hoops and trying to get people to understand what went on with this load before I'm allowed to leave the customer and go shut down. I'm promised by a CSR in Phoenix that I can deliver the load in the morning. I go back the next morning and they refuse it again because there is still no appointment. I spend another 3 plus hours at Costco trying to get this resolved before they finally tell me to just t-call the load at the terminal 70 miles away. Then the real fun begins.

I t-call the load and spend probably an hour trying to find an empty at the terminal. Why? Because Swift's "State of the art trailer tracking system" (You'll hear about it while on hold...) basically has no way of keeping track of empties that aren't attached to trucks. I'm not making that up. You have to wander around the terminal opening doors on unsealed trailers to find one that's empty and then go get someone to look up the trailer to see if it's on shop status or already assigned. I can't find one that is actually empty and not assigned or on shop status. So they send me across town to a DC to try to pick one up. Of course they don't have any. Then they send me 60 miles away to pick up a trailer at a different DC. I get there and they ask me for the pickup number. I say I don't have one, I'm just picking up an empty. He says we don't release any trailers without pickup numbers. (Are you kidding me? They sent me to pick up a trailer someplace we do a lot of business with and are somehow unaware of this policy?) Then he checks anyway and tells me I can't have that trailer anyway because it's in use.

I go back and forth with our people a few more hours and end up with no empty and losing the load because of it. I was supposed to be able to leave the terminal for home time at about 11 am. I ended up losing a load, having no empty, and leaving the terminal at 7pm.

I ended up losing a load, wasting at least a day and half of hours. I drove around in circles and got paid for something like 150 miles in 2 days. No detention pay, no local delivery pay, no anything. 2 days of running around, 150 miles. I wish I could say this is the first time something like this has happened to me, but sadly, I've had similar experiences too many times. And I don't know how I can fix it.

I also don't know what to do about the times I'm asked to deadhead an empty trailer to another region because that's where all the freight is (I'm outside of Chicago. There's no freight in Chicago??) and wait for a load. For 2 days, even though they have a ton of freight there supposedly. This has happened a few times. I don't know how to fix it when I am supposed to fill in for a local delivery driver, drive 79 miles total, deliver to two stores, and take 18 hours to do that because they are hand unloads. I get paid 79 miles plus $15 stop pay for that. After a few of these deals, now when I get sent something like this I suddenly come down with the flu or my truck desperately needs service. All the times I've had loads refused because they didn't give me a pickup number that the customer always requires and I spend 3 hours trying to get someone to fix. All the wild goose chases for empty trailers that either aren't there or aren't empty and I end up losing loads because of it. 3 times now I've been sent to the same wrong place to pick up loads. They have the company name wrong and don't give you a pickup number, so it takes forever to finally figure out that you are at the right company but they don't do Walmart loads out of that location. Now I know where to go for those loads but I've told them twice that the info needs to be updated so other people don't waste a bunch of time going to the wrong place, but they don't fix the info or give you pickup numbers.

I could go on and on because these things happen constantly. It feels like every day I'm on the phone and sending messages for hours trying to get something fixed so I can just pickup or deliver a load.

I imagine I'm going to get "Quit whining. That's trucking. It happens to everyone." And I'm sure it does happen to everyone. But not with the frequency it happens around here or else no one would be getting that 3000 to 3500 miles a week. I'm not mentioning all of these things to whine. But the question is basically why am I not getting miles and what can I do to fix it. Well, these are examples of where all of my time keeps going instead of going to driving. I like driving. I don't mind dealing with customers. I'm a lot more comfortable and efficient now with picking up and delivering loads. I have a lot better understanding of how our system works now. But I can't make any money when I'm being run around in circles or waiting on people to fix problems that I had nothing to do with creating.

I know you're skeptical about what I'm telling you about the miles. But I have no way of proving it. You guys always say don't go by people *****ing about companies on websites, get out there and talk to drivers at the companies. Well, I'm out here every day talking to other drivers and asking people at my company how things are going and if they are getting miles. I run into a lot of people who come up to me and say, "I used to work for Swift." They all say they are happier where they are now. No one has ever said, "I wish I'd stayed at Swift." I haven't run into anyone who left Swift and came back. And these people tell me they dealt with the same things I'm dealing with now. Am I not supposed to believe what I'm seeing firsthand or anything other drivers tell me? What other evidence do I have to go on?

Anyway, I had figured I'd try some more things while I'm finishing paying off my training, so I'm going to try regional for a while, since my DM keeps trying to get me to do that. Then I thought if that's not any better I'd try the flatbed division for a while to see if it's any different and to get that experience. After that, unless someone can tell me something I can do to miraculously start getting twice the miles I'm getting now, I'm out of ideas.

(Incidentally, as another example of how things work at Swift, whenever my DM has talked to me about going regional she has told me you work during the week and then get weekends off. Sounded good. Then last week I switched to regional and asked about going home weekends. Then she tells me, "You don't actually get weekends off. It's more that they prefer you to take your 34 on the weekend because there's not much freight then." How the hell does "Get weekends off" become "they prefer you to take your 34 on the weekend"? Those aren't even close to the same thing. But it's a lot like "You get 2 days off every two weeks" becoming "You get 2 consecutive 24 hour periods." Or how "We pay $400 to $450 dollars per week while you're in training becomes "We pay minimum wage while you're in training" as soon as you get to orientation.)

Hey Rookie Trucker, I don't think you seem like a whiner or somebody that has an ax to grind, but I'm still a little mystified by the numbers you give out. It just doesn't add up to me. In this business you have pretty much got to be the type of person who can get out there and make things happen. It's so akin to being self employed that I think a lot of people expect it to just fall into place for them and when it doesn't they're not sure what to do about it. You have got to learn how to make things happen. I know that may sound idealistic, but it really is true in this business. I was self employed with about ten employees for thirty years before I got into truck driving and it benefited me greatly in understanding how to react in the situations I now encounter.

I've got a hunch about what's happening with you, and I'll address it in a minute but first let me mention just a few things that stood out to me in your post.

I've been hearing that 3000 a week is about average since I started researching truck driving.

I don't think that is a true perception to have when you first get into this career. It would be ideal, but not likely. I work for a much smaller carrier than Swift, but we do have around 2600 trucks on the road. I've seen the average goals that the dispatchers are supposed to be shooting for and it's more like 2300 to 2500 miles per truck. That obviously means that some are going to get more than that while others will be getting less. You also mention that you are just now starting to get the hang of all this, and I just don't think rookies can expect to be "running with the big dogs" right out of the gate.

You also make this statement:

Anyway, I had figured I'd try some more things while I'm finishing paying off my training, so I'm going to try regional for a while, since my DM keeps trying to get me to do that. Then I thought if that's not any better I'd try the flatbed division for a while to see if it's any different and to get that experience. After that, unless someone can tell me something I can do to miraculously start getting twice the miles I'm getting now, I'm out of ideas.

I'm not sure this is a good plan. You've already had to stop and have some surgery which, whether you realize it or not, set you back a little just from the lapse in time on the road. If you keep switching around to different types of freight you are going to have to start a new learning curve with each new change, and that's going to mean less miles accomplished. Trust me, each different form of driving will have it's own set of frustrations and delays. I think you would be much better served to stick with one form of freight and try and excel at it for the first eighteen months or so. This business is performance based, not only for the drivers, but also the dispatchers and load planners. They've got benchmarks they need to be reaching so as to make more money. The driver benefits from this atmosphere because his dispatcher is motivated to keep him moving.

Here's my hunch, and I may be way off on this, but I'm throwing it out there anyway. I think you might benefit from switching to a different dispatcher. It sounds to me like yours just isn't very motivated to get you up into some higher numbers. It seems you've proven you are capable and willing to do more, and usually when a dispatcher finds a driver like that they are thrilled and do what ever it takes to keep that person moving. At this point I think it would be worth trying. Be professional and polite, but just let them know that not only can you not survive on 1700 miles a week, but that you don't see how you are making any money for the company at this rate either.

Good post Old School, I wanted to offer some advice but I'm just too new to have really been any help. So instead I thought I would sit back and learn.

I want to also say that while I will not relay stories that I am told as they are second hand info, there was a driver in orientation with me that had come from Swift and the similarities in the stories were striking.

Woody

Hey Rookie, what part of Indiana are you in? I live in Terre Haute and am working out of a terminal in Indy. Just curious.

Here's my hunch, and I may be way off on this, but I'm throwing it out there anyway. I think you might benefit from switching to a different dispatcher. It sounds to me like yours just isn't very motivated to get you up into some higher numbers. It seems you've proven you are capable and willing to do more, and usually when a dispatcher finds a driver like that they are thrilled and do what ever it takes to keep that person moving. At this point I think it would be worth trying. Be professional and polite, but just let them know that not only can you not survive on 1700 miles a week, but that you don't see how you are making any money for the company at this rate either.

I've thought about that. Especially when she was brand new just coming from being a load planner and didn't know much. In the past year she's learned a lot about what she can do to help drivers. But I'm not sure if switching DMs is going to do much at this company. DMs (dispatchers) here don't actually do any dispatching. They are mostly just liaisons and driver handlers. The CSRs schedule the appointments and the load planners put together the plans and assign them to drivers. And you have no contact with those people. You never know who is sending you the loads or planning the appointments. And they don't know you, either. We have over 32 terminals and they pretty much all have their own planners for that region. So you're planned by different people depending on what region you are in. I was in Texas one week having a run of really crappy loads (short t-calls, shuttle runs, trailer repositions, etc.) and I jokingly asked my DM if planners didn't like drivers from outside their region. She told me they have no idea where you running out of. When they have a load they need taken they just get a list of truck numbers that are nearby. They don't know the drivers at all.

The fact that my DM was a load planner before actually has helped a bit, but it just doesn't seem like there is much she can do. She's occasionally gone out and found loads for me when I was sitting or needed to get home, but she's not supposed to assign loads and says she gets her wrists slapped for that. In fact, lately, instead of assigning me a load she usually says she'll get in touch with the planner about a load. But rarely does she have anything to do with assigning the loads and she certainly doesn't have anything to do with setting appointments.

Can you please give examples for what you mean by making things happen out there? I feel like I've been doing that. When things started going awry I try to suggest things I could do to speed up the process. When they are trying to find me a trailer solution I've suggested sometimes that I'm near a terminal and could swing by and look for one there. They never let me, but I try it. There have been a couple of times I've been able to locate trailers long before they got back to me with a solution, but I'm not usually able to do that because they won't let me go driving around if I'm not dispatched.

Today I had a delivery at Bush Brothers and was planned on another load picking up tomorrow from there. (24 hours later) I suggested that if the load were ready to pick up I could take care of it all at once without going back. The CSR got them to load the trailer and I dropped my load and grabbed the other one and was on my way. Unfortunately, it's a live load that doesn't deliver until Friday morning. Saved myself the hassle of going back to the same place tomorrow, but I'm still stuck with load that's going to get me 290 miles in 2 days. I can't do anything about that and there is no way they are going to move the appointment up for me. I've asked many times if I could get earlier delivery appointments and the answer has always been "No."

I have no control over the loads I get. I can't turn down loads unless I'm due home time or it's an hours of service issue. (I.E. don't have the hours to do it legally.) In order to turn down a load I have to tell them I can't take the load as it's planned and then tell when I actually can pickup and deliver the load. A few months ago I turned down a load and said I didn't have the hours for it. Within 5 minutes I got a terse message from the terminal manager himself saying that if I turn a load down because I can't do it I have to give times when I can.

Another thing that is frustrating is their "Plus One" system of planning loads. If there is a window for the appointment or the customer is first come, first served, they don't tell you that. (Except sometimes when it's just a drop.) They give you times for both appointments and you tell them if you can do it or when you think you can do it. But since you don't know the window, you don't know how to try to negotiate the times. Sometimes I could deliver a load on time if I could pick it up early. But when it says live load "early appt time: 0700, late appt time 0700" I assume that means it's a firm appointment. I'm finding out lately that it isn't always. I can't give a range of times I can pick up or deliver so I don't know if I should adjust the pickup or delivery time. Guess wrong and give times that are out of range and they take the load off you. It's hard to negotiate these things when they don't trust you enough to give you the info.

And that's another annoying thing about the system here. The "Plus One" system is based on not trusting drivers. (cont)

I'm not being paranoid about saying the "Plus One" system is about not trusting drivers. They basically tell you that during the sales pitch. They tell you they used to tell the drivers the appointment windows but they were finding that a lot of drivers would wait until the last minute to deliver a load. And sometimes they would end up late because of it. Instead of telling you the window they try to come up with what would be the quickest you could deliver the load within the windows and then tell you those are the appointment times. It's kind of infuriating sometimes because they seem to assume you don't need to ever stop to use the restroom and they don't always factor in that you need fuel and very often they don't care about you running out your 14 while you sit on a dock. As long as you get the load delivered on time that's all they care about. There have been 3 times that I've turned down a load because it either delivered after my 14 would be up or I'd run out of hours on the dock only to get a nasty message from a planner saying, "What do you mean you don't have the hours? I'm showing you have plenty of time on your 11." (I swear some planners either are completely unaware of the 14 hour clock or think it restarts as soon as you pick up a load.) Anyway, I digress. The sales pitch for the Plus One system is that it will get you 1 extra load a week. (By forcing you to run as close to 14 hours a day as possible.) But when you really look at it, it only helps lazy drivers get more miles and helps Swift keep lazy drivers running. It actually just hurts motivated drivers. I want miles and more pay. I'm going to pick up and deliver a load as quickly as I can legally. If I didn't have to guess what the appointment windows were I could negotiate better schedules and keep running more easily. I know there have to be a lot of loads I've lost by guessing wrong on which way to negotiate. So, once again, I'm kind of handcuffed in what I can do. I've tried calling in to find out what the windows actually are, but unless I talk to my own DM , I usually get, "Those are the appointment times." Why? Because, not knowing me, they assume I'm asking because I want to deliver it later or something.

I want to clear something up because I'm sure I've given the wrong impression. I'm not saying everyone at Swift is unhappy or that no one is getting miles. There are plenty of drivers who are happy here. But here are the categories I'm seeing:

Dedicated accounts - Swift is a big company and has accounts with a lot of large companies. Walmart, Costco, Sears, KMart, GM, etc. We have a lot of drivers on dedicated accounts. We even have terminals inside some of the Walmart DCs. These drivers are happy. I would be, too. I've been asked to help them 3 times and spent a week or so in their fleets each time. It's awesome. The runs have all been worked out to nice schedules. Everything is smooth and efficient; you don't deal with most of the problems I usually run into. The paperwork is minimal and they even have detailed maps and directions not just to the stores, but to the docks so you're facing the right way when you arrive. Unfortunately, my DM doesn't like them grabbing me to work those accounts because she says since I'm in their fleet I'm not helping her team's stats any. But they keep you busy and it's a nice routine. No complaints from these guys and you can even tell that their driver lounges just have a more upbeat atmosphere.

Swift has a lot of day cabs in the fleet. Which means a lot of people doing shuttle runs and local deliveries and such. The drivers I've talked to on those runs have told me they are making between $850 and $1000 a week every week. Once again, they don't have to deal with a lot of the hassles I do OTR and they are generally home nights and weekends. Who could complain about that?

Owner/Ops - Lots of these around. These guys are always bragging about how many miles they are getting. Usually it's around 4000 a week. Are they inflating those numbers? Probably. Do many of them admit to abusing line 5 to get those miles. Sure. That's a risk they are willing to take. But they always tell me Swift gives them as many miles as they are willing to take. And very often when I'm sitting around with a lot of other company drivers waiting on loads I see nothing but O/O trucks rolling in and out of the terminal. Anyway, this bunch seems pretty happy.

Mentors (Trainers) - Most of these are also O/Os. They are happy. But they get to run as a team most of the time with their students and what company isn't going to give miles and long distance loads to teams? Besides that, they are making extra money because they are training people. So they are pretty happy. And they are fun to talk to because of all the horror stories they have about former students.

Company OTR/Regional drivers - This is the group I'm in and the group that is consistently complaining about low miles. (There actually was one guy I talked to working out of Colorado who said he was averaging around 3000 miles a week.) This is where all the turnover is. This is where you are hardpressed to find someone with more than 2 years with the company. This is where you hardly find anyone who came over from another company. These are the drivers that you overhear in the drivers' lounge saying, "They need to get me a load. I'm tired of sitting around here." This is the group I'm talking about when I say I'm always hearing 1500 miles a week. And this is where you are stuck unless you want to lease a truck, train someone, or somehow get on an account. And I've never seen any postings for any of the dedicated stuff, so I don't know how people even get those positions. I don't know what percentage of the company it is, but this is a large group. And if you think about it, this group is all going to have the same complaints. And it seems to make sense to me that we're all getting about the same mileage. We have no control over the loads. We have no idea how to negotiate them because of the Plus One system. Our DMs seem to have almost no control over the loads we get, because that's how Swift has it set up. And the mileage is going to average out because all the planners see is a list of truck numbers.

Bottom line, is that this group seems to suffer from too many drivers and too few miles. And I don't think it's hard to argue that for some reason, Swift wants it this way. Why would they keep training and hiring new drivers constantly with so many people complaining about not getting miles? I can't count how many times I've sat at a terminal , along with a bunch of other drivers, being told that there is no freight (even during the last quarter, not just the first) and wondered why I'm watching 8-10 people out in the yard going through training and a dozen or so people going through orientation upstairs. Along with Brett, I have to say "Something doesn't add up here." But while Brett is thinking it because what I'm saying doesn't sound possible, I'm saying it because I'm seeing it happen and it doesn't seem to make sense by conventional wisdom.

One of the things that Brett's response and this current load got me thinking about is how many loads I've gotten with way too much time on them. I started thinking about all of the loads I've had in the past year that are over 1000 miles. And it occurs to me that either I've gotten them because I needed to take a 34 and there was enough time on them to do that, or I've almost always been able to take a full day off in the middle of the load. This current load? Picked it up today because I was already at the customer. Less than 300 miles. Delivers 7am in two days. I had enough hours to deliver it tonight. But it's a firm appointment and nothing I can do about that. How can I make miles when I have to take loads like this? I can't turn it down because I can't make the case that I can't pick it up or deliver it on time.

Twice in December I took loads going past my house. Both times I was able to take a whole day off at home and still deliver on time. One load was only 700 miles. Before that one I took a load from Laredo to Northern Ohio. I think it paid either 1600 or 1800 miles. I picked it up, was feeling sick and shut down early. The next day I had a fever so I took the whole day off there. (Too soon to complete a 34 with the new rules.) Then I busted butt and stopped off at home because I was going right through there. I took another full day off at home and delivered the load the next morning, on time.

According to my DM , as a solo driver, I'm not supposed to be planned on loads that long. She says the only reason I'm getting those is because they don't have any other loads at the time and they are grabbing loads that they weren't planning on having picked up yet, so they have lots of time on them. And like I said, I can't turn them down. Not sure what to do about this.

This past week I've actually been feeling upbeat and good about driving. I've taken a lot of Costco loads because we got so far behind when the storm came through. Those are pretty easy and I've taken plenty of those so I've got that system down and even been to a few of these stores before, so I don't have to spend as much time trip planning. I've had some of the same problems, some of which I described in an earlier post, but they aren't the really infuriating ones. I've felt like I've been staying busy until this current load. But then I look at my numbers. For the past pay week I've taken 9 loads, only gotten paid 1900 miles, and I'm still close to needing a 34. I would need one if this load didn't have so much time on it. I've been driving hard and only on the clock when I absolutely need to be. I've got the system down at Costco pretty well now. But you figure all of these loads are between 100 and 300 miles and then I have to wait in line at the DC to get in, drop a trailer, drive around a huge facility looking for my trailer, scale the load there, adjust the tandems , then wait in line to leave, drive across the street to a very busy TA, scale the load again so it's official, wait a while in the fuel line, try to sneak in and get my scale ticket before I hold anyone else up and tick them off, then fuel and fight my way out of there, then drop and hook and shut down at a Costco. That ends up being a lot of time on duty not driving and not much time on duty driving.