Ok RookieTrucker Instead of going off duty then go to sleeper berth. Samething but you are in the truck in the sleeper not burning your hours but you are available to work if you are needed.
Unless I am missing the point here I know you are allowed to rest while at a customer while being unloaded and that means sleeper berth.
If you are not required to be on the docks and you can sit in your truck while being unloaded you do not have to be on duty cause your not working. Your waiting for someone else to do the work.
The portion of the tractor behind the seats which acts as the "living space" for the driver. It generally contains a bed (or bunk beds), cabinets, lights, temperature control knobs, and 12 volt plugs for power.
Another thing that I just thought of....you are not doing restarts if you are going home every weekend.
Get home Saturday at noon your restart is not up till Monday morning at 5 am. And if you are leaving out to pickup loads Sunday evening like you said then how are you resetting your hours?
Hopefully when you meet with the fleet manger things will get straightened up some.
The really ironic thing about your take on my conversation with my DM is that I have to confess that I'm not very original. That argument that I used about her not working on her days off is one that I got from an experienced driver on this site over a year ago. And when he used it with his dispatcher to get more home time everyone applauded his cleverness. When I say it, I'm a crybaby.
Prove it. Where is this conversation? Because I would never tell someone to make that argument with anyone in the offices because it would royally p*ss them off and it certainly isn't going to help your cause. There's nothing at all clever about making that argument.
1) Go off duty whenever you can.
2) Never decline loads. So, from now on, if I have to drive a few hours over my 14 or when my 11 or 70 run out to take a load, I will do it. Tip #2: Run illegally whenever a load requires it.
3) If you want to get home time, it means you don't want to make money. Only whiners go home. Tip #3: Never go home, never stop working.
1) Go in the sleeper berth! Geez man....you've been driving for a friggin year and we have to tell you to go in the sleeper berth when you're at a customer to save on hours? Come on! Even if they tell you not to go off duty at a customer they won't tell you not to go in the sleeper berth.
2) You specifically said you've been "turning down loads". You didn't say you were willing to take them but didn't have the hours available. That's two different things. If they send you a load you can't legally make then you let them know that. You don't say, "No, I won't take that load." You say, "I don't have the hours available to make those appointment times but here's what I can do..." and send them your best ETA's. Then they'll decide how to handle it. Maybe they'll have you pick it up and exchange it somewhere. Maybe they'll reassign you. But that's not turning down a load. You said the planners were getting miffed with you for turning down loads. They won't get miffed with you for reporting your hours accurately. They WILL get miffed with you if you complain about them going home on Fridays when you can't OR you tell them you're out of hours when you've only driven 1500-1700 miles for the entire week.
3) How much money do you make sitting at home? None. How many miles are you turning sitting at home? None. How much money have you been making running yourself out of hours while sitting on-duty at customers? None. Set your priorities. You said you want more miles so I'm telling you to take the miles when you can get em.
You came here to us for help because you're not getting enough miles. We're telling you:
1) Stop logging on-duty when you're at a customer. Log sleeper berth
2) Don't turn down loads. Instead tell them what hours you have available and what your best ETA is. They'll decide how to handle it. That isn't going to get anyone mad at you.
3) Don't complain about not getting enough miles and then complain about not being home enough. Do you want more miles or do you want to sit home longer? It can't be both.
Listen, trucking is a very competitive job. Most jobs are not. At most jobs you go in, you do what you're told to do, and you go home. They hold your hand every step of the way. Trucking isn't like that. You're competing for freight against the other drivers in your company. There's only so much freight to go around and if you want your fair share then you have to be willing to compete with the guys and gals that are on top. And I'll tell you right now the drivers getting 2500+ miles a week aren't complaining about getting home Saturday morning. They're not logging on-duty at customers. They're not refusing loads.
What they are doing is running their *sses off every last chance they get. They're squeezing every possible minute of available time out of their logbooks. They're taking every load they can get their hands on. They're calling ahead to customers to move appointment times ahead. They're keeping track of where empty trailers are in case they drop a load and an empty isn't available at that customer. Then they can go grab one and keep running.
Drivers who are getting the big miles are doing everything they possibly can to get them. They're making friends with lower and middle management so they can call in favors when they need them. They're calling customers, implying they're with customer service, and they're getting appointment times moved up. They're finding loopholes in the system to exploit. For example, a lot of companies allow you to drive a certain number of miles or under a certain speed without recording it. So these drivers will park two miles from the destination, be out of hours, but still be able to get there when it's time - saving them a lot of burned-up hours on the log.
Listen, I'm not telling you to do any of those things. I'm just telling you what I did and what the top drivers are doing to get the miles they're getting. I drove for 15 years. I competed hard for freight and I did whatever I felt I could get away with to get the job done. Some people are willing to do that, some aren't. It's up to you to decide if 1700 miles a week is good enough. If it is - great! If not, then you're going to have to take a lot more aggressive approach to logging and making things happen out there like calling ahead to customers to move appointment times up.
A written or electronic record of a driver's duty status which must be maintained at all times. The driver records the amount of time spent driving, on-duty not driving, in the sleeper berth, or off duty. The enforcement of the Hours Of Service Rules (HOS) are based upon the entries put in a driver's logbook.
The portion of the tractor behind the seats which acts as the "living space" for the driver. It generally contains a bed (or bunk beds), cabinets, lights, temperature control knobs, and 12 volt plugs for power.
Calling customers to move up appointment times is probably the single most effective thing you can do to get more miles. Trucking is disorganized and sometimes appointment times are scheduled through 5 different people at the carrier and 10 different people at the customer, so it may or may not be accurate. Plus things change quickly. The truck scheduled before you may never have shown up, or may be late, or whatever. I always called when I was OTR and 9/10 times they got me in early.
Also... like everyone else mentioned SLEEPER BERTH at customer's. Unless you are physically doing work, you should be in that truck taking a nap, eating, watching a movie, or whatever.
OTR driving normally means you'll be hauling freight to various customers throughout your company's hauling region. It often entails being gone from home for two to three weeks at a time.
The portion of the tractor behind the seats which acts as the "living space" for the driver. It generally contains a bed (or bunk beds), cabinets, lights, temperature control knobs, and 12 volt plugs for power.
Hey so Im a driver for swift and I have a couple tips for you. I would imagine these are things that would aply to all mega fleet drivers though. Tip 1. Your wasting far too much time finding trl, I call my disppatcher if I dont have a response to the qcom in 10 min, or if im just in a hurry. Plus any DL can help with that. Also ask a hostler where MT are. If im sitting around especially at a cust ill be proactive in finding a load anf not judt wait to get auto disp ( if my 14 is ticking ill just call and not wait for a qcom response). Tip 2 having a load thats 600 miles and del 2 days later ill ask if I can tcall it of if it can del early, if not, ill reject it ( swift isnt a forced dis company) . Tip 3 if you get a load where it looks like your gonna lose your ass cause of short miles or a overly long time to del with a closed window, call you DL and just politely ask if they can back you up with a better load once you del, if they say ill try, then you have somthing to talk about the next time you get a crap load ; ) Hoppe some of this helps, oh also try to get a sense of where the freight is moving at ( and more importantly where its not) Iv flat out rejected a load untill I got a back haul just to avoid being stuck for a day or more. Swift reallly isnt a bad company if you know how to play the system, if you just sit back and let the computer run your life your truck will sit and your wallet will be empty . Unfortunately the driver has to figure that one out, the company wolnt so it for you. And one last thing, if you happen to have a DL who inst going to work with you, bring it up with the big boss ( fortunate ly iv never had t hat happen) I heard the new boston terminal is a nightmare, I saw you mentioned adetroit?
A facility where trucking companies operate out of, or their "home base" if you will. A lot of major companies have multiple terminals around the country which usually consist of the main office building, a drop lot for trailers, and sometimes a repair shop and wash facilities.
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.
You can just cal and ask what the del time is, +1 is usually drop and hook anyway which rarely get rejected for early drop, or even pu for that matter. You need to stop trying to follow all the set out rules to a t and try being more creative. In anothet post you said they wolnt let you grab a trailer from a terminal if theres not one there? So did you just end up living there? No there probably was a trl there you just didnt see it, if therez really not one there jist drive over to tje terminal, as long as your average miles dont go over 10% of hub I promise you won't get a slap on the wrist. Good luvk buddy
A facility where trucking companies operate out of, or their "home base" if you will. A lot of major companies have multiple terminals around the country which usually consist of the main office building, a drop lot for trailers, and sometimes a repair shop and wash facilities.
Drop and hook means the driver will drop one trailer and hook to another one.
In order to speed up the pickup and delivery process a driver may be instructed to drop their empty trailer and hook to one that is already loaded, or drop their loaded trailer and hook to one that is already empty. That way the driver will not have to wait for a trailer to be loaded or unloaded.
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Wow for some reason I have read this totally different than you did Brett. Yes I think he needs to make some changes, but SOME of the changes to be made are against what he feels the company is telling him to do. So either they are telling him wrong or he is misunderstanding what they are saying. Hopefully the meeting with the terminal manager will help clear things up.
As I said before, there was a guy in my orientation that told me several things that I pretty well dismissed as a typical disgruntled former employee. But several things were very similar to what is being told here. Rookie strikes me as someone genuinely looking for help, and trying to make things work. Maybe I'm just naive, but it's what I'm reading.
Woody
Terminal:
A facility where trucking companies operate out of, or their "home base" if you will. A lot of major companies have multiple terminals around the country which usually consist of the main office building, a drop lot for trailers, and sometimes a repair shop and wash facilities.