Clock Management And 34 Hr Resets

Yeah it's not every weekend in my case. In fact it's quite rare. But sometimes you gotta doo watcha gotta doo lol.

I wouldn't like being required to be at the receiver Sunday night. The minimal time it saves on the clock Monday morning doesn't offset the inconvenience of having to stay at a customer if you're trying to get a 34. Sitting for a 10 is one thing, I do that all the time. But a 34 is a whole nuther thing, especially with the wife haha.

I could do this, but we can't separate the truck and trailer, period. So unless personal conveyance can still be done w/ the trailer attached to the truck, then I guess there's no problem at all, other than finding parking.

Yes, you can now stay attached to your trailer for personal conveyance. Check with your company for any specific rules they may have.

I have no idea on that one-if you could run around on a 34 with your loaded trailer. Definitely check with company compliance and safety for that.

It sounds like you just need to plan where you will stop for your 34. If you need to do laundry, shower, eat, and whatever else then you should probably not do a 34 at a rest area...

Sounds like to figure your time needed for a 34 is to start from the time you will unload on a Monday. Whatever that time is, count back 34 hours. That’s the time you need to be sitting at your reset location.

Not quite, he is not going to want to do a 34 at the consignee. I think he almost had it this weekend, just a bad choice for a 34. He needs to be parked at 2100 Sunday night at the consignee. So consider Sunday a drive day, twelve hours, eleven drive, another hour for fuel, pretrip, break, load checks, etc. So he needs to leave out Sunday morning at 0900. Start going back for your 34 start time from there. So he needs to be parked up someplace to do laundry on Friday by 2300.

This is the route I'm going to try next week. Thanks for breaking it down.

Solo, if you do decide to try this way, you’ve got to be very stingy with your 70. Way too many flatbed guys will run out their entire 70 in five days. Don’t want to get to Friday and only have five hours left.

No problem. I finished this week up w/ 12 hours left on my 70.

I have personally spun this web every way possible, and the bottom line comes to this... if you run 10+ hours a day consistently, and sit it out doing a reset, are you available to go pick up a load during a reset?

No

Can you legally drive anywhere to position yourself for a load during that reset?

No

If your driver manager calls and tells you he has a load for you a couple of hours away from where you are, but you are doing a reset, can you tell him you can head that way to be ready for the load?

No

People have responded to my post that I am wrong giving advice that I am about to give again on HOS.

My response to them... if you want to set somewhere for 34 hours and play video games...KNOCK YOURSELF OUT

if you want to make money and work everyday you are away from home ... don't work more then 8 to 9 hours on line 3 and 4 on any given day.

These truck companies will not wait for you to do your reset. They will find the next available truck to pick up that load. So if you are sitting in Wichita, Kansas waiting for someone to call you and tell you there's a load available, do you want to be that driver who has to say... sorry I am stuck here doing my reset ...

seriously ... you can work everyday and never take a day off and never need to be that driver who has to say ... sorry I can't get that load cause I can't manage my hours well enough so I can be available for that next load...

if you average 8.5 hours of line 3 and 4 every day you can work every day without taking a day off ... do the math

I have personally spun this web every way possible... seriously ... you can work everyday and never take a day off and never need to be that driver who has to say ... sorry I can't get that load cause I can't manage my hours well enough so I can be available for that next load.

Chuck, I completely understand what you're saying. As a new driver, Solo has some special issues in his flatbed world. TMC has got their own way of doing things, and they're dispatching him a certain way that makes their handling of regional freight more efficient. Very few regional flatbed drivers can run on recap hours and make it come out right.

So, there might still be one way you haven't spun that web.

I don’t know,Chuck, I think regional flatbed, which is basically what Solo and I do, is a little different animal. We are very rarely, if ever, going to be able to load or unload on a Sunday. We get a load Friday, and usually deliver Monday with nothing to do but drive over the weekend. Once you run those miles, you are sitting around on Sunday. (And of course, I’ll hear “call the consignee and see about getting unloaded on Sunday.” Majority of our places are Monday through Friday, if no one is even there, you aren’t getting unloaded.) So you can piddle around all week and still have to sit around Sunday, or do a 14 every day and put Sunday to use getting a reset. I’ve taken a reset every weekend for the past year, and still manage 5+ loads and 3000+ miles every week.

There is no set “standard”...specific Dedicated Accounts; retail store delivery like Walmart & Target that absolutely require the 34 reset. All possibilities considered, a blanket statement about use of the 34 is misleading.

Very few of my daily assignments can be completed in less than 10 hours (includes driving & on-duty for multiple live unloads). By the sixth day, many times my 70 hour clock has less than 8 hours available. At least for me, I try to maximize what I have available every day, 12+ is the goal is, even if it takes 2 dispatched loads to achieve that number.

During the recent holiday season, there were sevaral occasions when after 3 consecutive days I had used over 38 hours of on-duty time. This usually equates to a high level of performance and productivity. It’s the only way to make top money and be at the top of the driver ranking on the WM Account.

Chuck, so you're saying you want to drive 7 days/ 365?

The way i look at the 34 reset, is when before i drove i worked at a place that offered their employees four (ten hour days) instead of five (8 hour days) and almost everyone took the four day with week, as did i.

If you're primary reason is to make money and get rich in trucking i think you're in the wrong profession. That's my opinion at least.

I have personally spun this web every way possible, and the bottom line comes to this... if you run 10+ hours a day consistently, and sit it out doing a reset, are you available to go pick up a load during a reset?

No

Can you legally drive anywhere to position yourself for a load during that reset?

No

If your driver manager calls and tells you he has a load for you a couple of hours away from where you are, but you are doing a reset, can you tell him you can head that way to be ready for the load?

No

People have responded to my post that I am wrong giving advice that I am about to give again on HOS.

My response to them... if you want to set somewhere for 34 hours and play video games...KNOCK YOURSELF OUT

if you want to make money and work everyday you are away from home ... don't work more then 8 to 9 hours on line 3 and 4 on any given day.

These truck companies will not wait for you to do your reset. They will find the next available truck to pick up that load. So if you are sitting in Wichita, Kansas waiting for someone to call you and tell you there's a load available, do you want to be that driver who has to say... sorry I am stuck here doing my reset ...

seriously ... you can work everyday and never take a day off and never need to be that driver who has to say ... sorry I can't get that load cause I can't manage my hours well enough so I can be available for that next load...

if you average 8.5 hours of line 3 and 4 every day you can work every day without taking a day off ... do the math

Wow, you guys do 34’s with no toilets or running water every weekend? More hardcore than me.

If Lewis and Clarke had the same mentality, they never would have discovered California. But maybe that would have been a good thing.

Chuck S, your narrow view of a 34 limits your potential. First, you mistakenly assume that we're doing a 34 empty. Thats incorrect. In fact I only do 34s after I've busted my tail to get to a rcvr early, affording myself the opportunity to reset my clocks.

Second, you assume we're resetting because we've ran ourselves out of hours. That's not always the case. Sometimes we just managed to get to the customer early enough to get a reset.

As mentioned, many flatbed customers are closed weekends. So the strategy of running hard and resetting works for us. But it can work for drivers in any division, depending on the circumstances.

... do the math

Oh yeah? Here's some math for ya...

Driver A likes to run on recaps. If he/she is on duty for exactly 8.75 hours every day, they will never run out of hours, reaching 70 hrs on day 8, and recapping 8.75 hrs back on day 9, day 10, etc.

Of the 8.75 on duty hrs, take a half-hour for pre-trip and loading, that leaves 8.25 hours to drive every day.

8.25x62mph =511.5 miles per day x 30 days =15,345 miles per month with no days off.

Driver B likes to run max hours with resets. He/she drives 11hrs per day, plus a half hr for pretrip/loading. At 11.5hrs on duty each day, they'll hit 69hrs on day 6, needing a reset.

11x62mph =682 miles per day. With a reset needed after every 6th day, they can only work/drive 24 days a month. 682x24days = 16,368 miles.

So Driver B gets more miles, PLUS Driver B gets the other 6 days of the month off while resetting. And this doesn't count against hometime.

Still with me?

Now before you start telling us that sitting for 34 hrs is a huge waste of time, first consider this:

Driver A will also be sitting for 20 of those hours, due to their two required 10 hr breaks. That leaves only 14 addl hrs that driver B will be sitting during that 34 time frame. But wait there's more...

Driver A is only on-duty 8.75 hrs a day. Add the 30min break to that, and that means Driver A is sitting for 14.75 hrs every day between shifts.

Driver B only sits 10 hrs between shifts.

So over the course of a 7 day week, Driver A sits 103.25 hrs. Driver B sits only 84hrs including the reset. So who really sits more?

Obviously the above examples are perfect scenarios, and we all know there are no perfect scenarios. But strictly mathematically speaking you can't argue with the numbers. Its simple math.

Now I've said it countless times before, and I'll say it again. The loads will always dictate how we should manage our hours. Sometimes we can recap, sometimes we need to reset. Neither way is really the better way all that time. It all depends on the opportunities placed before us. Giving the chance, if I can get to my receiver early enough to squeeze in a 34, I'll always take that opportunity. Why?

are you available to go pick up a load during a reset?

I'm already sitting on a load during a reset.

Can you legally drive anywhere to position yourself for a load during that reset?

Same, I'm already loaded. Nobody said we were sitting empty.

If your driver manager calls and tells you he has a load for you a couple of hours away from where you are, but you are doing a reset, can you tell him you can head that way to be ready for the load?

Same yet again. But if my driver manager calls to ask if I can make a 2400 mile run in 4 days after I deliver, I can confidently say yes because I'll know I have a full clock every day instead of being limited to a lousy 8.75hr recap. A recapper can't say that.

People have responded to my post that I am wrong giving advice that I am about to give again on HOS.

That's because you are wrong when you try to project a narrow minded opinion as the only or best way to manage HOS.

There are simply too many variables in this business to limit what you can get done in a day. My strategy has been to take what I can, when I can. That means making maximum use of every hour of every day. Sometimes it doesn't pay off. But other times I get that 2400 mile run.

If your method works for you, that's great. But don't sit here and try to tell others that their method is wrong. There's more than one way to skin a cat in this business.