Are Drop And Hooks Really Any Better Than Live Loads? - Article By Rainy
Topic 25869 | Page 2
Good job Plan B
A side note to my above pictures. Obviously the tire recap being half missing was easy to spot. But as I was checking out the tire I heard the faint sound of air leaking somewhere under the center of the trailer tandems. At first I couldn't locate the leak so I started shaking all the air lines and running my hand all over listening for variations in the leak. That thinner cable was resting perfectly over the hole in the air line muffling the leaking sound. It appears that over time friction from the cable had worn a significant hole in the brake chamber air line.
Tandems:
Tandem Axles
A set of axles spaced close together, legally defined as more than 40 and less than 96 inches apart by the USDOT. Drivers tend to refer to the tandem axles on their trailer as just "tandems". You might hear a driver say, "I'm 400 pounds overweight on my tandems", referring to his trailer tandems, not his tractor tandems. Tractor tandems are generally just referred to as "drives" which is short for "drive axles".
Tandem:
Tandem Axles
A set of axles spaced close together, legally defined as more than 40 and less than 96 inches apart by the USDOT. Drivers tend to refer to the tandem axles on their trailer as just "tandems". You might hear a driver say, "I'm 400 pounds overweight on my tandems", referring to his trailer tandems, not his tractor tandems. Tractor tandems are generally just referred to as "drives" which is short for "drive axles".
I'm the new guy and only have three months in, but so far my "pre loads" have about a 50-60% rate of actually being pre loads. I just sat for a live load on one the other day for 3 hrs 40 min while i watched a couple scheduled live loads come and go.
Nice article.
I left out, I'm back at the same shipper today, but this was actually a pre load as listed. So now I'm just doing my ten hour to get up and take off at midnight. I'm using old school's advice about creative parking and using your clock to your advantage.
Shipper:
The customer who is shipping the freight. This is where the driver will pick up a load and then deliver it to the receiver or consignee.
My longest wait times have all been drop and hooks. All Tyson related facilities. Beef and chicken. Worst offenders, Noel Missouri (over 24hrs) and Amarillo Texas (20 something hrs). Easiest/fastest D & H is Cargil/Excel in Dodge City Kansas. It's just about as fast as my fastest live unload at Costco (under 30 minutes from gate to gate!)
Going from a shiny new trailer to an older trailer always makes me sad. Had one trailer for about 6 weeks. One of the newer ones. Lost it to a d&h 2 weeks ago. I'll always miss you 200288.
Drop And Hook:
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.
TYSON—Trucker Your Staying Over Night
My longest wait times have all been drop and hooks. All Tyson related facilities. Beef and chicken. Worst offenders, Noel Missouri (over 24hrs) and Amarillo Texas (20 something hrs). Easiest/fastest D & H is Cargil/Excel in Dodge City Kansas. It's just about as fast as my fastest live unload at Costco (under 30 minutes from gate to gate!)
Going from a shiny new trailer to an older trailer always makes me sad. Had one trailer for about 6 weeks. One of the newer ones. Lost it to a d&h 2 weeks ago. I'll always miss you 200288.
Thanks Dave, I am really enjoying 200288. I am glad that someone took that old trailer off of my hands 2 weeks ago. Just kidding. I hope you get one of those shiny new ones soon.
Drop And Hook:
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.
HOS:
Hours Of Service
HOS refers to the logbook hours of service regulations.
That was a great article. You could probably get on indeed or Craigslist right now and see postings saying "85% drop and hook" or something similar. It really is a bait tactic to lure drivers in. Here at fedex, on the line haul side, all we do is drop and hook. I don't deal with customers, shippers, receivers, appointment times, parking or traffic mostly. Sounds like a dream, but there are still delays that happen. As she mentioned, you have crap trailers that need repair, overweight trailers occasionally, no accurate location etc. You really never know what you're getting into until you get into it.
Yeah, but we get paid extra for each drop, each hook, each fuel and delays.
Shipper:
The customer who is shipping the freight. This is where the driver will pick up a load and then deliver it to the receiver or consignee.
Line Haul:
Linehaul drivers will normally run loads from terminal to terminal for LTL (Less than Truckload) companies.
LTL (Less Than Truckload) carriers will have Linehaul drivers and P&D drivers. The P&D drivers will deliver loads locally from the terminal and pick up loads returning them to the terminal. Linehaul drivers will then run truckloads from terminal to terminal.Drop And Hook:
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.
To be honest, I cannot agree with the article. The Live Load vs. DnH is more a question of trip length to me. My company's policy is to schedule 2 hours for each DnH and 4 hours for each Live Un/Load. And when you have a 2500 mile trip ahead losing 8 hours for live loads opposed to losing 4 hours for DnH just doesn't compare to the 120 hours between stops. Where Live Loads kill your paycheck is on shorter trips. Five 500 mile or less trips is still 5 days of travel but now you have 20 hours budgeted for DnH or sitting for 40 hours to unload and that's an extra day lost to just sitting there waiting for the freight to move on/off the trailer.
All this policy also gets in the way of experience. Generally a DnH takes less than an hour to check in, drop, find an MT, hook, and check out, and a Live Un/Load takes 5 hours, although I have had to sit for 9 hours at a dock for lumpers to get their act together.
But yeah. Short hauls need their freight too, and DnH beats to pants off of Live Un/Loads for anything under 1000 miles.
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Am currently experiencing a a perfect example of what Rainy talked about.
I just dropped a shiny, clean , fully fueled , nearly brand new trailer at this shipper.
As I'm pretripping the preloaded trailer I'm picking up, I discover a couple glaring issues.
Someone clearly left their problems for some other driver to deal with, and Im the lucky driver that inherited the problems.
The joys of drop/hook...
Shipper:
The customer who is shipping the freight. This is where the driver will pick up a load and then deliver it to the receiver or consignee.