Having Fun With Your Logs

To recap this conversation, pun intended, it was never about personal preferences, sleep cycles, availability, biological clocks, stamina, good/bad months, traffic, weather, or any other variable or variation you can think of. I never said you couldn't have a productive month on recaps, and don't know why you feel the need to defend yourselves on that point. I simply hold the contention, based on facts, that a reset driver could potentially do better. Nothing else was intended. No need for anyone to prove themselves a productive driver.

I'll try a different approach to get my point across: You are faced with two doors.

If you choose door #1 (recaps), you get a thousand bucks total.

If you choose door #2 (resets), you still get the thousand bucks, but also have a chance for $200 bonus prize.

Absent any outside influences or variables, which would you choose? If your choice is recaps, that's great! You still win! I just prefer to go for that added bonus.

This discussion should be titled: “Discussion of the Titans”. Lol. As a rookie, I have been fascinated and have learned a lot.

I started out dry van and that was all resets. Now, with reefer and with another company, I thinking I’m running resets, but things are totally different than with dry van. It seems like I’m unknowingly doing recaps. The big difference I can see is that I have much more detention time with reefer than I had with dry van, where I did a lot more drop and hook. Now, I rarely do drop and hook.

How does what I described above factor into this issue of resets vs recaps?

I’ve followed along and found this very interesting. It’s no longer in my wheelhouse because I have offically became a part timer. My choice.

The math never lies. If you run hard and burn through your hours and reset you can run hard again before your recap hours would take effect. I did it for years.

You can space out and run along everyday without a substantial break and do fine.

As has been said there are variables that we as drivers can not control. We are told what the schedules are. Then we make those work.

No driver or DM can forsee traffic backups, breakdowns, or anything else thrown into the mix. We deal with things as they present themselves.

I do firmly believe we as drivers really don’t have the majority vote in how we run, it is dictated by others. We have the minority vote, in my opinion.

Good DM’s figure out the freight to keep us moving, less experienced ones not so much. Another great reason to get to know your DM and develop that great relationship.

It's a great conversation. I think something to keep in mind may be that rookies might face some challenges in running long days too. I'm still a rookie in my mind, but did I have the capacity to run my clock to the max when I first started?

Tonight is a good example. I have 26 hours left of my 70, 3 days till I get recaps or reset. I've driven 7 and 3/4 hours today for 456 miles. I'm at my reciever in billings Mt. I could easily stay here and definitely would have when I first started.

It's been 30 mph wind gusts, but they are dying down. I have to go to Worland WY for my next load. It's 160 miles to the shipper on two lane roads in the dark. I wouldn't recommend it for a rookie, yet if they wanted to drive our their clock, they would need to. In my case, I'm going to, (I'm using the short break of split berth to pause my 14 hour and let the winds go down) not because I want to maximize my clock, but I want to make sure I get the next load to the terminal early for a tcall so I can squeeze another load in on Monday. If not I'll have a pickup, drop and 623 miles to drive tomorrow.

I guess what I'm getting at is that as a rookie could there be a possibility that in trying to max out their drive clock every day that they are placing themselves in danger of over doing it?

I guess what I'm getting at is that as a rookie could there be a possibility that in trying to max out their drive clock every day that they are placing themselves in danger of over doing it?

That's a danger for anyone, rookie or professional. I'm not suggesting anyone drive themselves to the point of exhaustion. That's already been mentioned.

In short, if you get tired, rest. That goes for anyone, whether doing recaps or resets.

it was never about personal preferences, sleep cycles, availability, biological clocks, stamina, good/bad months, traffic, weather, or any other variable or variation you can think of

Why not? I want to talk about everything that matters in the real world of time management, and all those things matter.

Sure, we can have a purely mathematical discussion that only targets one isolated aspect of time management, but that has limited value and will not give people the information they need to make good choices in the real world.

I'm a practical guy who strives to understand the big picture because we live in a complex world of interconnected variables. I would like people to understand there is a large variety of factors that go into time management. In fact, I burned out early in my career and spent several months away from trucking because I pushed myself to the max all the time.

If we refuse to talk about sleep cycles, dispatch, burnout, traffic, or any other variables, we may give people the wrong impression. They may leave this discussion thinking they must run resets because that will give them maximum productivity. That takeaway may lead them to make the same mistakes I made early in my career. That would be a catastrophic failure on our part as mentors.

So it's nice to cover one variable in great detail, and we have. We have established that running resets will give you the maximum time available if we take nothing else into consideration. If that's all you want to talk about, we're cool with that. We appreciate the contribution. But I'm not satisfied with a discussion of such limited value. I want to take that one variable and examine what happens when you try to apply it in the real world.

That being said, I would appreciate it if you guys would stop discouraging people from talking about other factors or sharing their experiences. I don't want this thread to die, and I don't want to limit the discussion to one tiny factor. There are, in fact, much more important factors to consider when managing your time, and I'd love for people to understand that.

I agree that the variables matter in the context of time management, but they apply to both methods in this discussion. Thus, when applied equally to a recap or reset strategy, we're left with the math and how it affects each strategy as an advantage or not, which was the specific point I was arguing.

Yeah man , let’s keep it going! Like I said before, this is a discussion of the Titans of Trucking. Old School, Turtle, Brett, etc.,

I’m learning so much . This thread has been in credibility educational.

Okay, I’ll completely retract my statement about letting this thread die and contribute to the ongoing value of this thread for rookies. Specifically with regard to burnout.

The irony is that April of this year, the month I ran all those miles and maxed out my clock most days, including tarping almost every load, was the easiest month of trucking so far. It was like a dream.

I was running a dedicated account from Russellville, Kentucky to either Phoenix, Arizona or Golden, Colorado. Generally, my total ground time at the shippers was 2 hours. Drive 2 to 3 days to my delivery. Generally, about 1 hour of ground time there, then deadhead back to Russellville. I was taking longer than 10 hours breaks because otherwise I would back up my clock so much that it would significantly affect my sleep schedule.

But the dream ended. And now I’m back to running regular loads OTR. And for some reason, rather than the dream dedicated account, I have had a steady stream of crap loads with long securement times. I swear that there is some sort of notation on my truck number “metal tarp loads only.” Davy A mentioned using a 2-hour break to extend your clock, which I do on a regular basis to maximize my drive clock. But it makes for long days—16 to 17 hours. Three or four of those long days in a row and I’m exhausted.

I suppose that I could run recaps such that I wouldn’t need to have such long days, but I think the load planners assign my loads based on the way that I run. For example, I almost always have a “day load” on Thursday that delivers Friday morning. And because it’s almost always a long securement time, I have to leverage the 2-hour extension AND, drive my full clock on Thursday to make the appointment time for Friday. Then I get my “weekend load” on Friday. My current one is 1,300 miles that I’ll deliver on Monday.

Chief Brody started this. It’s his fault. Lol.

Burnout. Let’s interject this into the discussion, because it’s a very real issue