Internal Debate On Recaps Vs Resets.

Before I respond to a couple of comments posted above, I want to make clear that I agree that running recaps vs. resets is a matter of personal preference. Driving 11 hours in a day makes for a long day. Especially when I drove flatbed, where I would have several hours of securement in a day and then still try to get in 11 hours of driving before the end of the day. Many of those days were long and grueling. Thus, I can see why some people prefer 8 to 9 hours days. But the flipside of running recaps is you’re driving every day. You don’t get that “day off” at the end of the week. From this perspective, it’s simply a matter of personal preference.

But a couple of the comments above suggest reasons other than a personal preference. And, the suggested reasons for running recaps as opposed to resets first, don’t make sense. They don’t make sense because of this underlying assumption that the trucking industry and the customers they serve are designed for inefficiencies. Second, they are contrary to own my experience. I am responding to the comments posted, not just to be argumentative. Rather, I’m sharing my experience to show new drivers how they can overcome certain obstacles to running resets, if that’s their personal preference.

Klutch says:

When I was trying to run out my 11 every day I would still have a solid chunk of hours left on my 70 when I would be parking for my 34

If you have a total of 11 hours on-duty each day, you’re going to have at least 66 hours of on-duty time by the sixth day of your 8-day week. If you have substantial hours on your 70 by the time you take your reset, you’re not driving 11 hours in a day.

Klutch also says:

Just wasn’t enough for the planners to work with when I wasn’t picking anything back up the next day.

As far load planning goes, in my experience in two separate divisions at Prime, is that the load planners look to see which drivers are “on board,” meaning that those drivers are within a certain distance of their 90. At that time, the load planner begins looking for loads for that soon to be empty driver. If you’ve delivered a day early, the load planner doesn’t care. They simply need to load empty trucks. In fact, the way I run with resets, and again this is in two separate divisions at Prime, makes life easier for the load planners. I generally start on Monday and will burn through my 70 by Saturday. On Friday, the load planners just need to find me a load that I can deliver either Saturday or early Monday morning. When the regular load planners leave for the weekend on Friday, they know I won’t need to be reloaded until Monday when they return to work.

Robert B says:

the reason for that is because of the loads I haul and the customers we service

As far as the loads hauled and customers served, I will share my experience from two different divisions in Prime. First, in flatbed, we would often deliver to constructions sites where they need to schedule a crane or other equipment for the unload. We would be given the telephone number of the construction company contact. Let’s say I’m scheduled to deliver on Thursday at 9:00 a.m., but I’m actually going to get there by 2:00 p.m. on Wednesday. I would call my construction company contact between 7 or 8 a.m. on Wednesday to see if I could get unloaded at 2:00. Usually the response would be “hold on, let me see if I can get the crane here.” Contrary to the assumption that the customers the trucking industry serves are designed for inefficiencies, they will actually try to make things more efficient. In most circumstances, I’ll get a call back in a couple of hours. “We can get a crane here by 3:00 p.m., does that work for you?” Yep. Then I would send a message to my FM that I will be unloading at 3:00 p.m. Yes, I know this requires me to back track on my statement above as far as “just show up.” The just show up advice applies to “institutional” customers that have regularly scheduled deliveries and are often open 24/7.

Second, in tanker, we deliver products to customers who often have limited capacity for the product. So, if you get there a day early, you can’t unload because they don’t have room. The customer where I delivered to on Saturday, solved this problem by buying some used “yard tankers.” When they don’t have room in the main storage tanks, I back into bay 18B and the yard dog backs the yard tanker into bay 18A. They just pump the product from my tanker into the yard tanker. So, going back to the load planners, if I arrive early at customer A, who does not have yard tankers, and have to wait a day to get unloaded, where do you think they are going to send me next time? To customer B that has yard tankers.

I also delivered two loads to one of our customers in Canada. The first time, I showed up after their cut off time, but the efficiency driven manager gave one of the workers a crash course in pumping off a tanker and we got it done. The next time, I called ahead because I was going to be there 5 hours after their cut off. Again, the efficiency driven manager, informed me that Kevin would be there until 10:00 p.m. and as long as I got there by 8:00 p.m. I would get unloaded.

So, my experience in two separate divisions and two different countries, reveals that its not the load planners, its not the loads, and its not the customers that dictate resets vs. recaps.

That's interesting about the tankers. Makes a lot of sense.

It's definitely an internal struggle though for the most part. Logically both approaches have benefits and drawbacks.

I'm currently down to 3 hours on my 70, on recaps, I get back 10:40 tonight, but only 5.75 tomorrow, then a 13:30 (from running nights, gives you two driving periods in 24 hours) then a 2. That 2 and 5 are a killer for me. Enough that I would have rather just reset, but my new DM worked her but off to grab me a couple loads as I need to be back in Dallas Thursday 0900 to pick up the old lady from the airport (yes we're back together).

So essentially I'm not any further settled between the two, except that I'll pull a reset in a few days and try running a couple weeks full bore with resets and see how I like it.

Davy if you're going to switch from recaps to resets it's probably best to do it after you're coming off a home time.

And then, like I said, you kind of have to force it. When I came over to tanker they scheduled my loads for resets. I ran my schedule out and it took him a while to figure out how to run me with resets.

With any freight its the customers that dictate alot when it comes to deliveries.

Running tankers, it was chemicals. None of our customers had yard tankers. Chief you have a great customer in that one.

Espically so when your pulling hazmat they only want that stuff handled once. A couple customers had extra totes they would use if the tank could not hold it all. Others we just parked and waited. Once in West Monroe La I waited three days for the tank to lower enough.

Running my customers, when I meet an external crane service it depends on the area your in and availability. I always arrive the afternoon before so I can meet with the folks and get the layout. Cemetaries are usually a bit tighter to get close to where the item is being placed. I have had deliveries delayed by a day or two because the crane wasn’t available. I always call ahead to let them know what approx time I will be there, and verify how they get trucks in. You do not want to go in another way, that could go very wrong.

Running reefers like I have been the last month it has run all over. Calling is usually a waste of time, because your going to end up on voicemail and never get a call back. I have showed up early and been worked in, and I have been sent away with instructions when to return. Again it all depends on the customer.

We all serve widely varying customers and they all have their individual quirks.

Just to be clear, I’m not saying that things always work out to where I leverage the “bonus day” running resets. Case in point where I delivered this last Sunday and then sat idle for most of Monday. But I still ended up maximizing my 70-hour clock, which brings up a point Turtle had made in the prior thread on this topic.

Recaps vs. Resets

Taking a 34-hour reset is not “wasting a day and half.” If you ran hard for six days and burned through you 70-hour clock, you haven’t wasted anything. The person running recaps won’t come close to their 70-hour clock until the 8th day. Essentially, the driver running recaps spreads out the “wasted day and a half” over the course of 8 days. Plus, as the discussion in the last thread pointed out, the driver who burns through their 70-hour clock in 6 days and takes a 34-hour reset has an extra 11/14 on the 8th day of the 8-cycle while the recap driver is finishing his or her first 70-hour clock.

Just as PJ points out, there are some customers where I have to wait. I had to wait for 5 hours in Linkwood, Maryland because they didn’t have the product ready. I recognize that there are obstacles to maximizing productivity running resets. I gave a couple of examples above about how I overcome those obstacles. I could provide pages and pages of more examples as well. But if, as Davy, you’re thinking about maximizing your clock running resets, it won’t just happen. You have to be proactive to try to make it happen. Because here’s the reality. If you show up at your scheduled appointment time, you have 0% chance of getting loaded/unloaded early and getting your next load early. If you arrive at a shipper or receiver early, you may not get loaded/unloaded early 100% of the time, but I guarantee you that percentage chance is always greater than 0%.

As mentioned, if the decision to run recaps or resets comes down to your personal preference, neither I nor anyone else can have any argument with that. You do you, and I fully support your decision to run as hard, or as easy, as you like. But the most common mistake I see in this debate is when someone starts thinking a reset means:

I feel like I'm wasting time when I'm not rolling for a day and a half.

Or feel like:

it bothers me taking a couple days off.

You simply have to get out of that mindset, because it's inaccurate.

Instead of thinking of it as two days off, think of it simply as 34 hours. A reset driver takes 34 hours off. Right? Now here is the most commonly overlooked fact: a recap driver takes at least 30 hours off in that same time frame. How? Because on average a recap driver only works 9 hours a day, leaving 15 hours per day sitting every single day. So while the reset driver is sitting 34 hours, the recap driver is sitting 30 hours.

But it doesn't stop there at 34 vs 30.

On average, the recap driver sits five more hours per day than the reset driver. This brings the total hours of weekly "wasted" time to far more than a reset driver.

It's black and white to me, but I struggle to explain it any more clearly.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I look at the 34 hr reset as more of a 24 hr reset. I can usually arrange my schedule to run out my clock as close as reasonably possible to using up my 11 hr/14hr clock when I’m approaching 70 hrs. Then I have to take a 10 hr break, (which I have to take regardless of where I am on my 70), then I only need 24 more hrs to complete the reset. This is how I look at it and try to get a 10 and my 34 all rolled into one reset. Doesn’t always work out perfectly but it does more often than not.

I feel lucky. I start on a Sunday or Monday, run five days, then shut down for my home time. During those five days, I will drive anywhere between 9.5 - 10.5 hours per day consistently. I try to run my drive clock to under 1 hour or my 14-hour clock to under 1.5 hours each day. But, by the end of the fifth day, I'm getting home with a load through the house and 2500 miles, sometimes a little less, sometimes more, and around 65 hours burned off my 70 hr clock. I don't even want to think about recaps. LOL.

This topic can get out of hand sometimes, I'm glad to see it's not. Brody, I was planning on doing it if feasible after my next reset. I won't have formal hometime until new years, taking a week off then and going to cancun. I've been experimenting with running longer and longer as I've had loads that favored that.

Turtle, I'm aware it's a mindset, and thus not necessarily beneficial as it's not logic based. I think there's strengths and weaknesses to each approach. I'm trying to keep from getting set in my ways of doing things and keep open minded.

I still have a certain amount of internal resistance to not simply working super long days for weeks on end, especially in a field where the more I work, the more money I make. It seems to take time to retrain the work habits I've had for decades. It is what it is, our HOS dictates it, but it's still a frustrating piece for me.

I still have a certain amount of internal resistance to not simply working super long days for weeks on end, especially in a field where the more I work, the more money I make.

I can certainly understand that. We come from similar backgrounds, both being former contractors. I believe we're hard-wired for production. It's what keeps me constantly looking for ways to improve my bottom line.

Also remember that I often post for the benefit of the many many others who may read this, now and in the future. It's not always a direct response to you in particular. I try to make sure inaccuracies or gray areas are clarified, lest newbies stumble across something and take it as fact.