The trucks are governed at 62 mph, so the only place you can speed now is California....lol. I think quite a few larger companies did this to conserve fuel.

And of course good ole oregon lol.

you forgot Illinois

HELLOOOOO McFly

SLOHIO

I will say this for them being turned down.
The way they have the trucks spec'ed 62 is right in there sweet spot.
I have seen my economy go up 3/10 now.
I also can say that with the freight we haul, and many of the runs we do, the 3 mph is not effecting driver pay much. It is rare that there is a run where it will make a real differance in pay.
Even if a driver is running there log as accuratly as possable, it will not make much differance, because you still round off to the 1/4 hour. If anyone is rounding there driving time up, or rounding to make there stops shorter, they are insane.
At the end of a normal week it will not make allot of differance. A few dollars maybe.
Nobody is running flat out 11 driving, 10 stop, 11 driving, 10 stop, ect all week long with a reset to get max miles. It just does not work out that way in this industry.

There will be stops. There will be live loads. It is just the way it is. Also, the way most of the loads are set up, you can get there going 55 mph.
The drivers whining about the 3 mph drop are just whiners. Sure I hope they will give us a boost of a few cents a mile to help even it out. But so far they have not. Many large fleets have given raises to there base rate this year, Central has not done this yet.

So far this year they have raised there base rate on all freight they haul. Lowered fuel costs by lowering truck speed. Lowered idle on all trucks to below 30% over idle (at least to them, driver will pay for the fuel over 30%).
And no raise to the driver yet. I am waiting. L/O pay needs to be raised to at least .90 cpm just to be around where the other big carriers are. And Driver pay with 1 year needs to be boosted to .36 cpm.

This would mean raising both L/O drivers and Company drivers .05 cpm.
I know they have the money to do this. Heck, even if they kept it where it is and used that .05 cpm to pay for APU's for all trucks it would be worth while for the drivers. And to the company. Most Company trucks are still at 20 to 28% over idle. APU's would lower this to 2% or so. And I am sure the lease OPs would not mind having an APU on there truck already and not having to buy them.

Chrome,

I am looking to become a new driver and I am considering Central because they have a hub here in St. Louis and also because of the driver training program.

The one thing I have a question about though is the new over idle policy.

Can you please explain to me how this works as I am looking to make money not looking to pay money to do a job.

Thanks

the best way to control you idle time is easy if you are not in the truck do not let it idle.
If it is cool outside open the vents and in some places you can roll down the windows a little bit instead of idleing .

The policy is that if you idle the truck over 30% of the time the engine is running, you will pay for that many hours of fuel.
The qualcom tracks engine running hours. They will look at the total number of hours the engine is running for the month and the percentage of this that is idle time.
Idle is tracked for all idleing over 6 min. Short idle peorids just count as engine running time.

So if you idle the engine over 30% of the time, they charge you for .6 gal of fuel an hour, at the national average fuel price for that month.
All of our Volvo tractors have an Idle reduction system. Eather Icon for the older tractors with the cummins engine, or TAS on the Volvo engines. With this system you turn the system on, and set a temperature range in the sleeper. The engine will turn on and off automatically to keep the sleeper at this temperature.

As long as you are running ok miles, and trying to run during the day, it is not really an issue. I keep TAS set at all times, so that the engine starts when the sleeper hits 80 degrees. At this range it is between 74 and 80 in the sleeper. I find this ok, a little warm at the top end, but I can sleep.
This last month I believe I averaged about 28%. Some of the time I was down south in 100 degree heat, and one week I had to run nights, so it idled allot to keep temps down. Also, I have a black truck. Try your best to get a white one. They are much cooler in the sun, and easer to keep clean.

In the winter they have it set at 20%. But all of our newer tractors, 2006 and newer, with truck numbers from the 62 series and higher, all have under bunk heaters. These work very very well. In winter I averaged 0 to 4% idle, on the qualcom.
Part of this was due to the qualcom not tracking idle when TAS is in battery/ engine mode. In this mode the system starts the engine to charge the battery's and keep the engine over 70 degrees. Just temp start function is not on, since the bunk heater is diesel fired.

All of our older tractors that don't have underbunk heaters will be traded in by March. The vast majority are being traded now.

My biggest issue with this program is that most of that over idle is due to poor planning on the company's end, and shipper receiver end. If they give drivers 2800 miles a week or more. With appropriate pickup and delivery times, the idle would never be too high. I do not think that when these things happen the driver should be held responsible. Also, even with 30% over idle. I ran the thermoking tripac savings program for our fleet, and they would save close to 4 million dollars over 4 years. And this includes the price of the units.

I still believe that someone with an IQ over 50 must be working in Salt Lake somewhere, and they will eventually figure this out and buy the units. Maybe when they get there trades done for the year they will look into it more. Though they just bought 300 Volvo's to finish there contract with Volvo. So who knows what truck they will buy now, and how they will spec them. The new trucks they buy for late this year and next year will not be Volvo's though.

And they must buy these trucks. They have a 4 year cycle with Volvo, the trucks need to be gone when they hit 4 years, and many go when the warranty is up at 450k miles. My 2006 will hit 400k in the next 2 weeks.

As for making money. When I was full OTR, and they were still taking money from my check for my refresher, loadlocks, ect. I was taking home 750 a week on average. Now that they are not taking that out, and I am on the Kraft fleet. I am taking home 800-1000 a week, and running less miles. On this fleet it is .38 cpm, idle bonus of .01 (when i can get it) and .01 cpm for productivity bonus (get this every month). So year round I am getting .39 a mile, in winter, mid-late fall, Spring, I was getting the idle bonus all the time. So .40 cpm most of the year.

St. Louis is a good area for Kraft also. I am there usually 2x a week. But there are some drivers on Dedicated runs in that area, they have to be on Kraft a while to get them, but they are getting 2800-3100 miles a week, and home at least 1 or 2 nights a week. Must be with the company over 6 months and have 100% ontime service, 95% fuel compliance, to get in Kraft.

I agree with you TOTALLY. We are doing ok with the Lease, not great but OK.

__________________
The Two J's living in the house Peter bilt.

Well, my hubby just left on the bus. Was a hour and twenty-five minutes late! He had a hard time leaving us and our 10yo cried her eyes out, but he is on his way.