Does running hard make any difference?

every load is different.a driver could get a load first thing in the morning that's a 700 mile run,your company will want that load delivered the next day early. Then u may get a short run of say 300 miles.you'll likely deliver that the next day right when the customer opens.then u may get a thousand mile run and have two days to get there.companies give drivers enough time to get there for the most part but that doesn't mean doing a lot of stopping either.right when you get your load info you look at your available hrs,the miles of the load how long u think it'll take to get to it's destination,if you think you won't have enough time you tell your dispatcher right away.they frown on being told at the last minute.they'll find another driver to relieve you of that load if need be.

 

Just being available,getting loads delivered on time,will get you noticed.
Rule #1..dont damage any property or accumulate tickets.
You'll do fine.

 

8-2 split works,when you get stuck at a shipper,receiver,early in the day.
After 8 hours in the sleeper,you can recover most of your 11 and 14 clock.
If you dont have a whole day of travel,it gets you on the road a few hours early.
New guys with e logs,can watch the clock after 8 hours in the sleeper..it will show you the hours available,as long as you had 2 hours off duty that day.

 

If you only drive 8 hours a day you don't have to stop for a 30 min break either.

 

Years ago, I was running wind hubs out of PensacolaFL to LimonCO. Across i10, us90, i165, i65, us98, i59, us49, i20, i220, i20, i820, BL287, us287, TX70, TX152, us 287. The common OSOW route.

Arrived on Friday morning. Finally get out of there Friday afternoon, hammer out of Florida to stop at the Oasis Travel Center in AL. Saturday morning, hammer out of there and stop at the TA in TerrellTX. Sunday morning, hammer out and stop Sunday afternoon in LamarCO in that truck stop behind the scale. That put me 114 miles out from my destination. Monday morning, drive up to Limon for my appointment. Get unloaded, hammer back to the Petro in Amarillo and take 10. Tuesday make it to Laredo and take a 34. When the 34 is up, leave out and hammer over back to Pensacola. Friday morning, start it all over again.

Ran the same schedule for months on that project. Running hard? I didn't think I was, it was only 1 load a week and 50% deadhead. I loaded with a driver that lived in Mobile. Also loaded with a husband and wife team. Loaded on Friday as was my custom. I deliver Monday. I see the husband and wife team stopped at the Loves in LamarCO Monday afternoon. I see the Mobile driver coming up 287 as I'm heading back Amarillo Monday night. They were in 70 mph trucks, 11 ft wide, 84000 lbs. Not real big, not real heavy. Running my schedule, I began to lap the field.

After that gig ended, they put us on a hub gig from PensacolaFL to HunterOK. Different crew, different site rep. Same routine for me. Load Friday, run to the oasis. Arrive in Hunter Sunday afternoon. Monday morning, they take us to our wind pad. Then the site reposes by and tells us that since it was such a nice and pretty day that the rigging crew wants to take off. We all dropped our trailers and went back to the nearest truckstop which was on i35. $1000/day detention, I don't complain. They unloaded me on Thursday morning. Hammered back to Pensacola and got loaded Friday night. Left Pensacola Saturday morning and was sitting in Hunter Sunday afternoon.

I didn't think my routine was running hard, it was running smart. You have metro curfews for OSOW in Fort Worth and Oklahoma City Monday-Friday. Why deal with curfews during the week when you have free reign on the weekend?

 

I run mostly cross country, when hours get short, I reset or take a shorter load if availible to let my hours catch up.

I finished a 34 in St George UT last Monday, delivers my load Monday morning, waited for a guy who was running out of hours to show up and I took his load down to Ontario CA, and delivered Monday night.

Tuesday I deadheaded to Yuma and loaded, left there Wednesday Morning bound for Rochester NY, arrived in Buffalo NY Last night. I deliver today at 1700. So I arrived 26 hrs early, 62 miles from final. I went and had dinner watched the football games and just relaxed, I will have breakfast and take my time until around 1500, then I will go deliver this load.

When I deliver I will have roughly 12 hrs left on my 70, Monday night I will get back 7, Tuesday 5, so thats 24 hrs for 3 days.

I am taking a short load, picked up Monday afternoon in Buffalo, delivers in My Crawfod VA on Tuesday afternoon. 450 miles or so, will uses 9 hrs give or take, that should leave me sitting with around 15 hrs, and I get four days if 11 hours, for the running hard I did coming across in 4 days. That's almost 60 hrs availible for the next run across.

It's all a matter of working the hours availible. If the short load had not been availible, I would be resetting to head west again..

Some may think of running 10.5 to 11 hrs a dsy as burning oneself out, but that still leaves me 13 hrs a day to eat, sleep, shower, etc.

 

I think I get what you're saying here, STexan. You're saying unexpected, unpredictable events don't come up? Or, drivers can avoid unexpected, unpredictable events? You're saying drivers can show up 12 hours early and "hope to get unloaded?"

I took 45K of canned food from KC, MO to Tacoma, WA. I did look at my weather resources, and saw winter storm Goliath had just made landfall heading east as I set out from KC, MO heading west. It doesn't take a rocket scientist, which I'm not, to see we were going to get acquainted. I made my delivery with some pretty tough sledding (sometimes it seemed like it really was real sledding) and I agree about getting there, I just think unavoidable and unexpected conditions come up no matter how hard I try to prepare and plan. So then we deal with that, no problem. New information, new response.

Last, some drivers don't mind, or even enjoy, "running hard." There's different understanding of what that means, but it surely doesn't mean hanging out at the truck stop or whatever. I can't even begin to estimate how many times drivers have zoomed past me on a highway, only to zoom past me 3 or 4 more times that same day. Stop for this, stop for that. I imagine those drivers considered themselves to be "running hard," some of them at least. To me, frequent stopping and driving 85mph in between isn't running hard, it's something else altogether. Time is like sex - once it's gone, it's gone forever and you'll never get that opportunity back again.

 

TripleSix and KMac sure made great posts. There's a major difference between running hard and running smart. I need to get on another thread - now I'm wondering just what is "running hard?"