Picking operating hours (not HOS)

I prefer the long haul. Solo Yakima to Boston in 5 days is or was my bread and butter. Essentially freedom. Within reason. The continential divide in Montana during winter takes a lot out of me on storms and you have to be very careful to ration out your time if you have to stop and seek haven as the worst of the blow dumps two feet around your knees by Billings eastbound. But you cannot stay. You must go. But that is me. I loved and thrived on it.

Overnights? Ive fired dispatchers for making me do that. I simply don't do well with that. It gets late then later then worse. There is a reason I fire em. Sometimes they fire me. But when I had my team going then overnights is not a problem. With the added problem of being senior driver and ready to respond to the teammate's crisis any time. Your sleeping period does not entirely belong to you.

Ultimately my final solution to so called freetime is never to sleep or take it in urban cities etc. No one is going to walk or drive 60 miles just to beat on my berth and hollaw YOU NEED A LUMPER!? Talk about a bad attitude and tire thumper knots time.

 

It's funny that "Abe" has the marketing tag line, "Run Hard. Get Paid." I remember when this video came out. He even got his 15 minutes of fame, interviewed on TV.

Here's the thing, if he was waiting for a dispatch all day, what was his job? TCB. Sleep. Maybe I should update Elvis's ring to read TCFB.

So he ended up not sleeping when he had the responsibility to do so, THEN accepted a load requiring an overnight run. THEN he goes Full Snowflake and whines about his experience on YouTube.

REALLY???

 

One thing to add to Lepton1's post above
If you commit to doing the load - you do the load. You don't do what Abe did and accept the 400 mile load then halfway through it create another problem for the load planners/dispatch/customer. If you can not run it, you tell them up front - they may still be unhappy or displeased with you - but they will be less displeased than they will be when you accept then say "but I am le tired" halfway through easily-legally-doable run.

 

"I am le tired!"

I gotta work that one into a truck stop lunch counters.

 

Exactly.

They sat the guy all day and then expected him to run all night, that's not nice. I wouldn't be happy. However, it sounds like he knew the plan at the start of the day and had the choice of getting in enough rest to do the run or letting them know that wouldn't work.

How he came up with an option 'c' is beyond me.

 

At approximately 0:40-0:50

 

Pick your own schedule, don't be a sissy. Expect your pay to reflect the schedule you picked.

 

I didn't watch the vid but,

Communication is huge !!!!!!!!

 

The point of the video is you sleep all night wake up in the morning. Then dispatch say hey sit all day and sleep anther 10 hours. Who can sleep 16+ hours? Then get in the truck and drive all night and if your tired your not a good truck driver. Come on that's crazy. Yeah just tell the company you refuse the load.

Any company that expectes that from their driver is just playing a game in my opinion hiding behind the fact that it's legal. Yes they pay good money but as a driver your getting screwed.

Who wants to be treated like that ? Yes he probably could have sleep more. That's just how some companies treat their drivers. It doesn't seem like they care to much.

 

I agree. On the flip side, any driver who knows the situation and waits until it's too late to change it before calling the company is also playing games.