Newbie.... blah blah blah....yadda yadda yadda

I had a similar situation years ago when I was with Swift, sitting at the Laredo terminal. I was offered a load to Las Vegas with an appointment time for a live unload. I did a quick analysis and decided to turn the load down because I thought I would run out of hours just short of delivery.

After turning down the load it started eating at me. Did I make the right decision? That was a decent load!

So I broke out my computer and created a spreadsheet to analyze available hours of service. Crap! It showed I would be two hours short of making my appointment time, with the limited hours coming back each day at midnight. But I was still kicking myself, because I thought I could make up time along the way.

Then I got another load offer to drop a trailer at our terminal south of San Diego on the Mexico border. Wide open schedule, so I accepted it.

It turns out that as I came to the I-8 split off of I-10, when there was less than a day to get to Las Vegas (had I accepted that load), I was definitely about two hours short of making delivery. I chose wisely.

I used that spreadsheet a few more times on to tightly scheduled long hauls. After that I got better at eyeballing available hours. Live and learn.

 

When I was in a governed truck I did my estimates at 50 to 55mph (sometimes less) depending on where I was going. Nowadays I use 55 to 60 which most often puts me comfortably ahead of schedule. Sometimes things happen but generally it works out in my favor to where I don't have to do the "call of shame".