Depends on your situation. In many cases it will be dictated by the loads. In a perfect world you can get more miles overall with a reset. Some drivers like short days and prefer recap, others like to run hard then have a full day off.
If you want to make the most miles and the most money, you will burn hard everyday until you are forced to reset. If you are someone like me that likes to run more regular hours every day you will choose to average your days and use the recap hours. It is less stressful than running full out until you need a 34.
I did the calculations, and all things being equal, reset will get more hours. Caution, read this only when you want to fall asleep! First, to maximize hours on reset, you can only work 8.75 hours a day. That will get 70 hours in 8 days, and give you 8.75 available the 9th day. Second, if you maximize your hours, and try to make easy calculations, you will short yourself 2.5 hours a period, which is 6 complete days. Third, to compare them, we have to make them equal in every way possible, so 1, there are four 6 day weeks for every three 8 day weeks. 2, in a maxed day the ratio of drive time to on duty, not driving time. This is .815 of every hour that counts towards the 70 hour limit is spent driving. As we need to compare Apple's to apples, we use this number to calculate how many of those 8.75 hours per day are spent driving, and that is 7.13 hours a day driving. That is 428 miles per day at 60 mph average. 10,272 miles in 24 days. Taking a reset you'll get 13,200 miles in the same 24 day period, if everything is the same.
That's why you can get 3200 mi/week with a reset in the middle and 2400 mi/week running it carefully.
That depends on how many hours you gain after midnight.If you have like 10 hrs left that's quite a bit of ground to cover dispatch may want you to run it.
Example: East coast, OSOW can't run on Sunday, superloads cant run on weekends. Most of the shippers and receivers in the open deck world work banker hours. So, I prefer to burn through my 70, and plan for a restart on the weekend.
As was mentioned, it all depends on where you work and the type of runs they might typically have available. If they regularly do coast to coast or other long 2,000+ mile loads, a guy on a coast monday morning with a fresh reset will probably be first in line to get dispatched on a long load that needs four, 620+ mile days, strung back to back, to make the delivery appointment (so they don't have to deal with a repower) Some guys don't like to run like that, some do. But no matter, taking a reset should always be done at the optimal time and experience will tell you when you would be wise to work in a reset and when it won't be worthwhile. If you have recently had a few slow days (less then 3-5 hours), a reset might not typically be necessary. These slow days effectively banked you some good hours you would need later. But always try and do your reset at the end of a long load and/or near when you run out of hours on your 70. Resetting when you still have good 70-hours available or will be picking up good hours tomorrow and the next day is usually counter-productive and not worthwhile. I've gone 4+ weeks running recaps, and I've had times when I've done resets every 5-9 days, for a month or more, and still ran 3,300-3,700 miles each week. It just depends on how the loads and appointments fall. If you don't often deal with firm and critical pickup and delivery appointments, then all my discussion becomes academic, and how you manage your 70 becomes a matter of personal preference. Today's eLogs makes it easy to run recap hours without making math mistakes, and also helps the office pre-plan better and easier.
