My experience running 100% legal, if anyone cares.

word! OTR trucking is a rip-off! it's also a real crappy blackhole industry.

 

Knight has a no "sitting duck" policy. They have tried to make me sit in places before (COMPTON, LONG BEACH) But I told them straight up, you have a load on me or I'm rolling to a truck stop, sitting duck policy, not parking in a unsafe area.

 

Well, since I did not start driving till late in the day today and I will be driving all nite, I am calling today a loss. For the ease of my calculations, and in the intrest of maintaining accuracy, I will count all miles driven today and over nite as tommorow's miles.
On a side note, I was allowed to drop that load that was mis-scheduled for delivery. I was suprised when they didnt make me sit on it for 24 hrs and deliver it myself!
Hopefully, I can get back to driving during the day and sleeping at nite as I just dont function very well between 0200-0600. I have learned, no matter how much sleep I had during the day, that I am really not alert enough to drive during those hours. It's amazing though, no matter how many times I tell them this, they seem to find runs for me that require me to drive at that time. I do what I can and when I get tired, I GO TO BED, NO MATTER WHAT! NO LOAD IS WORTH MY LIFE OR SOMEONE ELSE'S!

 

Today was a good day!
618 miles
12.75 hrs, on duty
$210.12 earned or
$16.48/hour
Started at 1400, pretrip/fuel, drove 3.5 hrs to my p/u, drop and hook, eat my dinner, drove7.5 hrs and parked for the day.
This is the BEST day I've had since I started this experiement! But's only b/c I did not deliver the load I started with, I dropped it in our Charlotte yard for a local driver to deliver and my load I picked up was a drop and hook. I used very little time on line 4 and was able to drive a complete 11 hrs.
Today justs further proves my point that if we could eliminate all the delays at the shipper/recv'r that drivers will be able to make an accecptable wage. Or the uncooperative customers should be forced to pay us for our time THEY wasted! I dont see that happening anytime soon b/c there are too many carriers willing to haul cheap freight and they will NOT force cutomers to pay for any detention time just to keep the freight!

 

Maybe it'd be better if pickups and deliveries were made by the local guys and staged at the yards for you guys to hook and haul. You could probably get things running pretty smoothly like that.

 

I'd be okay with that! The industry would have to hire ALOT more local drivers though to handle the workload. Which would be great for the economy!
I imagine that is exactly how the successful LTL carriers do it. Sure would be nice to drop a loaded trl in a yard, take your 10, hook to another loaded trl, go to the next terminal!

 

Go to sleep Dave, you ARE dreaming........................

 

I myself always wondered why relays havent been established. One driver drives it 250 miles to another driver, that driver has a load going the other way, swap, driver goes back 250 miles, swaps with another driver, goes home for the night.

 

They have. It's called LTL.

Sad Panda...you're on the can fleet, aren't you?

 

It may be because about 1/3 of drivers are NEVER close to being where they are suppose to be !!!! But it sure would be nice.
Nope, what you are gonna see (it started years ago) is more regional freight. Even Conway is getting into it bigtime. Shorter runs, less money, more hometime, this is what drivers want !! Not me but, you get what I mean.........
But we are getting off subject. EVERYBODY RUN LEGAL, that would srew things up big time...........