Are reefer dock times bad?

Long wait times for reefers is fake news. We're all in and out within an hour.

 

Yep ... reefer is the bottom of the barrel in trucking just because of the really goofy off the wall times.

 

I did reefer trucking OTR for 18 years and liked it just fine or wouldn't have stuck with it.
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OGT- Las Vegas - YouTube

 

Chois Trucking, Inc. USDOT 2494954 - Las Vegas, Nevada ...
https://www.quicktransportsolutions.com/trucking...
Chois Trucking, Inc. is an active carrier operating under USDOT Number 2494954.

• USDOT: 2494954

• Location: 3367 Trickling Stream Cir, Las Vegas

 

Pride Transport has a drop yard in Las Vegas, if you need a place to park while on hometime.
@Snowshoes works there.
www.pridetransport.com
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Pride Transport runs the finest equipment on the road, running both automatic and manual transmission trucks. Our fleet average age is 23 months and all trucks come equipped with refrigerator, satellite radio, optimized idle, available 2000 watt inverter and fully installed DirecTV.

 

All depends on how good the receiver is, a lot of receivers are blaming lack of manpower these days, for extended unload times.

 

Drove reefer 2.5 years. I found that about 50% of the loads I was sitting at a dock more than two hours. All the time. Both waiting to get loaded and unloaded. Delivery times are usually or about half the time or after midnight and between 6 AM. All different hours. You will run graveyards one week and early mornings the next. You will be much more tired all the time then you would be hauling dry van.

At least once per week you will sit somewhere for probably six hours or more due to delays. And you’re much more likely to get relay loads with other drivers from your company which also will require you to sit and wait for them to meet you. To me a reefer driver should make much more than a dry van driver.

 

I would imagine that reefer loads don't get staged in the cold storage vs a warehouse with dry van loads which they stage the products on the doors they will load from

 

My luck this quarter has been absolutely brutal. I have had probably eight (8) 12 hour loads/unloads in the last two months!

This is pretty unusual for me to have that many in such a short period of time, and I'm not sure that there is a single culprit, just luck of the draw. The lion's share of them were at Simplot who has been balls to the wall busy lately and they were behind. Others were a bit hard to understand why, in some cases probably staff laziness/disorganization. I had a meat load to a grocery warehouse in Phoenix that they had no place to put the meat, their freezer was totally full so had to wait until they loaded their trucks to have room for it. Others have been beef processors that are behind, which happens and can cause some insane detention periods. Covid and call outs over the last year have caused some processor back ups like that.

As for HOS, if detention is over 10 hours, then I got my 10 in while waiting for their phone call. It's a juggling act for sure, but it works out.

I'm a 24 hour reefer jockey. If one does not know how to master using split sleeper, they won't be able to do it. Split sleeper is a 24 hour reefer jockeys BFF.

 

All I’ve done is reefer. Usually big city customers are the ones that love to hold you up. You come in 30 mins late they won’t take it but it’s ok to hold you up 4+ hours. Most of the time it’s not the unloader’s fault just the guys responsible for scheduling order too many trucks on the same day and not getting the extra man power for it. Usually the ones that treat you like dirt and hold you up so long also leave a huge mess on the trailers too.