JCT

At least w speak to people and answer the phone when they call. UNLIKE someone we know........

 

That's not true! "someone" hit missed the ignore button the other day when I called him. And laughed when I asked him about it.

 

One of the questions asked was pretty good and I'm not sure exactly how well it HAS been answered. I don't feel like re-reading all 320 pages to find out. How much is available on the fuel card? As long as you're under a load ASSIGNMENT, your fuel card is active for basically an unlimited amount of fuel. (our fuel account has to have some kind of limit, but with nearly 800 trucks that limit is probably incredibly high) You are solely responsible for how much you spend. If you choose to buy 300 gallons to go 200 miles, that's up to you. (yes, ridiculous example. But it makes the point I'm trying to make) It is VERY possible to spend far more than you make if you don't think correctly. There are times that it may be logical to put more fuel on one load to save fuel on the next one. The smarter you fuel, the more money you will make. Saving 6 cents per gallon can put more than $10 in your pocket on a single fill-up! A penny per gallon makes a difference in the long run. I plan all my fuel stops carefully BEFORE my truck moves even an inch on a load. I'm having to re-learn how to plan fuel stops now that I have a truck that gets dramatically better fuel economy. You can still lose money with good fuel economy and make money with bad fuel economy depending on how SMART you fuel. There are several secrets to making money on fuel that they won't tell you in orientation. Know this, I haven't gotten Flying J fuel in months....

 

I don't know if they changed this any, but I believe that they have a $900 limit per day on fuel. I found this out when i first started, went out with my trainer, we were basically running team and we had to fuel up more than once a day, found out it didn't go thru the second time so we had to call to authorize it. Yup the fuel at flying J is WATERED DOWN CRAP!!! it gives you no fuel mileage at all. I currently fuel at TA and Loves.. At TA we get 6 cents off the cash price and Loves we get 3 cents off cash price.. If you look at it, TA and Loves are cheaper than the J after the extra fleet discount anyways, plan your fuel stops and fuel SMART just like grizzlyman said. Do that and you'll be making money

Also I've heard from friends that we got drivers are having trouble making money. First you need to time your trips when you turn it in. try to cut it off on a tuesday or wednesday for the week, if you got a thursday delivery try to put it for the week after instead of turning it in as late trip or scanning it. That way you won't keep having to play catch up... basically if you're in that situation where you have a wednesday or thursday delivery. Try to wait till your next preplan and see what that is to decide if you wanna turn it in for the current week or postpone it according to your personal expenses. that way, you won't be stressing out that one week you have a big check and nothing the next. Hope that helps some of yall that are trying to get the hang of it

 

Alan and grizzly.. thank you for the last two posts.. They were very informative.

 

Grizzlyman, as you can see from my profile, I'm a new driver and company. I've never thought about planning fuel stops and am interested in how you plan for it and what your looking for when your doing it. Thanks in advance for the answer.
Alan or LMB, feel free to jump in on this also.

 

ok well here goes nothing.... after going thru the oh so nice winter weather on christmas day.... i arrived in oakland cali today... after 4 hours at the door guy come out on a forklift to inform me that my load has been rejected due to improper p.o.'S on the bills and cases... so waited 4 more hours and got the qualcom message to go from oakland to the manteca millard cold storage and get them to rework the load. and deliver back in oakland the next morning.... so needless to say its been an interesting day... all part of trucking nothing anyone at jct could have done. i am getting paid some detention pay as well as having the miles added onto the trip for driving to manteca and back.... even when it is not jct's fault... they do their best to make things right.

 

Panhandle Flash

Also, in addition to what LMB said it would be handy to have a laptop with internet, or a smartphone with internet on it. Then I would save the websites for the truck stop chains, where they post their fuel prices on there. I normally just check TA and Loves mainly due to the fact that they have better fuel in my opinion (at least my truck likes it better)

Now the planning part don't just check on where you are gonna need to fuel at, look at several places before that place and see search for the lowest price. It works most of the time but sometimes you just gotta take the hit on the expensive fuel. (in that scenario you can always just put enough to get you to a place where there is cheaper fuel and top off there).