What do you do on your resets when not home and OTR?

Ok, I know what you mean now. The pin that hangs in the front of the trailer that locks into the fifth wheel on the power unit is called a king pin. The tool you're referring to would be most commonly known as a king pin lock.

 

When you run recap that means the hours you can drive today are the hours you drove 8 days in the past. Whatever that number was, whether it was 1.75 hours or 10.25 hours you can only drive those same hours today. If you are planning to go to CDL school they will explain the Hours of Service or HOS to you. Your trainer at your first employer should also show you about HOS.

 

That running recap is hours on duty NOT just driving. Honestly, I never locked myself into a system and ran according to the freight. Regardless of the system used you only have a maximum of so many miles you can drive a week. Also locking yourself into running recap hours can cause a service failure if you need x amount of hours to pickup and deliver a load and over those days won't have enough hours to transport the load. This means you are going to find yourself sitting at a truck stop on the losing side of a repower. I guess what I am trying to say is that sometimes running recap hours can be a good situation. This does not mean it is good to do it all the time. Develop a good working relationship with your Fleet Manager/Load planner/Dispatcher and run the freight. My point again is don't lock yourself into any system, stay flexible.

Here is where I tell a story. Years ago I was standing in the operations room of the carrier I was driving for. One of the load planners who handled accounts out west ( California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah) started cussing. He got up and started screaming at one of the Fleet Managers. What had happened was one of the drivers had a service failure because the driver had mismanaged his hours, and had a history of doing so. The customer was not happy and they set up a repower and got the freight to the customer albeit late. The last words that planner said were you might as well deadhead that driver out because I am not giving him any loads right now. Later I called my FM and asked what happened. He said that guy was laid over for several days and got some crap that got him back to Texas.

Word to the wise, running recaps is OK. Just don't lock yourself into doing it all the time.