Not really. The name of the game is always "Conserve Your Clocks", particularly the 14. "Too much time on the load" more refers to 'wasting time' that could be used for running down the road.
Say picking up in GB, delivers into Gas City, IN, d/h on both ends, no parking at either customer (I've adjusted all times to central for simplicity). Load is ready at 18:00 Day 1 and must be picked up by 0700 on Day 2. The load cannot deliver until after 1800 on Day 2 and must deliver by 0600 Day 3.
If I'm available at 1600 Day 1 with 4 hours on my 14, I'd be asking for a different load or to relay it. There's no 'good way' to run the load. The best option is to roll into the shipper and hope it's ready early. If it's not then you're going to have a scramble for parking. It being GB, not a big issue but the nearest parking is about 20-30 minutes in any direction. Once parked you've got less than 400 miles to delivery, call it 7 hours total trip time, which means you don't want to start pre-tripping until 1100. That puts you at the consignee after 1800 with at least 6 hours on your 14 when you're done. You've now sat for an 'extra' 6-7 hours. As a bonus - all the smaller shippers are closed for the day (pretty much everything around Gas City), which means you either lay up or dead head to Ft Wayne or Indy. By the time you do that and get under a load your parking options become limited, so the smarter option is to park and pick up in the morning (if the load allows). No matter how you slice it the load has about 8 hours of unproductive time (that's pronounced as 'uncompensated time').
Now say you can't make pick up on Day 1. In this scenario you've got to start your clock by 0545 and will be at the consignee by 14:30. Once you deliver you can only head to parking. Even using a split log doesn't help that much because there's still nothing you can move on until the next morning.
These types of scenarios are becoming more common. Stricter appointment times means building more time into the load. The truck to parking ratio has gone completely pear shaped even in 'truck friendly' places like Wisconsin, which means needing to shut down early - sometimes excessively so, which means even more wasted time. 400 miles a day isn't bad if you can keep running recaps - 2,800 miles a week or about 110,000 miles a year which adds up to about $80,000 a year, or about $28-30 an hour. Not bad, not great either. For that kind of money I'd rather get a local p/d job, but to each their own. The sticky wicket is when you string a couple of these unproductive loads together - loads that either have too much time between appointments or where truck stop locations dictate start/end times. You average daily miles quickly drops to 350. Then Ops starts kvetching about 'no one wants to work anymore', without recognizing that their freight base and dispatching paradigm is what's depressing average daily models.
The Old Man's career dries up, Snackbar transfers to Crete from Shaffer
Discussion in 'Discuss Your Favorite Trucking Company Here' started by supersnackbar, Apr 2, 2026.
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