New driver here, lOOkin' for advice about maximizing money/time/miles, going to CRETE

whether or not you have the ability and/or the desire to maximize your miles each week (often your company has more to say about it than you do) is what determines whether you should be trying that 7 days driving per week with no reset thing. 70/8= 8.75 hours per day you can WORK and never need a reset. that includes time spent on duty at shipper/recvr, fueling, and pretrip. means you can DRIVE maybe 7.5-8.25 hours per day...8.5 on a really good day, in order to never go over the magic 8.75.
the other option is maxing out your hours as much and as quickly as possible, and then resetting.
assuming you ALWAYS get to drive 8.25 hours per day at 50 mph, the 1st way gets you a maximum of 2887 miles per week. thats pretty much a best case scenario.
assuming the same on duty of .5 hours per day under the 2nd method, and assuming 10 hours per week of wait time off duty at shpr/recvr's, the 2nd way gets you a maximum of 3275 miles in 162 hours, including the 34 hour restart. under optimal conditions, max'ing your hours each day will yield a better paycheck, hands down. with longer runs, thus less time on duty at shpr/recvrs 3275 can stretch up to closer to 3400 and the time involved reduces to 155 hours or so including 34 hr restart. course, that last part changes when the new july rules go into effect, but restart even under new rules will gain you a good 400 miles per week.

 

Oops.......... Sorry. I didn't finish reading the end of the thread title

 

Some simple things you can do:

1) Keep a notebook with the location and hub mileage for each stop. Maybe time too. This can be used for a lot of different purpose, from simply keeping track of mileages to rewriting a log book if you lose it (happened to me once!)
2) If your company allow it, get familiar, and I mean FAMILIAR, with the split sleeper provision. Mostly I used it in the NE running regional, but it can save your butt from having to turn down a load at times, or make the difference between being 8 hours late or on time. Just make sure you KNOW it, forward and back, before you try to use it, because it can seriously bite you in the butt if you don't use it right.
3) Never, NEVER, judge a trip simply by mileage. And use an average speed of 50mph to get a rough guesstimate on how long it will take. In the NE, if I have to pass through Newark, NYC, or Boston I'll usually drop that to 40 simply because of the traffic in those cities. Trip planning is an art to a degree, so you will make mistakes. Just learn from them and move on.
4) If you can, try to plan hitting urban areas around the rushes. Sometimes you can't due to delivery times and location being near a city during rush hours, but if you have such a delivery ask the S/R if they have overnight parking, or if there is somewhere close that does, and try to get in their at night. Then you can take your 10 (or 8) and have to fight through less traffic.
5) Your truck is your means to income. It doesn't matter how many loads the company has, what you are getting per mile, or what kind of bonuses the company pays, if the truck is broke down you are SOL (except for break down pay, which is no where NEAR what you should be getting mileage wise.. unless you are hourly...) Keep on top of your pre-trips and especially watch oil, and coolant levels, fuel usage, tire pressures, and such. Small problems in these areas can snowball quite quickly into major, week-long repair jobs.
6) Stay as legal as you can. You are going to make mistakes. And sometimes those mistakes can get you a ticket. It can be hard enough to avoid fines when TRYING to do everything right, so why make yourself a bigger target by intentionally doing things wrong? Trust me, I got a $400 ticket AND a misdemeanor charge for a single logbook violation in New York. That hurts, especially when you realize that now your safety bonus is gone for the quarter and the year (since it was logbook related, I lost a full 4 quarters eligibility.) as well as a clean record, and now with CVSA, now I have that on my record for 3 years (well, 1 year left actually, so it's not worth any points, but is still there for any employer to see.)
7) Ok, I know I said #6, but you are going to want to pull some stuff. 15 minutes away from a receiver with 0 time left on your log book? At a shipper and out of hours but they refuse to let you stay there? There will be times when you simply aren't sure WHAT to do. If you HAVE to use "gray areas" of the law to get the job done, be smart about it. I always feel it's a failure on my part if I have to, sometimes even the split sleeper provision makes me feel a little guilty, but if you do it all the time you WILL get caught sooner or later. The less you do it, the less chance for DOT to notice it, or if they do notice to do something about it.
8) Kinda with 6 and 7, but always keep your logbook as neat as possible. You'd be surprised how many times I've had a cop take one look at my logbook, just the first page, and comment at how neat it was and then bothered not to look at any other pages. If you have to mark a page void and rewrite it, do so. That kind of attention to detail DOES get noticed by DOT. Now, I've had some safety directors say "Never rip a page out of a logbook, DOT counts to be sure there are 31 pages in each!" I don't know if that's accurate or not, but I've never had one do it. And I have torn out pages before simply because I hate having a page with a mistake on it in there. Easiest thing to do it take apart your companies logbook and run it like a loose leaf (if they let you.) Easiest way to keep a neat logbook, however it might make DOT look a little harder to. They know why drivers like loose leaf logs too.
9) Kinda like Pokerhound said, run hard when you can. Because there's no guarantee your next load will be available right away. I always call receivers to see if they can take me early. If not, I take a good pace to get there but don't run flat out. If they can, heck ya. Burn those hours. Because on those occasions where you do sit for 24+ hours and start getting some of your time back, you will be glad you did. And if you do run out of hours, a simple 34 clears that right up. Always communicate with your dispatcher though on what you are thinking. They may have another load for you already but didn't tell you, so communication is important for planning purposes and working around your hours. Heck, that should be #10 prolly.

Anyway, that's just some stuff off the top of my head. Also, keep in mind, that trucking is one of those industries that are always changing. Regs, trucks, loads, roads, weather, all of it can and will change faster then you can think possible. As long as you plan well you that amount of problems you run into should be minimized to a level where you only feel like choking 1 out of 3 or so people you meet.

 

From the Create threads I have read. Create tells you were to fuel and which route to take. I think you are getting ahead of yourself. As the one poster said. You actually have very little say so in how many miles you run. Especially at at mega carrier. Also there is very little room in a truck so 2 bags may be too many. You should ask this question again after you get through with training. Create does a lot of 500 mile or less solo runs so good luck ever seeing 2500 or running up on your 70.

I think you should do more research on Create and start asking how to make it without starving to death your first year. Hope it works out for you. Take it one step at a time my friend.

 

Minimize documented hours logged? hmmmm.... never heard of that? I really do only spend 15 minutes at each shipper

 

i wanna go to the shippers YOU go to. ive waited more than 15 minutes for them to acknowledge my presence more than occasionally.

 

Ummm...how about asking your trainer? If he is good and has been with crete for a while he will know them, thier lanes and loads.

 

Take one carry on sized piece of luggage, with 5 shirts, 4 jeans, 10 socks and underwear, 1 bath rag and towel. Forget the food and laptop. Take a netbook or tablet instead. Buy a lightweight flannel lined sleeping bag and a pillow for your bedding. You can't sleep on the top bunk while rolling, so you can move the bag upstairs or down
. Your trainer can take it from there. LISTEN to that person first.