How to find long haul dedicated route jobs?

Cheater.....

 

On time percentage has to be well above average. Ripping cross country covering the miles despite what traffic conditions and the weather throw at you. If the road is open, you have to go for it.

"Ain't no load worth risking my life over."

We are risking it all every time we leave our parking space.

 

So if the dedicated routes are mostly for teams and you don't have someone to team up with do they try to find someone for you to team up with or is that just a bad idea all the way around?.

 

I've been solo for about 4 months now so i guess i'm lucky? lol

My on time % is 100%. I don't take loads that i can't make service on. Also, flatbed loads typically don't have appointments. Just show up while they are open and they will be happy to load or unload you typically. There's a couple mega corporate outfits that are picky about appointments, but it's not the norm in my experience. As far as weather goes i've never had to shut down for fear of safety, but i have shut down once because it was a waste of my 70 to keep on going. Spent over an hour at a max speed of 15mph due to extremely slick conditions and the fastest guys out there weren't running past 20mph that night in the mountains east of SLC. To further complicate things i was constantly being forced to stop because of trucks jackknifed halfway on/off the road every mile or so.

 

Years ago I ran what they called super-solo pulling a reefer running produce. Good long miles and wide open road. Have not heard of many company positions like that since then. Like was already said, most of that freight goes to teams.

 

My company has Super Solo Pay incentives as well (750 miles per day regularly)

It's just a dream anymore though. The reality now is with our Governed trucks (65 for us) and E-Log's (max 11 hrs drive time) it's not possible.

Lets say you do good and average 60 mph. That's 660 miles. Super Solo for my company at least is 750. I've managed to do 691, but nowhere near 750.

I could start at midnight and run for 8 hours shut down for 10 and then run for 6 more for 14 hours of drive time in one day ''technically'' and then i could achieve 750 miles in a day and achieve super solo status, but i don't see that being sustainable.

E-Log's bring the suck sometimes :/

 

If you're going to pull a box and get long runs, they're going to make you run team. That's not the case with the rest of us, just vans

 

It is sustainable. Decent pulling truck, 11 hours on elogs, 65 mph equals 720 miles. I had a gig for year running back and forth between Bellingham,Wa and Jacksonville, Fla.

And someone will say, " You can't average 65 mph in a 65 mile an hour truck." Yes you can. They tell you that you can't, but if you set the trip meter on your GPS, it will tell you your average speed. Mine was 65.4

 

rambling man do you run out of spokane or the midwest? system does a lot of canada dont they?

 

If you don't have to stop once or slow down even 1 mph all day long then yes it's possible, but with the 8 hour break that's not the case. Even if you did average 65mph that's still only 720 which is 30 miles short of super solo for my company anyways.

I guess Spokane as i'm on the OTR Fleet. I run the lower 48 though.

We do quite a bit of Canada, but i've never gone. More trouble than it's worth IMO.