To all the OTR roaders out there ,how much time do you spend driving on a highway

I did a lot of time at JBS! Hey, you know the scale-house down the road is a restaurant again? A pretty good one, to!
I never minded too terribly much sitting on reefer, gave me time to catch up on homework. 4 semesters left on this bachelors that is a massive waste of time and money!


But I meant, sitting in an actual dock, not waiting on a load. Reefer freight ain't terrible, but it's not always the most preferable of freight. Here's to hoping flatbed will be more regular, eh? Oh well.


Seriosuly, go get a tamale at that restaurant, though. I always stocked up! The pork and bean tamales were out of this world good, and at $2.50 a pop, no less.

 

That sucks. There wasn't crap in Cactus other than that joke of a C-Store across the road from the staging lot at the time. Parked next to a main line track by a crossing for a few days does start to get under ones skin. I would drive back down to Dumas to the Walmart there only to find myself (and all other drivers) getting run off.

I don't do the reefer thing anymore and haven't for some time now. I like the flexibility of flatbed and not having to meet wee AM hour appointments and customers are almost always happy to see you even if your two days early. I think the longest I've ever had to sit and wait for a load to be ready was about 5 hours and that was at Western Extrusions in Dallas. Most other times not more than 3 hours. Nothing like the appointment times you get with warehouses where lumpers won't honor the appt. and get to you when ever the feel like.

Haven't been up through Cactus in a while though. Since the walmart crap, I got smart and stocked up at the walmart just down the road from the yard in Lancaster because 7 times out of 10 when I went to the yard, that's were I got dispatched to.

 

If you're a legit, all 48, OTR driver, the vast majority of your loads are going to be Interstate to interstate leading you to your destination (which could be 1/2 a mile to 50+ miles off interstate). Depends on what part of the country too. Down here in Alabama and Louisiana, I've been stuck on a lot of State routes (where shoulders are a big luxury in Alabama apparently...). Spent a few hundred miles on them the last 2 days maybe. Extremely unusual for me. Last time I was on state routes this much was when I went from NY to Greensboro, NC.