Controlling your schedule?

Flatbed will be your best bet for daytime running as the general rule. With others, the more grocery hauls you do, the tougher it's going to be maintain a somewhat regular schedule, and with shorter "regional" work you can find yourself having to run varied hours just trying to keep from starving to death.

 

Trip planning is key to keeping a somewhat regular schedule. I pull dry vans hauling everything from food stuffs to tires. And although I like running overnight, I found it near impossible to keep it that way because a lot of small and medium shippers/receivers are only open during the day time hours. As an early riser you would have an advantage of finding decent parking in the evening, because rest areas/ truck stops fill up quickly as it gets twilight.

 

Only thing truckers can control in this industry is the truck on the road, and most of them today can barely do so. Even with careful planning your schedule will get out of wack, unless you have a great dispatch. can plan to drive at 5 am everymorning, but there will be that 1 load that don't deliver till 8am. or get stuck sitting in a door, or truck breakdown.

 

open during the day so it's impossible to drive at night.

if you don't drive at night. how you going to get unloaded/reloaded during the day?

 

Would it be better driving in teams instead of singles??

 

good teams typicly run something like a 9-9 pattern giving each driver some of both.

 

It depends on the company. If you can get the job done then they will give you the more sensitive loads and your schedule can be all over the place. If you drop the ball alot then you will get easy loads and will have plenty of time for "trip planning".

 

There will be a lot of times you have no choice but to run at night. You might go for a couple of weeks or more, driving during the day and then for whatever reason, the time frame changes and you are driving at night and there is no other way to make pickup or delivery times but to do it this way.

We did see a woman years ago that worked for USX who would only drive during the day, they must have had her loads flagged in order to do this all the time, and no telling how long a person might sit in an area waiting for the next load also.

 

A new guy don't get much say in his schedule .
After almost 20 years with my company I pretty much run my own schedule .

Since all i do is deliver trailers I don't have to meet any appointments so I run mostly regular hours .