70 mph vs 65 mph

Point well taken Bear, but I see you admit that every 700+ mile trip I have I am in fact losing out. Why do you assume I don't drive a full 11 every day I can? I'm burn'n daylight if I'm able but don't.

I do not fault them one ioda for doing this to save money. I just wanted an honest examination of what a driver loses in this situation. Let's face it, being paid by the mile is an incentive based pay. The more I drive - the more money I make. However, if I was paid based on how fuel efficient my truck is, I would drive 55 every time it was feasible. Perfectly reasonable for an OO to base his profits on that.

Depends on how you define barely I guess... I know it's anecdotal but, the last week that I was at 70 I picked up a load in Lavonia GA to Memphis. Another company driver at the same place loaded about an hour before me with that much of a head start. I passed him just before Tupelo and beat him by about 15 mins to the dock where he had to wait another 30 for me to get unloaded and another hour for their lunch break. He was still standing there when I left.

I have to respectfully disagree sir. My paycheck is paper and when it says I'm losing money, I assure you I am loosing money. Look, a slower truck means a slower rate of pay. There are only so many hours in a log sheet that I can drive, and at the end of the day, it's the same amount of hours logged with fewer miles driven. I would concede to you if I were driving from IL to the northeast often but my region is the southeast. Please note the start of this thread where I'm talking about trips from MS to TX and back. Often times I'm averaging trips at 67mph even tho on paper- my safety dept won't allow me to log it over 65!

Now, a trip from Moss Point MS to Hope Mills NC took me 10.5 hours. 715 miles:



That trip took me home. If I did that same trip now, I would run out of hours just 25 miles shy of being home and have added an extra 10 hour break to my week. That's another 10 hours away from home that I don't get paid for.

Well, as far as spreadsheets go I'm sure there are exponentials that can never really be accounted for. I mean here I have real data that shows a 5mph decrease in speed with a 7mph actual loss. Sticking with my perspective of hours, there are only so many in a day, that 2857 miles I did in 58 hours at 7.6mpg saved my company around 218 dollars at the pump. Great for them! Compared with my previous hourly average, I lost 162 dollars this past week. So I guess in certain spread sheets, my time is not a factor in this loss or gain calculation. Is that what it is?

Yes, I understand. When times are tough we all have to bite the bullet. Just please don't deny that a drivers pay is affected by this. As long as you pay drivers by the mile - that will continue to be our only incentive and cutting our speed is a disincentive. Or, an incentive to find something better.

 

Thanks for all of the input from you guys on my situation. Just to update things, I quit.

I found another company that runs their trucks at 72 and pays hub miles.

I'm in a much better situation even before my previous employer started fiddling with things. Again, I don't blame them for doing what they had to do to cut costs. I found my self in the same predicament when my paycheck got cut forcing me to look else where to improve things.

I'm going to miss my dispatcher. We had actually become personal friends. I left with no hard feelings on either side.

Oh, did I mention that I'll be home more now?