E-Logs: how close do you cut it?

I had one minute left on my 70 when i made to our yard in fontana. Quite often i cut it close.

 

When I was OTR I would start looking for a place to park when I had an hour left. Sometimes I'd stop with 55 mins left and other times I'd be cutting it real close.

 

situational each haul. I'm thinking what time of day I will be parking and does that spot have parking that time of day/night, if you're familiar with the location you have a feeling how much of a hassle it could be. In general best to leave an hour remaining to park. Possibilities of a traffic jam could blast your plan out of whack.

 

This is a common mistake made by rookies.

"I have 2 hours of drive time and gps says I will get there in 1 hour and 59 minutes. Should be ok." Groan.......

I'm not saying I've never cut it close but you have to strongly consider the consequences that can happen if you get stuck in traffic or something and run out of hours. If you are driving in violation and you get in a wreck, even if you are not at fault, you will find yourself in a whole heap of trouble.

I talked to a driver recently who explained that if he is about to run out of hours but is close enough to his destination he just pulls over and disables his Qualcomm. I politely explained how stupid that is and his response was, "oh it's ok, we all do it at this company." Smh.

 

Perfect answer right there. I cut it too close for comfort more often than I would like. It's summer and road work is in full swing across the whole country. I always have plan A,B, and C. If I'm in the northeast, I have plans D,E, and F. I run on a small dedicated account with a good number of customers that allow parking and I know the routes so that is an advantage for me.

Rule of thumb is to start your search with an hour left that way you can push on to the next option if need be like @HotH20 said. Also about summer, those rest areas that you know are normally empty until late are now full up with RV's and tourists parking little kayak trailers in the truck spots. With that being said, we all know that even the best laid plan can fall to pieces quickly but if you give yourself a few options you'll be alright.

 

Depends on situation/circumstances.
Not one size fits all. I don't care to run it down if I know I'll find a place to park.

Or even go over a few minutes. Although I generally try not to do that.

 

I did that two weeks ago. Pulled up to the back gate at our yard on Saturday afternoon with one minute left in my 70.

 

I usually had an end of day spot picked out before I even started the day, based on the amount of mileage I could on average. And of course a backup location if something delayed me. Truckerpath is an extremely useful app for this.

So to answer your question yes I usually used every bit of alotted drive/on duty time I could. I also ran out west a lot, much easier to predict daily mileage than running east.

 

I just got in a truck with e-logs, so I can't say for sure whether I cut it close or not with my hours, only having a week's worth of work on them. If I were to go by this week as a whole, then no, I do not really cut it too close. Most days I have about 1-2 hours left on my clock by the end of the day.

My first trip out, however, I managed to get into my parking space at a truck stop with exactly 1 minute left on my clock. Now that is trucking. But since I am not OTR, I very rarely am cutting it that close. My dispatchers are VERY good at planning my loads so that I never have to cut it close. The only thing that throws the dispatchers and I for a curve with planning is construction/traffic jams, which is what caused me to cut it so close on my first trip.