Trip Planning

NEW driver, going to his very first gig. He probably doesn’t have that stamina needed to do what you do every day in every town in America. Don’t figure on 650 miles per day, every day, start at 500-550.

He’s coming over with his 4wheeler driving habits and he will have to develop NEW habits. How do you, or did you create your new habits? What changes did you have to make?

The majority of bad things we see are the results of Bad Habits.
Smith System = habit
GOAL= habit
Using your mirrors =habit
Pre trip = habit
Sleep = habit
Drivers getting hit in parking lots = habit
Bathing =habits
Defensive driving and sharing the road = habit
Trip planning = habit

 

I haven't read through the thread but I'll say this: When you're new, you need to be finding a place to park when your clock has 2 hours left on either your 11 hour drive clock or your 14 hour start clock.

If you're in the northeast, I would extend it to when you get down to 3 hours on either clock.

Download the truckers path mobile App and once you get a flow of things a couple months down the line, then you can run your clock closer to the end.

there's a learning curve to all this and hopefully your dispatchers realize this. Remember, your dispatcher goes home to a safe place every night. SO SHOULD YOU! Do not let dispatch bully you, park it and respectfully state a safety concern in writing if they ask.

I did this my first few months solo and I never had to park on an on ramp or anywhere unsafe, and I started solo in the thick of winter in February (when parking, believe it or not, actually gets worse and much tighter).

Follow this rule. 2 hours left on your 11 or 14, start finding a place to park now. Unless you're in the northeast, then you start looking with 3 hours left on either clock.

 

OH! Well yes, that makes a difference! LOL!!!

 

It's a guess but paper loads are either pallets of paper goods or sometimes giant rolls of paper that just barely can be rolled into a 53 foot trailer. Some of the big rolls look like huge paper towel rolls or rolls of carpet that are loaded by a "stinger" on the front of a forklift. Other rolls look like HUGE adding machine rolls. Paper loads are usually HEAVY and the factories they come from smell terrible.

 

Yeah like wet dog farts depending what their producing that particular day!

 

Aaahhhh haha

 

Yes! Then there is the recycled material that you pick up at a forlorn, very dumpy shipper that has a dock so tight, with hazards such as pointy concrete structures sticking out (maybe left overs from what once might have been a decent dock) that you have to very careful to avoid if you are wanting to depart with your left trailer door...and the material smells to high heaven and appears to be 42k pounds of wet baby diapers banded together. Omgosh thought I would vomit!

 

What OC are you out of?