Time management

You can do anything and everything except drive if you’re “on duty/not driving”. The only issue is that you don’t want to waste too much of that time. You’ll need it for pretrip, post trip, fueling, dropping trailers, hooking trailers, backing up to loading docks, dealing with shipping and receiving folks, and pretty much everything else we do in addition to driving.

 

And I always answer a call from my dispatcher, because she’s a really good one and wouldn’t call me if it wasn’t vital.

 

And most drivers don’t log off duty a whole lot once their 14 hour clock has started, because it doesn’t stop just because you’re off duty.

Exceptions: 30 minute break, and any time you can benefit from a 2-8 or 8-2 split.

 

You're overcomplicating this on duty thing a bit much.

How does showering or eating while on duty make any sense? Logging on duty for a phone call?

 

If you’re driving over 500 miles a day, you’ll be using up a fair amount of your time. The driving will use up your available driving hours, and that list of things I wrote up above will eat into your 14 hours. Your 10 hour break will include sleeping, of course, but also breakfast and dinner, and any relaxing, etc.

And I don’t care how young, fit, and energetic you are, those miles will tire you.

 

The only time you On Duty or working is for stuff like driving or loading or unloading or fueling the truck or pretrip or post trip inspection. The 14 hour clock is to stop drivers from working 18 or 20 hours days. So if you start driving at 8am you can drive up to 11 hours plus load or unload and fuel the truck all by 10 pm(14 hours later) you have to stop. You might only drive 200 miles and spend 10 hours loading and unloading. You might drive 600 miles. It does not matter what you do you just have to stop working.

Now showers and eating that time is OFF DUTY time. It doesn't count against your working time for the week(70 hours), but it does not stop the 14 hour time limit. So if you drive 4 hour in the morning say 8am-12 noon. Then spend 8 hours in the shower and eating and washing clothes and play video games 12pm-8pm. You can only now drive 2 hours till 10pm. You waisted to much time in the shower and eating washing clothes and playing games.

 

There's many different trucking jobs and many different companies.

The one thing all companies have in common is that they are running a business to make a profit. You may be happy with $700.00 a week but in most cases that will mean the truck you're driving isn't generating enough revenue for the company to pay for it.

What type of trucking job are you looking to do, regional, over the road etc. ?