2200 miles a week as a newbie?

Well, governed at 68. But, I run at 62 for the most part.

Those are dispatched paid miles. For odometer miles, I ran 134,000 miles last year.

And really, from a technical standpoint, what's impressive about it? It's only 450 miles a day, 7 and half hours of drive time.

 

3000 miles a week average is certainly doable, as long as you (or your company) can keep you dispatched under a load, even running at 62 mph. New drivers, learning the ropes and earning their stripes, will often have days sitting and waiting for a load. That's what eats into mileage averages more than anything else.

 

You need to examine everyones motivation when trying to understand a system and before you call BS. The company does not give two squirts about "average fleet miles." That is CPM truck driver thinking. The recruiters and desk jockeys con the driver into thinking running miles is the only way to make money; they do not pay a driver for his time or work. The company, the planners only think about revenue per mile. Since all expenses for trucking are broken down per mile, the company makes more money only when miles are low and revenue is high.

Short hauls pay more. Short hauls produce less expenses for the company. Short hauls provide more revenue, more profit for the company. The company works for profit, money, cash, not miles. Quit thinking like a CPM driver and you will understand.

Since revenue per mile is most important parameter, most representative of profit, that is what truckload companies evaluate on, pay bonuses on. Secondary, it is easier to plan trucks with short hauls. It is easier to match up trucks with hauls and reduce deadhead miles the more trucks you have available with hours.

Short hauls are what planners, and companies prefer. That is why the average length of haul is down to 450miles; that makes money for companies and easier planning for desk jockeys. The drivers time and work is free. They work in there own best interest, not the driver. Obviously if drivers were given a choice they would all drive 3000mile drop and hooks, but that does not pay as well to the companies or planners. The desk jockeys, not the drivers, have the control of the company, the loads, and the drivers time. They work for their best interest, especially since the drivers time is free.

So you prove my point; you have noticed they are playing a game on you as a driver. The point of the game is to get you to run the the short loads that pay crap, and still make it hard for you to quit. They run the west drivers east and the east drivers west. That way, when they stick you with short runs that pay crap, you have a harder time quitting. It is hard to search for a local job when you are 2000miles away from home. You can't file apps, or make it to interviews, or even tell a prospective employer when you might be able to work for them. The mega-crap even purposely over-run your scheduled hometime in order to discourage any other employer from taking you on. It is all a scheme to keep a driver working for low wage while they collect on short runs.

 

News flash. Truck revenue per week isn't maximized running short loads. I book a fair amount of loads off the board now, since I'm paid on a percentage of what the truck makes. Diddling around on short hauls isn't the panacea you paint. Hence the priority for fleet managers to maximize miles, even at the megas. No receiver compensates a carrier well for fixed costs of wait times for shipping or receiving, not to mention load securement or tarping if you are in the skateboard game. The truck/driver is an asset that needs to maximize revenue. Best revenue per week will come from longer hauls.

 

You are paid % and choosing loads you factor your time into revenue.

You missed the dozen time I stated in my posts, that a CPM drivers time is free. The planner at mega-crap is not concerned about "the fixed costs of waiting times for shipping and receiving, not to mention load securement or tarping." For a planner there is none; the drivers provides the time and work. A driver's time is free. Securement and tarping is paid a fixed costs that is more then covered in the quote especially since driver's time is free. To lower costs the planner uses and abuses a drivers free time to maximize his stats, and money for the company.

Considering a driver's time is free, best revenue per any measure will come from the shorter hauls.

 

Talk to planners and dispatchers at the megas and let me know if they agree with your analysis. Not from my conversations with them. Short hauls are a PITA for them, but necessary to cover customer commitments.

If you owned a truck, paying a driver cents per mile, would you rather book a 450 mile load that pays $2.50 a mile AND will take two days or a 1400 mile load that pays $2.00 a mile with a drop and hook at both ends?

A lot of the local and short haul loads at megas are terminal ends of long hauls. Someone already ran the miles to drop the trailer at a terminal, so the carrier isn't getting a premium for the short haul to a live unload. It's wasting time and money to have an OTR driver on the load, but if they don't have enough local day cab drivers to cover it then an OTR driver has to.

 

A planner is usually situated in the cubical adjacent to the recruiter. Is he going to bust the recruiter's rap that, "we plan you up with 2500+miles a week with 90% drop and hook." Is he going to tell on himself. No, like a used car salesman, he works in his best interest. His interests are to keep the length of haul short, revenues up, and lots of available hours on the truck for easy planning.

Planners need drivers to think they are making 2500 miles a week with nothing but drops. If the reality was known, 1500 miles and live loads, no one would work there. As it is 100% are out the door a year.

Again, you make my point. The 450mile run makes more money per mile: 25% more. That fact greatly increases a planner's most important stat.; revenue per mile. Then on top of that bonus, the planner has more hours on the truck for which he can use to move the non-spot freight he has fermenting on his board.

Again, thinking like a driver shows. Any driver would take the 1400mile run and work less, but the planner does not pay for work.

Meaning? Meaning there is no preference for picking up the the short runs over the long runs? I think I have clearly pointed out there is. You are simply reinforcing the point I am making; A mega-crap company is filled with short runs (on the driver's end) that do not pay crap for the driver. When you break up a longer run into shorter hauls, you have no effect on revenue per mile. However, the shorter the run, the more the money sucks for the driver. Couple this with the fact the shorter runs are preferred in the first place by the company and planner, the outlook for miles, and therefore pay, as mega-crap driver is bleak.

 

"A planner is usually situated in the cubical adjacent to the recruiter." I can only speak from my own experience, but this statement doesn't add up in my book. Recruiters in small trucking companies are often in "the cubical adjacent to the planner" simply because there is one open office. At Swift, many of the terminals had recruiters in separate offices or even separate buildings or floors.

With Swift the recruiters are on a salary and the great majority of their bonus is tied to only one thing, and that is when a driver finishes orientation, finishes training, and delivers their first load. That's it. If a driver delivers their first load, they get a recruitment bonus. They aren't bonused for revenue per mile or any other thing.

I'll say three things. First, ALL companies are focused on generating maximum profit (or at least they should be). High $/mile short loads don't necessarily generate more revenue and profits than lower $/mile long hauls. When you factor in wait times, securement (for flatbed), etc. the short hauls can chew into total revenue per week. That's why any sane person would plan their truck around maximizing revenue per week.

Second, the REALITY is that most available loads are relatively short hauls. ANYBODY can conduct an experiment to confirm this if you have a smartphone. Download "Truckloads" by "Truckers Path" or a similar app that searches for available loads. Then use the search feature to input what you are looking for. I just did this, using Dallas as an example this morning, searching for dry van loads originating within a 300 mile radius of Dallas. There were nine loads. The average dead head miles were 21.33 and the average loaded miles were 356.44. There were a grand total of two loads with decent loaded miles: 609 and 1007. The shortest load was 40 miles (with a 35 mile deadhead) and the median miles were about 200 loaded miles.

Try that search feature from any city, with any equipment, and I'm sure you will find similar results the great majority of the time. Bear in mind that if you are working as a company driver, in order to be dispatched on a load a CUSTOMER needs to place an order with a SHIPPER... AND your company has to either have a contract with the shipper or receiver AND/OR a relationship with a broker. Anyone that's spouting about how companies are trying to screw them with short hauls will need to also claim that the entire US economy, including all shippers and receivers, are in a grand conspiracy to "get them". The REALITY is that the great majority of loads available (ie. a customer ordered from a shipper) are short hauls.

Third, I would encourage anyone already with a company to spend some time in the office, learning how sales, customer service, planners, and dispatch do their jobs. Get the big picture. Stop with the Polyanna attitude that everyone is out to get you or that all office personnel are stupid. Figure out the system and work WITH it. During my two year tenure with Swift I spent time with office staff every chance at every terminal. I especially studied the bubble map (showing where freight versus drivers was positive or negative) and tried to get where freight was best.

There was one planner that showed me how he planned a JIT load that was 500 miles, with a backup JIT load that was 1200 miles. He had a Google Satellite View map with icons showing available trucks within a 50 mile radius, there were three trucks available. He clicked on each trucker icon to drill down and see what kind of driver he/she was. The first driver had 5 service failures and averaged only 1400 miles a week. He drilled through to comments and noted that driver only drove during the day. The service failures and inability to drive at night automatically disqualified him. The second driver averaged 1900 miles a week and had one service failure and was closest to the first pickup. The third driver averaged 2800 miles a week and had no service failures and a very positive risk analysis score (the RAS was a priority for the high value load customer). Take a wild guess which driver was assigned that load?

The OP's question is whether 2200 miles a week is doable. I say it is more than doable, especially for the OP's situation where he's planning on running and gunning without need for lots of home time. I say that as long as he's willing to take any load, any time, anywhere he should do just fine. In addition to that I would also recommend that the OP or any new driver reading this thread should assiduously avoid conspiracy theory thinking. Deal with the real world and DO YOUR JOB. Talk with office staff like they are regular people and learn how they do their jobs. They are just as frustrated as truckers on the road, trying to get their job done with difficult to use software and/or recalcitrant shippers/receivers. They AREN'T out to get you or ruin your home time. They are also at the mercy of whether shippers/receivers place orders, and trying to balance the needs of X other drivers, and X other home time requests. Deal with them as equals and your own job and income will increase.

Sorry for the late reply to your post, Toomanybikes. I was busy booking loads and maximizing truck revenue this last week. Today is a forced 34, which in the oil patch business these days is a godsend.

 

High dollar short loads do make more revenue/profit because planners and the company do not factor in wait times, or securement. They pay a flat rate for securement and pay nothing for wait times. It does not factor! I said it before in this post. Saying it again makes it no less true.

The mega's like Swift do. That is why they do not pay for wait time. They do not pay per hour of work. They require a large number of drivers to run short well paying runs for CPM!

Yes!!!!! Again you make my point. You say the average length of haul you found was 356miles. If you take that factoid as typical and apply it to the driver's situation you understand why a 2200mile weakly average is hard to impossible. The 365 mile average haul will be planned on a two day schedule. Over a week a driver can average 3.5 365mile runs over 7 days or 1277 miles. That leaves no time for 34 hour reset or any sometime. If a driver resets or takes one day off that is only 1095 miles. To make averages of 2200 miles or greater you have to get longer runs, and now days that is just not likely.

 

Toomanybikes, methinks your statement that it is "difficult or impossible" for a driver to average 2200 miles doesn't hold water. You are throwing in assumptions that the load will take two days, etc. Perhaps if all your carrier did was live loads and unloads that might be true, but if you have drop and hooks both ends as the majority of loads are with major carriers, if you can't bang out 378 miles in a partial day there are other issues regarding driver productivity that have nothing to do with any company conspiracy.

I averaged 2500 miles per week with Swift, which averages 357 miles a day. Yep, lots of short hauls, sometimes two a day or more, interspersed with nice multiday runs. Yep, I usually ran weeks at a time without a 34, meaning I rarely had days sitting and waiting.

Sounds like you may be talking from experience with a carrier that didn't have that efficiency or the customer base to keep your wheels turning.