Can you, legally, drive 11 hours in a row.

Or show him your pee bottles .

 

The company I left in January, would dispatch the truck at 65 average. They allowed for no stops, no fuel or eating. You were supposed to have food on board and eat at the docks. They even expected the driver to be at docks rather than truck stops.

Hard to maintain the average when the truck would barely do 63.

 

My carrier and others are much more reasonable . Most runs have 3 or more hours flex time . Many of our customers aren't open around the clock . We can't park on the street with hazmat loads . Corporate also prefers drivers take breaks off customers' property so they get their full breaks without interruption . There are posts on our bulletin of notices sent to all terminals by corporate telling of drivers starting to unload while still logging sleeper berth . Safety doesn't miss a trick .

 

My company dispatches us at 50 mph and If I use their schedule I always have to much spare time on my hands. I prefer to spend my spare time at home. I know the runs we do very well and can average between 57-62 mph which allows me a couple more hours at home before I leave on every trip and getting home a couple hours earlier on most trips.

 

Yes you can drive 11 hours straight you have to flag if you stop, for less than 7 minutes. Noit very many can go 11 non-stop. I have you may have to use a bottle, Once when I was at IWX I was given a time line to drop and hook that dispatch did not think I could make. But it meant keeping my promise to my daughter to be home in time for a performance I promised to be at. I made it. I don't recommend it

 

It can be done, but it will cost you..
I used to do "IRON BUTT" driving all the time...gotta go,gotta go,
gotta go go go..
Almost KILLED me.
Put me in the hospital for 11 days with a DVT( blood clot ) in my left calf.. broke loose and went into my lungs.
The body is not suppose to sit idle(?) for long periods of time as
ROAD MEDIC said. Now im out of the truck after 2-3 hrs drive time
and it looks like a chinese fire drill around my truck as i do laps to get
my blood flowing again....

 

I do unload while still in the sleeper. Pull into the customer at night, pull the straps position the truck where I think they want it (I'm usually right), and they just start pulling cargo off in the morning. Much better way to wake up than with the annoying knocking.

 

You and some others can do that . Our drivers that got caught have to run an air line to the tank and run a compressor to air it off . In some cases the truck also has to be weighed before unloading and some scale tickets have time stamps .

 

Yeah, not really possible with a tanker or at a larger complex. Running between our job sites, loading myself with nobody around, and delivering to small hardware stores and such, it gets very hard to track where and what I'm doing at any given time. And that's the way I like it.

 

11 hrs straight? Yeah, well... what about load checks every 150 mi./3 hrs? Do the DOT's ever check that? I've done 8-9 hours solid behind the wheel myself, but have always wondered (I'm a rookie driver) how legal I was. Of course, I made the log "look" legal.