Climate Express

You can go 8/2 or 2/8 as long as you keep drive time available. Example: you drive 2 hrs to the shipper. They take 2 hours to load you. You can log that either sleeper or off duty. With that 2 hrs, you've started a 10 hr break. You leave the shipper, and you drive 4 hrs. You feel like you need a nap. Park 8 hrs. Now when you log 8 hrs, you have to do that in the sleeper. Once the 8 hrs is up, you get 7 hrs back. You get 7 back because you burned 4 after you left the shipper. You've done an entire 10. The 2 at the shipper + your 8 hr nap, gets you a full ten. By doing it that way, the 2 hrs you've sat now means something.

Sometimes I do the 8 hrs first, then the 2. Doing 8 hrs works I'd you haven't driven that much and you got held up forever in a day, or if you want to pace yourself on running a load. You could run 5 hrs, sleep 8, regain 6 hrs after the 8, run another 5 hrs, chill for 2, regain 6, and just keep that cycle going. If you stopped 8 the first time, stop for 2 the next time, alternate. That's where the flexibility in HOS really is. I been running 8/2 or 2/8 all week, but if you use all or most of your drive time, the split is useless.

 

Yeah, man the new rules will give you an option of 8/2 or 7/3 splits. There are other new rules that in my mind dont change much. The one I do like is that you can use line 4 for a half hour break. Example, fueling for 15 min, the 15 off duty. They give an adverse condition rule, like if you're stuck in traffic or something like that, you can get 2 more hrs on your 14, but to me understanding you still have to do 10 hrs after parking. Not much benefit in that to me. To me, the traffic that's most killer is NY and LA, then it is beneficial. I dont really feel like shippers and receivers holding up drivers is addressed with these rules. I don't know if it anything can ever fix that. I was in Olney, IL at the Walmart DC for 4 hrs I anticipated that though, because I had so many POs

 

The screwed up thing is that there are shippers and receivers that are ok paying detention!!! I've seen what they get charged and it's well into the thousands. It's really those big money places like Pepsi that have that attitude. I went to a place in Smackover, AR(yes that's the name of the city lol) that could load a truck in 30 min. The lady in the office told me that she assigns different loaders to each order. Their rule is, if they have to pay detention, it's coming out of that loaders check. I loved that...sometimes places get swamped and they are low on help. I can understand that. The outright playing around and BSing is what I can't take.

 

I never understood pickup appointments. A driver makes a pickup appointment maybe 50 percent of the time. I guess that's the only way they can avoid detention, or charge a late fee, like Americold does. In Monte Vista, they are slick. I've waited there a out 4 hours before, and then they have fabricate your times on the paperwork, and have you sign off on it. I told them one day, "Y'all think you slick don't you?"