Commute times

Theoretically I can commute 1200 miles to Baltimore, climb into a Day cab and do a container to norfolk for 30 plus hours, then come back and commute home to Arkansas. There is no money in that. Gasoline would be about 500 more or less. It would be cheaper to fly or train there but not by much.

There is nothing anywhere in the Nation that prevents someone from driving a car straight through say commuting from Jersey to LA to do day cab work there.

Im not aware of anything preventing a trucker from commuting. Some of my first trucking jobs exceeded 50 to 70 miles one way in a commute just after midnight to ensure that truck is loaded and rolling on time for 8 AM near Altoona.

I actually chose sleeper regional so the commute was reduced to 2 steps. Less of a headache.

Here in Arkansas we have people drive two or three hours at speed to get to little rock or wherever in the morning. They make enough money to do it fuel costs be ######. Do you want to regulate them too?

I better shut up before our elders get bright ideas for additional micromanagement of our wretched lives.

 

Do we need to send out the boys with white coats after you STexan? There is a not so nice phrase we call people who talk to themselves..

 

FMCSA Seeks Approval to Study Driver Commuting Times

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is seeking approval from the White House Office of Management and Budget to study the safety effects of excessive motor carrier operator work commutes — primarily those exceeding 150 minutes.

The 2015 FAST Act mandates that the agency submit a report of findings to Congress, according to a Nov. 27 announcement in the Federal Register seeking public comment.

If granted approval by OMB, the agency plans to gather information on the prevalence of excessive commuting in the commercial motor vehicle industry, including the number and percentage of drivers who commute, the distances traveled, time zones crossed, time spent commuting, methods of transportation used, research on the impact of excessive commuting on safety and CMV driver fatigue, the commuting practices of CMV drivers and policies of motor carriers.

FMCSA said it wants to provide a random sample of 12,000 drivers via an email-web survey based on recent Motor Carrier Management Information System data.

“In the past two decades, as the number of workers has increased and the distance to affordable housing has also increased in most metropolitan areas, commuting times have increased in the United States,” the announcement said. “According to the 2015 Urban Mobility Scorecard, travel delays due to traffic congestion caused drivers to waste more than 3 billion gallons of fuel and kept travelers stuck in their cars for nearly 7 billion extra hours.”

FMCSA is asking permission to send out a survey that would take drivers about 20 minutes to complete. The agency also is seeking comments on the information collection idea for 60 days.

 

Seems like someone needs to rebuild our 1940's era railroading to get people 200 miles into a city in a timely manner each morning. Affordable housing is getting awful scarce and cannot be built for love or money near major cities these days.

 

Takes me 7 minutes to get to our waterfront terminal.


FMCSA would be tickled pink if drivers were housed in dormitories at a central terminal where every aspect of their life could be controlled right down to the annual conjugal visit.

 

Actually we had dorms in some companies. Everyone goes upstairs to get some sleep, however short or long. We had a crew of immigrants come in and take care of the laundry side and clean the showers.

That was a normal ternimal when Dispatchers only have to go upstairs after a certain amount of time, say 10 hours wake you up with a can of soda or something and hollar, get going you lazy *&^%... The rest of it I'll leave out.

Sometimes in my flatbed days, particularly with that roofing foam, I would be up top of that load sleeping nicely. There is at least one device sabotaged and in my jacket pocket so no one will move that #### rig with me up there. He he. Hell, some nights under the stars with a wind up alarm in the other pocket. 2 am comes around well rested and bushy tailed ready for a new day. No commute needed.

 

Is walking from your front porch less than a hundred feet considered a commute

 

Everybody moves away from their jobs so the can have 1 and a half acres and a big house and a 5,000 dollar zero turn mower.
Sure they spend 3 hours driving every day but they also have the big yard and neighbors 200 feet away instead of 30 feet away if they lived in town.

I drive 4 miles to work, takes 6 or 7 minutes. nice

 

I had a few acres with a enough hardwood sycamores to last about 10 years worth of cutting with a big saw to provide heat for a family with children up towards Heber where its cold in the hills. To this day I cannot believe how much wood is still left to cut when we sold out.

Considering the zero turn, that would have been purchase number one 19 years ago, that armored decking would have cut the fields well enough. We wore out 3 murray rider mowers and one craftsman with the 20 hp kolher in 14 years. That;s almost 10,000 dollars in mower purchases. A single hustler for between 3500 to 4500 at most would have lasted all this time. The kohler was a disappointment after the block failed and started blowing smoke... but we put 30 miles on it each week on two and some gallons of gas mowing.

Ultimately the final solution was to have a neighbor's lawn care do a partial contract and finish our land in 20 minutes with his super hustler, zip zip and zoom. Done. 80 bucks a month, thank you.

We even had a farmer come by several times a season to cut round bales of hay in our fields. We get between 3 to 5 bales out, but he burned the fuel to drive to our land to do it, for about 15 bales or so total for the growing year. We were told that it's grateful he got em, but it's not worth the expense of the fuel to do it. That was before the great ice storm of 2000. Market prices took off on hay.

We enjoyed our home in the woods. Very much. We are tenants now, but it's worth a life time to be a home owner at least one time with enough land to actually not worry about the neighbors or even park a few semis now and then.