How do you get miles in the winter?

The best months for dry van are Oct., Nov, Dec. the worst are Jan., Feb., March. Much more freight in Oct- Dec. So it depends what you consider winter.

Weather shouldn't be an issue. If roads are open their is good money to be made.

 

If you're the guy ahead of me, yep.

 

You run your butt off in the summer and put some money away to balance out the slower times in the year.

 

Feb. year before I had 13,000 + month running 80 & 90. You can get plenty of miles in winter, just have to pay attention to weather.

 

Haul: salt, Christmas trees, snow shovels and blankets.

 

Speaking of timing. Bad timing for me this weekend. Taking a break in Butte, on way to a 5:00 appt in Sumner, WA Monday. Winter Wx Warnings up for the next several days all the way from western MT to Snoqualamie, including eastern WA.

Parking lot at the J in Butte is 1/4" frozen water. Will have dealt with on/off and various types of road icing conditions since Jamestown, ND but no chaining today but Sunday and back out to Indiana Monday Tuesday and Wednesday no telling him many passes will require chains if the long term warnings in WA, ID, and MT are accurate

 

I accept the conditions and lack of miles during that time of year.

There are too many trucks in the ditch because they want to push through the conditions, just to make the buck.
I am not one of them.

 

How to maximize your miles in winter? Work the holidays. Take your time off the first couple weeks of January when all the fools who took Christmas off will be coming back en masse and there is not enough freight for everyone.

 

The roads don't stay bad all the time just like it doesn't rain 24/7 in the summer just I the winter the rain becomes snow (ya I know duh I'm rambling I do that) if its not a hard snow then you can probably maintainnear highway speeds if roads we're pretreated they will likely be clear... If it's a hard snow most likely it will be fine in the morning so either driver what you can through it IF you can safely or shutdown and you lost a day.
. If you have to shutdown a extra day every week you still only lose 500 to 700 miles depending on truck speed and other factors


Point is it ain't that bad... Well I rambled.... Maybe I finally found me a handle... Rambler

 

Do a lot of retail. Very busy almost halfway through December. Then it seems like a lot of last minute stuff crops up when the retail finally slacks off.

I remember last year missing the Christmas party because I was at an international terminal getting a trade show booth through customs for a January show in London. The year before that we picked up a UPS contract for overflow (before Amazon decided to buy their own trailers)

Usually the non-priority stuff starts catching up in most of Jan. Usually I hit a lag in Feb because I'm always miserable in March. Something happens and I'm almost bankrupt. Or using credit for groceries.

As far as weather, hey you hate driving in cities but commuters are good for keeping snow off roads (when they aren't busy crashing) and in the Northeast we usually only get 1-3 really serious snows per season (complete with media freak outs!) the nice thing about these panic-storms is it keeps the 4 wheelers off the roads for a bit and we can restock their stores with delicious groceries.

Only thing I remember about last few years is 1.) leaving my tractor at the house during a 36" event and taking two days to shovel it out culminating in the landlord requesting I not park my truck at the house anymore. 2.) having a very white knuckle ride down from Vermont at 3am because I had a 5pm pickup and an 8am delivery in a NYC suburb. Poorly planned by dispatch/broker and frankly would have been impossible with eLogs (if you catch my drift)

But most of the winter the roads are clear and I get plenty of work.

This is going to be the first time with eLogs though and we're already getting requests for repower loads in Jan. Going to be very interesting.