In school, Time Management

You need to 1.)Build your stamina 2.) Get into a rhythm

1. Build your stamina.

You’re wanting to trip plan...excellent! But that’s almost impossible to do if you don’t have stamina. I need you to be able to meme out 500 miles on your deathbed, on your worst day of living. Do you understand what I am asking for? I need 500 miles to be easy for you. Every day of the week, easy. Chase mama around the bedroom, leave the house after a quick nap and hammer out 500 miles, easy. Got it?

2. Get into a rhythm

This happens after you’ve been on the job for a bit. You develop your daily routine. I’m always up at 0500...even if I can’t leave until after 0900. I have a routine. Me first, then the truck. Lots of guys don’t do a proper pre trip because a proper pre trip isn’t in their routine. The goal isn’t to just have a job, the goal is to be good at what you do. Don’t be one of those guys that wake up at 0745 and put her in the wind by 0899. You’re unprepared and you’re rushing.

T H E N... we can focus on time management and becoming a more efficient driver. Okay?

Luck in battle.

 

Hopefully once you sign on with a company, you'll get with a good trainer who can teach you this. A lot of it is learned simply as it happens. Nobody can teach you trip planning by giving you a book to read, or walking you through a map. You just have to learn as you see how s### happens in the trucking world. Like others have mentioned, a shipper or receiver is going to keep you late, traffic is going to happen, whatever. Also, I tried that eight and a half hour day thing, and it really limits you to three or four hundred miles a day and you don't make any money doing that. Sure you don't run out of time, but your paychecks are going to suck. It's better to drive out your time, 600 plus miles a day, and take your 34, and then start fresh.

 

Dont sweat the small stuff most is out of your hands, dont start your on duty/drive till your ready to move, use off ...

most with a team is eat sleep, drive repeat.

 

The thing about "trip planning" is generally everybody settles into a different way and "formula" of doing it and think their way is the best if not the only way to trip plan.

And to have a dozen people explain 12 different ways of doing it will only make it harder to grasp. Honestly, the way some seem to trip plan blows my mind and I suppose it works for them but I can't fathom how.

I have a much more "pragmatic" approach to the issue than others. It involves a more realistic highway speed average speed estimate that depends on region then I add in time for projected fuel, breaks, possible traffic delays, etc.