Math in Trucking

2+2=Jupiter

 

I would say your hours of service is what you mainly need to know your math well.That's what I've mainly used it on.I assume your phone has a calulator.

 

Hours of service. Take you two hours to get loaded, and mark it 15 minutes. I imagine you conserve large amounts of time that way especially if you are with a company that does drop and hook rather than live loading. It's much more profitable. In day work such as bulk cement, blowing off the cement with the turbo takes about 45 minutes to a little more than a hour some days. You would mark that onduty. Because you were working. Several loads a day cut into your overall hours left for driving to and from these customers.

I remember well my first HOS failure in math, the DOT man in West Virginia lit a cigarette, told my trainer that when the smoke break was over he would start writing large expensive tickets. My trailer threw me in the cab and we were gone. However the two weeks day and night after was nothing but logbook school which I found to be a chore. But ultimately something that would save me many times over in the years to come.

Im worried about the electronic logs that are happening now. I understand they may not be editable as the old paper logs were. For example if the scale man said you have a discrepancy in your day's log somewhere in the last 8 days you have a opportunity to fix it there and then. Provided you can make the mileage. recorded toll tickets, locations and stamped bills of lading work and fuel tickets too. God knows what else I forgot.

Dispatch and shippers/recievers have a incredibly stressful problem in time. They do not want to be told, nor will accept being told that you are out of hours and cannot deliver on time. Time that is promised without your input days or hours before you are assigned the load.

Much of my math in the later years boiled down to 30 mph average. If you assigned me a load from Little Rock to say... LA as a single driver I know already that I need a day (500 miles) to Armarillo, Another day to make gallup, then get past Kingman on the third day. That's around 30 hours driving plus the hours in the sleeper and necessary time for onduty fueling, Call it three fuel stops 15 minutes each, plus two hours reserved for scale work, like the Arizona inspections perhaps that might take a hour. If you told me to be in LA on Wed Morning, I might make it. I should make it. But it's going to be too close to call. But I will tell you that it wont make it legally based on HOS should the planning not work out and refuse the load. Oh wait, in some companies refusing a load is same as being fired. Oh well.

A team that never runs out of hours is a better choice for time sensitive freight.

The one thing I have grown to be a advocate of is the value of awake or up time. The moment you roll your ### out of bed you start a biological clock in which your body accumulates toxins and waste in your system the day goes by until a certain amount of time requires you to seek sleep until the new day for whatever hours it takes you to get rested, some can do it on 6 hours, others 4 and young ones may need 10. Sometimes more. Ive taken as much as 22 hours after a 2300 mile run without sleep once or twice.

No one has made a stand for People in dispatch to account for your time waiting in the lounge for hours or half a day waiting for your load assignment to be given to you. There has been much time lost to waiting. Legally you could log it onduty, waiting. But you will be out of hours unable to make your load appointments anywhere.

 

So if your truck has a 200 gallon capacity of fuel, and it gets 6 MPG, and the really nice truck stop you want to go to is 1300 miles away, you will..............................

And the company your driving for is paying you $.25 / mile, and your trip is 800 miles, you could come to work for me and make $.20 / mile, but I'll give you a 1000 mile trip, and you will stay busier.

 

Just so long as you can do the following simple equation you'll be fine.

 

A Twist on Dave's fuel would be gallons per hour burned. You can go through 20 gallons or more in a hour on your knees against a 24% grade. Might take you 2 hours to get up top. Plus the cost of cleanup and pants LOL. /tease.

 

Same pay, less work...so why would he work for you? Lol

 

Where's Matt Damon when you need him?

 

We can all do the bridge formula can't we?

 

W = the maximum weight in pounds that can be carried on a group of two or more axles to the nearest 500 pounds.
L = the distance in feet between the outer axles of any two or more consecutive axles.
N = the number of axles being considered.

1) Multiply L*N.
2) Subtract 1 from N.
3) Divide step 1 and step 2.
4) Multiply 12*N
5) Add results from step 3 & 4.
6) Add 36 to result of step 5.
7) Multiply result from step 6 * 500.

That will give you W.
Then you compare the result of that equation to your scale ticket to find out if you're OK for the bridge or not.