Thoughts on efficiency

Congratulations! Fun, isn't it?

Even after all these years, I am still paranoid.

When you stop for the evening, grab yourself a beer, and do your routing fir the next day. It's the first thing I do when I get stopped for the day. Do the homework, before going to see if there's a cute waitress in the restaurant.

@passingthru69 , did you tell the nice permit lady that she does good work?

 

@TripleSix

No worries and you were the parade!

Red

My advice is don't make it worse!

Sometimes you have find a safe place to stop and take a deep breath and reach out for help.

Also, Man's gots to know his limitations

What I mean is know what size loads you are comfortable moving - then pick and choose loads that stretch that envelope in areas you are comfortable and familiar with.

This will allow you to gain the confidence necessary but limit the risk for catastrophic results.

 

What Big Ronnie is saying is, don't let them get you underneath a 20 ft tall load if you've never pulled over 16.

 

A lot of great advise here, you're being informed very well by the right crowd. That's a bonus right there!

You asked in the OP; "What slowed you down the most in the first year?"
Honestly the two biggest things that are going to slow you down are;
-lack of a routine. It's all new, so therefore you don't have your own personal system down. It will take some time and massaging before you get it nailed down. You probably won't even realize it until you achieve it. When you do, then you become faster and more efficient.
Slow, steady, with purpose, remove wasted effort, that's as fast as it gets...safely.
-the extra work. The extra work will slow you down considerably. You've now got to stop and think for a minute, "Wait, if this load weighs X amount, I need this many chains pulling back and this many pulling forward, and of course the side to side. Now where in the he77 am I going attach them?"
That along with the mental stress aspect of reviewing your permits, verifying your routes, planning where and when you'll get to places you can park safely, cause Pilots and Speedways no longer exist dude, get used to it! The 5 minutes here, the five minutes there half a dozen times a day just to plan this part alone can easily kill half an hour by the end of the day alone. Don't forget to add that a much larger percentage of scales are now going to have you stop instead of roll right on through. They may want to verify you have your permits and conditions sheets...there goes 15 you didn't plan for...it's constant, and takes a while to get used to building into your daily plan.
The extra work and stress will cause you more fatigue than you realize yet. It will slow you down. There will be days when after 8-9hrs in the saddle, you just need to say "#### it! I'm done." And here is the most important part of that...It's perfectly OK to say and do this! We all still have those days, I don't care how long you've done HH, it will still get to you, and that's OK. When you say "#### it, I'm done!" more often that not, you're probably avoiding a situation that your stress level doesn't allow you to be sharp enough & prepared to overcome.

IMHO, these are the two biggest slow you down hurdles to overcome. Experience will get you over them, so don't rush it. It will come when the time is right.

 

I don't mind wide or long but put me under a tall load and it takes a week before I can #### again. And I have only been at the 16 foot level.

I spent several hours one weekend reviewing a route because I needed to be on the other side of the interstate and that exit takes you under the interstate. In Montana if the bridge is not marked it is supposed to be 16' but that was my height.

We had self issue permits so there was no routing, it was all on me. So, in my research I confirmed that another 20 miles down the road was an exit that crossed over the interstate. I used Google Street view to look at that exit as well as the exit that I needed.

All was good but the tracks I had to cross at my exit had power lines running diagonally across the intersection on the other side of the tracks. That worried me so I called one of our drivers that had gone to Missoula earlier that morning and was on his way back. I had him stop at the exit to watch the lines for me. At 16 feet a pilot car was not needed so I wanted another set of eyes. Oh, I could also tell that the track crossing raised you up about a foot and a half.

Needless to say, I hate tall loads. 14-15 feet is not a big deal to me but over that I get real nervous.