Tried to move from Shaffer to Crete...

Split sleeper berth for a solo driver is ridiculous. I do not posses the on/off switch the new breeders must have had implanted by the secret government.lol

 

Yeah, you are usually in a position to not sleep during the 8 and are twiddling thumbs waiting for it to pass. Then you get to drive again, and then drive some more after a 2hr break. No ,I'm not going to be tired, I am a robot...

 

Split Sleeper in the middle of a cross country trip may be senseless but at the end in front of an appointment with no overnight parking, you may have to roll after 8 to beat traffic and/or make the appointment. And if a 2 presents itself that day, may as well make use of it.

 

I should have mentioned that ... doing drop/hooks is rarely the great option many think it will be. D/H's usually occurs with larger fleets .... mega fleets. And this means you're CONSTANTLY going to be dealing with problems practically every time you get another trailer. Problems that cause loss of valuable time and risk tickets, fines, and OOS until these issues can get corrected .... only to have to drop it a day or two later and start all over again correcting the next trailer

 

Why are you all talking about miles with your managers? You should never mention miles, and always talk MONEY.

Why offer to work harder when you finally decide that you're being underpaid?

 

This is all well and good, if you're in a job where you're home frequently. But if you've made the commitment to classic OTR lifestyle, sitting around with your thumb up your butt 16 hours/day in trashy truck stops is not a good way to exist. For OTR drivers who will do 3+ week tours, miles is everything. If you're going to be spending weeks and months at a time sitting on an uncomfortable mattress and making nothing, or sitting in a comfortable seat making money every mile you drive, why would you want fewer miles?

Furthermore, who says it has to be an either/or situation? Why not ask for both but take whatever you can get?

 

Because given a choice, the company's going to work you harder for for less money. Just like what happened to the OP. More miles, but less money per mile.

Makes it harder for the rest of us when people accept those kinds of offers.

 

What's really worse was I was taught to keep that left door shut, we did not have breaks in a 600 mile day when we know that there is another 600 to be done after the required sleeper time to get back another 10 hours to get it done.

These new HOS laws with stops, breaks, pauses etc. would have totally destroyed the way we ran back in the day. Im glad I got out before they did that to us.

Im convinced that some form of HOS is necessary but the Govt's rationale dating to 1938 specifically to exempt trucking from all over time because they were expected at that time to work 70 hour weeks, which would be twice the hours of anyone else in those days Nation wide at the DC Dept of Labor at the USA Federal level, prior to the war years which REALLY got things cranking. One of my grand parents helped build bombers near Baltimore for 6 years at total hours exceeding our own as part of the war effort.

One of my other grandparents was even retreaded as a ww1 vet wounded to go to fight again in WW2 in 1940, but he signed a paper which excluded him specifically from being mobilized again because of his public service work in a utility that is indispensable to the country at that time. I found his hand signed forms from that time period before the USA became fully mobilized in addition to his draft ww1 paper and his 1919 discharge hand signed forms from the ww1 years as well.

In those days the USA mobilied everyone. Especially women and deaf people as well as the blind (Making parachutes believe it or not by touch) and the deaf were sent into foundries or other really bad noisy factories that would have destroyed a normal hearing man in a variety of ways within a year.. And those with certain specific mental defects autusim or other useeable genuises were used behind the scenes in carefully supervised workshops to break code etc. Or as I have heard in a few cases, working in ammuniton plants where if they knew exactly what would have happened if they dropped a partially assembled detonator in a mile wide place filled with boom... no sane person would have taken that work.

What is the point of that from me this morning? Well. If we had to be fully mobilizing again for what I think is coming in the future for us regardless of what we would like to think of it we do not possess that ability to mobilize people to work those kinds of hours. We simply don't. Or have the industry to put them there to do it. all of that has gone away in favor of can I take your fries order with that? Or amazon unable to go to the bathroom without losing so much pay several times a day...

Everyone would be hard at taking the mandatory break times ... /snark.