Trip plan scenario, How would you calculate?

You are forgetting one critical aspect of trip planning. How many hours do you have coming back at midnight Friday morning and midnight Saturday morning? Granted, in your scenario you have plenty of hours to make it to delivery even if you don't have hours "coming back". However, in real life you might have a run of 1200 miles that picks up 8:00 am Thursday with a 9:00 am Saturday delivery... now you need to know how many additional hours you will have in order to complete the run.

There have been times I've waited to start my 14 hour clock because (for example) I only have 4 hours left on my 70 but I have 7 hours coming back after midnight. In that scenario I'll wait to start my pretrip at 8:00 pm so that I can drive continuously. At midnight the additional 7 hours will appear and I'm working as if I had all 11 hours available for drive time at the start of the shift. Please note all times are based on your home terminal time zone.

 

65 mph truck will make it in 11 hours. As receiver if he has overnight parking. Get unloaded Friday morning if possible, THEN start your clock and you will have 5 hours or so to grab a load for the weekend. By Saturday, you should have a couple hours coming back from the recap.

Even with delays, you should be able to deliver Friday morning.

 

it's just an easy way to figure how long it would take to drive at 50 mph average speed. Instead of dividing mileage by 50 mph, I just multiply mileage by two. Say for example, 300 miles. 300/50=6. Or, 300x2=600. Then just lop off the useless zeros and poof, 6 hrs

As for adding time for pretrip, etc, figuring 50 mph will usually cover that time and you won't need to add on duty time for pretrip and fueling. That of course assumes you're driving on mostly freeways at 60 or so mph, and assuming traffic won't be a big prob.

its just a rough estimation, like if you're on the phone with the boss and they just want to know if you can do a 989 mile load. You can just round it to 1000 miles, multiply by two .. 2000,,, or 20 hrs. If you got the hours and the delivery window will allow for loading and a ten hr break, you just say "no prob hoss". And not confuse the issue, but, if you have to log a rediculous amount of on duty time for loading and unloading, you'll probably need to add that to the hours too.

 

miles TIMES 2 DIVIDED by 100 =
(700*2)/100=14

Same as

Miles DIVIDED by 50MPH=
700/50=14

the *2/100 is quicker to do in your head.

 

This....^^^^^^^^^^^^

 

This isn't even trip planning. More like trip preplanning.

Trip planning is deciding which rote to take, where to take your breaks/fuel, when you will arrive, & how many hours you'll have available once you're unloaded.


For instance, Laredo to Nashville has 3-5 very different viable routes (all within ~30 miles of each other). Some have more backroads but avoid congeation-prone cities. Others are all interstate (might be slightly more miles, but more options on where to stop). And then there is the price of fuel along the way. Do you leave Laredo with a full tank and top off along the way? Or leave Laredo with just enough fuel to make it to a cheap spot elsewhere? Does one state charge a high enough IFTA rate that you want to minimize miles driven there? Are some routes flatter? More windy? More prone to bad weather?

That's trip planning...

 

For new drivers with mega carriers true trip planning is already done for you. They give you the fuel route and all the roads you need to take on the EOBR navigation system and tell you how many gallons to purchase at each location. That leaves deciding when and where to stop. With my company if you want to take an alternate route you have to play "mother may I?" with dispatch. We always have the option of bypassing a fuel location and asking for reoptimizing our fuel route later.