Weekly 34 hour resets

Yes it's called home every weekend.But if you're OTR it's likely no unless you're out of hrs.Companies hire drivers to drive and if you have the hours your dispatch will take full advantage of that.Loads dictate the drivers hours.There will be times you'll have to take a reset in seven days but not consistantly.Times you'll be sitting hours to over a day waiting for a load,maybe for a swap or the ever popular waiting for your truck to get out of the shop.Which means you gain hrs at midnight I believe unless that's changed.

 

I get on loops where I'm reserving every week and turning more miles each week then anyone... If your running 4K + miles you'll run out of hours and have a day to go. An extra few hours and your reset... Virtually no time lost and making more miles which is making more money!

 

I just ran out of hours haha 30 minutes left on the clock, just enough to break my set, fuel and park. 34 hours off and I'll be rolling tomorrow night. Essentially working every day of the week and I've been home 4 of those days this week.

It's officially beer o'clock so I'm going to start enjoying my sorta weekend.

 

Heck, you can do several a week. Work 1 hour, take a 34, work another hour, do another 34 and keep repeating. Can do 4.8 that way in a 7 day period. Perfectly legal, and perfectly pointless. But the rule limiting 34's are currently suspended.

-Steven

 

Newbie here. Not even been to training yet. How do you maximise hours and miles? This has me confused

 

to get absolute max hours would be to start your week and work 14 hours a day for 5 days straight, then take an exact 34 hour break and continue with the 14 hour days. After 8 days with perfect conditions it should add up to 82 hours.

That was the big fear story going around as to why they wanted to limit 34's to only once per 7 day period.

I don't like to do 34's because I might miss out on some choice loads. But then you run into the problem of planners who don't know how to do math, if my 70 is consistently down to single digits every day they somehow think I cannot run that big mileage load despite the fact I might be picking up 5 10 hour days in a row. They would rather put that big load on a guy who is showing 50 hours on his 70 clock right now.

 

The only reason to choose to is if you are oit of hours or burned you clock in a short time.

For example I left home in DE last Friday, got loaded in MD delivered in NY on Sat, got reloaded on Sunday, delivered (Wed) in Phoenix yesterday and drove here to Ontario where I am doing a reset.

Why would I do one? I only have 15 hrs over the next two days and then get back 3.5 at Midnight on Friday/Sat. So that's 18.5 hrs for three days, or I could do like I am, and do a 34, get a fresh 70 at 2am Friday.

I can run more miles and better loads with a fresh clock. I will load Produce Friday and head back east and not need 6 days to make it because of recaps.

Every week is different, but there are times you can strategically use them to your benefit.

 

I can haul ###, being efficient, get back and reset.
In 3 days I'll be 7 hours further Down the road the running off limited recaps

 

3 main ways to run your 70 hour OTR clock-

Run max hours every day and do 34 hour resets as necessary

Run 10 hour more or less every day and take one 24 hour more or less break per week

Run 8.75 hours every day and never take a break

Problem with the last one is, we are paid on an 7day schedule so you don't want to be running your hours on an 8 day schedule like that, you'd be shorting yourself potential time and money.

 

Resets, in my (whopping 18 months) experience are for two reasons: You're recap won't let you take anything worth a darn or you just need 34 hours to relax.

You can't control your schedule. So while, if you typically run hard you'll have decent recap, a messed up pickup/delivery schedule can screw up your recap pretty bad the next week.

You can take a 34 every other day if you want. The old rule of once every 7 days has been suspended because it was STUPID.

But a 34 should always be your LAST resort if you want to turn the miles. If you run about 9 1/2-10 hours driving per day with a total of no more than 11, you should have 10 hour days ad infinitum, barring scheduling hiccups, etc.