I am enjoying it while I can, I am also trying to maximize my hours too which is why I have thought about driving at night which will be a lot more productive even though I hate driving at night. Not sure if I will, I know there is one other driver he told me will deliver trailers at 2am and stuff. We joked today about when this ends and he said I wont know what to do when I get back to a normal DM and back to OTR, I laughed and said I already think about those days.
When you get a good gig, you run with it. Until it ends, or you get sick of it. I don't like running nights either, but if the gig was right I would roll with it as long as I could stand it.
yeah those are my thoughts right now I can get at least 2 trailers a day and im making a little over $90 per trailer, if I drive at night I could get a 3rd and possibly even a 4th which could help me bank up some money for the coming slow months. This gig is suppose to last until a little after the blitz, he said January would be around the time im released from it. the dm encouraged me to apply for a driver leader level 2 position that opened in Fontana, I told him I didnt qualify since they want a year experience and I only have 7 months but he said I show him a mentality that would be good for it plus I have management experience in other fields and he would also put in some good words. He said who knows maybe I can have an office job when freight slows down and if they say no then at least I tried and they know im interested. I went ahead and applied for it but I wont get my hopes too high, I enjoy driving but if I can still be in the industry and be home with my kids more then that works for me.
swift is a service failure, stop sending unrealistic preplans and then sending me messages ''please respond'' for the trip i am going to take after i finally finish the trip i am doing now ..yes, you planners, it takes longer if you have a heavy load and have to find someplace to scale, yes it takes longer if it is 45,000 pounds and there is a mountain range in the way. There is also that pesky 30 min break we have. They say dont speed ,, then plan every trip to the N'th degree of possibility. At some point i thought my driver code should be mac 22. But really, when i get a load i drive the whole 11 and never stop more than the absolute necessaries. As a company driver with a 62mpr truck i have done over 625 miles per day often, many times i parked with less than 15 min on the clock. But i still got two service failures, one was when the DM accepted the load for me when i told her i could not do it in time ( she told me "yes you can") and another when i got held up at a receiver and didnt make my pickup on the next load . But that was the fault of slow unloading as i was there on time at the first stop and how can i predict how long they are goin to take? Basically it would help out the drivers if they tried to be realistic about the appointment times. I am sure there are drivers out there who want to sleep alittle extra or stop more often, but cutting all appointment times to the computer generated minimum is not encouraging safety
percussion your doing it wrong if your driving like a maniac and getting SF's, work the system like others do, always trip plan to figure out how long it should take you in normal conditions, then calculate in a break, a 10, some traffic etc. So if I see one thats 900 miles and lets say pickup is Monday at 0900, delivers Tuesday 1300 at 50mph would be 18 hours driving, 11 done first day lets say 550 and shut down at 22:00, a 10 puts you at 0800 and you have 350 miles to go and 7 more hours which puts you at 15:00 so this is the time I might be putting in, this gives you some leeway for your pre trip/post trip and some traffic that might hit you along the way, also might depend on the weight, mountains, route etc. This is just a quick example so dont tear me up if its not a great one only point im trying to make is to make sure you give yourself time, use the system to your advantage and never take a load where you hardly even have time to fart to make it there in time.
I'm back and I am glad to know there is no duplicate account. I may have been wrong with my reactions to the posts that caused them but I am still a driver and now a Driver mentor with swift so if i made any misjudgements i apologize I am still working to be more professional even though at the time under the circumstance It seemed so wrong to defend against a few of these guys. Anyone who still has an argument or a bone to pick with me because i thought you were an imposter I am sorry.
