Need Advice

I got a message on the quallcom today saying i had accumulated 100 service failure/safety points this month. Some instances i know of for sure are 1) i had to repower a guy who had run out of drive time. By the time i got to him after traffic delays and hooked up, fueled up the truck and reefer and weighed everything i ran out of my 14 ten mins prior to arriving at delivery. If he'd fueled the trailer and weighed/adjusted trailer axles if necessary i would've probably been alright. 2) i arrived at consignee in Chicago on time but as i was being unloaded my 14 ran out and they do not allow nor do they have room to allow overnight parking. My fm told me to go to a safe haven location 12.7 miles away but during rush hour traffic it took me 1.5 hours to get there. 3) i was travelling through a smallish city during lunch hour and hit the brakes a little hard to stop at a yellow light causing a critical event to be sent out. There are several places i stop at with plenty of time left on my clocks only to have them load/unload me hours beyond my appt time causing me to have to creep slowly to a spot i can park at to rest for 10 hrs. The whole time I'm creeping along I'm getting hos violation warnings. 9 times out of 10 i am at least 1.5 hours ahead of my scheduled appt times. I'm not a whiner i am just looking for ideas how to avoid these issues from happening.

Right or wrong, what i did as a solo driver was to show 7 min pretrip, 7 min loading or unloading, 15 min drop and hooks and all other time i was waiting i was showing as being in the sleeper. I did lots of 8/2 splits. Oh, 10 min fueling and 5 min scales.

Oh and if stuck in standstill traffic.. Go off duty.

Is this ideal? No. Legal? Questionable. Did the gal who oversees logs ever give me a hard time about it? No.

I hope this helps. Your mileage may vary but i was taught to log this way.

Try driving nights for a bit to clear up your record. No waiting for truck wash.... no trying to find parking when you shut down.. no traffic.

I start between midnight and 0400. If I hit traffic at 0700 I shut down for 2 hours (or just plain tired and nap). By noon to 1400 I shut down 50 miles outside a city to avoid afternoon traffic. I got so aggravated in afternoon work traffic in told FM to report truck stolen if it moves after 1500. I was joking sort of and obviously I DO drive days when necessary but switch to night asap.

If I'm out of hours and its late in day I find the nearest truck stop and pay for parking to reserve the spot for when I get out of customer. Or look for walmart and call to ask them about parking. A lot of industrial parks have parking so you might want to ask the customer guard about that... even if customer doesn't have any.

I just spoke to my log lady the other day and asked about a violation... turned out she could remove the only 2 I had cause they were less than 5 miles and were me getting to parking. Turned out that I have no violation now and she said that was really good cause many drivers get 3 to 10 the first 6 mos. My FM told me to drive off duty when empty coming out of customers, but it kicks you onto duty at about 40 min.... so have a plan. I don't drive aimlessly. Be sure to ask if you are allowed to do this... I was told by prime to do so. If your compnay doesn't allow it then dont.

If the customer doesn't have parking...I try to shut down near by then roll in with a full clock which eliminates the out of hours issue. There are plenty of days where I park 10 to 50 miles away from customer then roll in 2 to 3 hours early.

Hope some of this helps

I got a message on the quallcom today saying i had accumulated 100 service failure/safety points this month. Some instances i know of for sure are 1) i had to repower a guy who had run out of drive time. By the time i got to him after traffic delays and hooked up, fueled up the truck and reefer and weighed everything i ran out of my 14 ten mins prior to arriving at delivery. If he'd fueled the trailer and weighed/adjusted trailer axles if necessary i would've probably been alright. 2) i arrived at consignee in Chicago on time but as i was being unloaded my 14 ran out and they do not allow nor do they have room to allow overnight parking. My fm told me to go to a safe haven location 12.7 miles away but during rush hour traffic it took me 1.5 hours to get there. 3) i was travelling through a smallish city during lunch hour and hit the brakes a little hard to stop at a yellow light causing a critical event to be sent out. There are several places i stop at with plenty of time left on my clocks only to have them load/unload me hours beyond my appt time causing me to have to creep slowly to a spot i can park at to rest for 10 hrs. The whole time I'm creeping along I'm getting hos violation warnings. 9 times out of 10 i am at least 1.5 hours ahead of my scheduled appt times. I'm not a whiner i am just looking for ideas how to avoid these issues from happening.

Start trip planning better. That's what safety always says

The hard stop, critical event, it happens and you know how to resolve that.

I am not sure why the planners are giving you loads that run into your 14hrs. Before you accept them though, make sure you have enough time.

I run out of time a lot during live loads and do the 10 mph thing also. We don't have a point program, not a problem a few of those messages.

There is a way to get an extra 8 minutes drive time after your 14hrs expire on qualcomm , but I am not going to post that here.

I would suggest really looking at your trips before accepting and depending on the situation, use the 8/2 split.

We have forced loads and can't refuse them. The load times are within my 14 hour window but the shippers/receivers sometimes take long times to load and unload me. I looked at the violations earlier and most were fuel times not matching. I assume this means my "on duty...fueling" times don't actually match the time shown on pump receipts. I was taught by my trainer to pull into a fuel island and log "on duty...fueling" for approx 5 minutes then log "off duty or sleeper berth" the rest of the time regardless of how long it actually takes to finish fueling. He also said he prefers to pull in behind someone that is already fueling and log "on duty...fueling" until they are done then he goes to "sleeper berth" the entire time he actually fuels. I've been doing that as that's how i was taught. I guess i will start logging "on duty...fueling" for the entire time I'm actually fueling so everything matches up. Other than the fact that i am a new driver and may be being tracked more closely because of that, i wonder why he wouldn't be talked to about this. Oh well, I'll not concern with him and do what i have to do for myself.

We have forced loads and can't refuse them. The load times are within my 14 hour window but the shippers/receivers sometimes take long times to load and unload me. I looked at the violations earlier and most were fuel times not matching. I assume this means my "on duty...fueling" times don't actually match the time shown on pump receipts. I was taught by my trainer to pull into a fuel island and log "on duty...fueling" for approx 5 minutes then log "off duty or sleeper berth" the rest of the time regardless of how long it actually takes to finish fueling. He also said he prefers to pull in behind someone that is already fueling and log "on duty...fueling" until they are done then he goes to "sleeper berth" the entire time he actually fuels. I've been doing that as that's how i was taught. I guess i will start logging "on duty...fueling" for the entire time I'm actually fueling so everything matches up. Other than the fact that i am a new driver and may be being tracked more closely because of that, i wonder why he wouldn't be talked to about this. Oh well, I'll not concern with him and do what i have to do for myself.

We were told one minute for every ten gallons pumped. Most people don't use the remarks but I do.occasionally. I know.some people who only l9g 15 min a day. I would sit with the log dept rep and ask them what is expected of you so you can do it right. They will helo

My fueling time has to match the time the transaction was finalized. So I wait until I'm fueling the reefer or DEF depending until I log the on duty time. I discovered this trick when I got stuck on duty fueling for 45 minutes when my card wasn't working. It just has to be 5 minutes to satisfy our logs.

And I'm not understanding the forced dispatch. If you don't have the hours available to make the delivery on time, you can't let dispatch know? We have to send a load commitment message when we receive our load info stating that we have the hours available to do the load. If not, we are supposed to talk to dispatch. I've had this happen once when dispatch sent me a load that took me across NYC at 8am into NJ for an appointment time two hours later. I had the hours available but told dispatch there was absolutely no way I could make a 90 mile drive, crossing NYC at rush hour, and make any of my appointment times. They said ok, and sent me a new load.

My fueling time has to match the time the transaction was finalized. So I wait until I'm fueling the reefer or DEF depending until I log the on duty time. I discovered this trick when I got stuck on duty fueling for 45 minutes when my card wasn't working. It just has to be 5 minutes to satisfy our logs.

And I'm not understanding the forced dispatch. If you don't have the hours available to make the delivery on time, you can't let dispatch know? We have to send a load commitment message when we receive our load info stating that we have the hours available to do the load. If not, we are supposed to talk to dispatch. I've had this happen once when dispatch sent me a load that took me across NYC at 8am into NJ for an appointment time two hours later. I had the hours available but told dispatch there was absolutely no way I could make a 90 mile drive, crossing NYC at rush hour, and make any of my appointment times. They said ok, and sent me a new load.

As a company drive i'm not allowed to refuse a load even if I dont have the hours to the 90. They want the loads picked up on time and will have me run it as far as I can then repower it. If I can't make it to the 01 I message them "57 miles to 01 Appt in 1 hour. Will be late due to 0800 work traffic in Baltimore".

I put it in writing so they know and it won't fall on me. We have to "aacept" the load as well but it is really to prove we received the message to get the load.