HOS - Mindset And Practicality

Too each his/her own no doubt. Seems I can run just fine on recaps, as long as a short day stands alone with 9-10 hours days on each side.

Managing recaps also keeps me motivated to manage strict time. Again, just my deal...lol...It also keeps me engaged and teaming with dispatch... Anyway you cut it a truck sitting for a day and a half is just that. A waste of income potential hours.

Working 6 weeks out with 3-4 resets is 134 hours of downtime. That's over 5.5 days hanging around. That's as much as my home time!. Can't stomach that.

Even running a 300-400 mile job to weather a short recap day is making money.

Also my point of managing HOS is squeezing all you can out of a screwball system. Its all good. If you plans 34' s right on. That s the beauty of pseudo independance....

Unholychaos- right on with the mileage record. That's about all 62mph can get....😀.....I put 643.6 up last week with 10 hrs 56 min. Across South Dakota.

C.T. - I expect a 34 before I go home for Christmas, Son...😀

Yeah I'd say definitely get home for the holidays if you got loved ones at home. I have a young family so home time is very important. If I did not I'd probably live out of the truck and save.

Reyn requested:

can you explain this further to understand how HOS work in real time?

This will help fill-in the blanks...

Learn The Logbook Rules (HOS)

Yeah I'd say definitely get home for the holidays if you got loved ones at home. I have a young family so home time is very important. If I did not I'd probably live out of the truck and save.

Most definitely agree. My wife and I have 5 kids with 4 at home.. I came to trucking from an occupation that had me out of country 6-8 weeks per tour. Its not easy but the kids have really never known anything else. Without my wife being the plumber, carpenter, doctor, chef, landscaper and BOSS along the home front, this kinda schedule could never work out

Happy holidays to you and yours C.T.

I completely disagree. Sometimes, a 34 is necessary. Example: I picked up my current load on Saturday with 6.5h on my 11 in Bridgewater VA going to Rogers MN by the end of the day on Tuesday. 1200m, should take about 22h drive time to get there. I only had 18h on my 70. Ain't no way in hell I can make there with the hours I have, so I get a far as I can, pulled a personal record of 640m in 10h 34m on Sunday, got to a kwik trip in Mauston WI, 34h reset, can start my day as early as 0400 Tuesday morning. Can easily make it there within the appt window, and now I have a full 70 to run hard and get home without having to worry about being short on recap hours.

@unholychaos: can you explain this further to understand how HOS work in real time? I’m guessing you drove the remaining 6.5 of your 11 on Sat. Set out early Sunday around 07:30. Pulled your personal record on Sunday & shutting down around 1800? Which then gave you the 34 hr reset until 0400 Tuesday. Is this correct?

Also, if you weren’t worried about home time, does it make better sense to get to the receiver early using recap hours, maybe the receiver accepts the load early & you can get another load in on that weeks check?

Let me explain the situation a little better. I'm not getting any hours back until 0001 Tuesday, which I'd be getting about 8.5h. I shut down in WI at 1730 on Sunday with 220m left to get to the drop. I only had about 2h or so on my 70, so I had to either wait until midnight to start my day and get there at about 0500 and run off recap, or wait a few hours and start my day at 0330 to complete my 34 and have a full 70 to work with. Waiting only an extra 3.5h just makes sense, if anything, I see it as more of a break after a long 7 days of hard running (3600 miles within that week btw).

That makes perfect sense. If you get hung up big or close to the 34 mark then jump on it.

I completely disagree. Sometimes, a 34 is necessary. Example: I picked up my current load on Saturday with 6.5h on my 11 in Bridgewater VA going to Rogers MN by the end of the day on Tuesday. 1200m, should take about 22h drive time to get there. I only had 18h on my 70. Ain't no way in hell I can make there with the hours I have, so I get a far as I can, pulled a personal record of 640m in 10h 34m on Sunday, got to a kwik trip in Mauston WI, 34h reset, can start my day as early as 0400 Tuesday morning. Can easily make it there within the appt window, and now I have a full 70 to run hard and get home without having to worry about being short on recap hours.

@unholychaos: can you explain this further to understand how HOS work in real time? I’m guessing you drove the remaining 6.5 of your 11 on Sat. Set out early Sunday around 07:30. Pulled your personal record on Sunday & shutting down around 1800? Which then gave you the 34 hr reset until 0400 Tuesday. Is this correct?

Also, if you weren’t worried about home time, does it make better sense to get to the receiver early using recap hours, maybe the receiver accepts the load early & you can get another load in on that weeks check?

Let me explain the situation a little better. I'm not getting any hours back until 0001 Tuesday, which I'd be getting about 8.5h. I shut down in WI at 1730 on Sunday with 220m left to get to the drop. I only had about 2h or so on my 70, so I had to either wait until midnight to start my day and get there at about 0500 and run off recap, or wait a few hours and start my day at 0330 to complete my 34 and have a full 70 to work with. Waiting only an extra 3.5h just makes sense, if anything, I see it as more of a break after a long 7 days of hard running (3600 miles within that week btw).

As a newbie, I’m still confused by the 8/2 split and how to best take advantage of it. I’m constantly battling the clock (wether it be 11, 14 or 70) and searching for any ways to be more productive. Explanations, advice from veteran drivers is welcome.

8/2 splits are something you really need to try on the Qualcomm when you have time so you can see it in action. you can try the search bar and look for other threads, but often drivers who dont use it or understand it put in their 2 cents and create dizzying circles. i swear one day im going to take pics of my graph as samples.

the basics: 11 hours of drive.minus the drive hours you used between the two breaks. 14 starts at the end of the first break.

Ex 8 sleeper ends at midnight. Drive until 0300. take 2 hour break. so 11 drive clock minus the 3 hours you drove leaves you with 8 hours of drive time. The 14 started at midnight so you have until 1400 to drive.

the tricky part is when you do the 2hr break first. the same rules apply, but anytime you do 8 sleeper, you pause the 14 clock. so if you get out of the 2 hr break at midnight, drive 3 hours then go in sleeper for 8 hours.... at 1100 you still have 8 hours of drive time. However, your 14 clock still has 11 hours (14 minus the 3 hours you drove). which means your 14 is dead at 2200.

On duty time and additional breaks can complicate it. but when you truly learn it, it can be very useful

also. the 8 sleeper is a minimum, and you do not need to do a 2 hr to pause that 14 clock. So if i cant do a full 10, but do 9 in sleeper, my 14 is paused and I get back the exact amount of hours I had when i went in tbe sleeper.

The other day I did 8 sleeper, drove for 7 hours, then did 8 sleeper again. This works the same way. After my second 8 sleeper, I got back 4 hours, drove 1 hour to Walmart. It took 2 hours to unload.

so between the 8 sleeper and walmart, i drove 1 hour. 11 hour drive clock minus 1 equals 10 hours on my drive. on the 14 I had 14 minus the 1 hour of drive but also the 2 hours getting unloaded. Rolled out with 10 drive and 11 on my 14.

I know this thread is a couple of days old now, but I missed it the first time around and have a little something to add to it. OtrEscapeArtist makes some excellent points, but some spark little further discussion.

Make the potential for taking too many 34 resets your arch enemy. Avoid if at all possible. If you run hard/smart then you can stay away from these. 34 hour resets pay $0 to us and to the company ( keep ahead of the clock)

I also disagree with this. A 34 can be a huge benefit when used properly in the right circumstances. In fact in my own experience, I've tried and tested both ways, and I know I have greater earning potential by driving hard and taking resets when I can. On average I probably get 3 resets in each month. My FM loves that I run like this, and I almost always seem to get the high-mile runs because he knows I'll push to get it there as early as possible. On runs that serve no advantage to running hard, I'll back off and recap sometimes.

Maybe it's because my FM and load planners have figured out how I like to run and plan accordingly. Maybe it's because in the flatbed division we can take greater advantage of this. I don't know, but it works for me. So I wouldn't dissuade anyone from utilizing resets.

Most of my resets fall between Saturday night and Monday morning, a time when most flatbed shippers and receivers are closed anyway.

For most drivers and situations it probably ends up a wash. We all know that every day, week, and month will be different. The loads will almost always dictate how we need to run. Either way you like to run your hours will probably work out roughly the same in the end. But just for the sake of it, and somewhat out of curiosity, I crunched the numbers.

Strictly mathematically and hypothetically speaking, these are how the numbers would work out in both situations. Again, this is creating a perfect scenario, one that we all know will never happen. But what the heck, let's see how it works out.

Driver A likes to run on recaps. If he/she is on duty for exactly 8.45 hours every day, they will never run out of hours, reaching 70 hrs on day 7 and gaining 8.75 hrs back on day 8, day 9, etc.

Take a half-hour for pre-trip and loading, that leaves 8.15 hours to drive every day.

8.25x62mph =511.5 miles per day x 30 days =15,345 miles per month with no days off.

Driver B likes to run max hours with resets. He/she drives 11hrs per day, plus a half hr for pretrip/loading. At 11.5hrs on duty each day, they'll hit 69hrs on day 6, needing a reset.

11x62mph =682 miles per day. With a reset needed after every 6th day, they can only work/drive 24 days a month. 682x24days = 16,368 miles.

PLUS, Driver B gets the other 6 days of the month off while resetting. And this doesn't count against hometime.Granted, this is a fantasy scenario. But I'll always be shooting for more miles, more $, and increased time to relax & recharge.

Anyway you cut it a truck sitting for a day and a half is just that. A waste of income potential hours.

But you're forgetting that even on recaps Driver A will be sitting for 20 of those hours, due to the required (2)-10 hr breaks. So Driver B will really only be sitting 14 hrs longer each week, yet still nets more miles.

Working 6 weeks out with 3-4 resets is 134 hours of downtime. That's over 5.5 days hanging around. That's as much as my home time!. Can't stomach that.

This is also forgetting that Driver A must take (8)-10 hr breaks in this same time period.

Anyhoo, I didn't bring this back up to call anyone out or anything. It's just that I often hear the recap/reset debate on the cb, or at the truckstop, etc. and this is my take on it. If I forgot something or screwed up the math, please throw it right back at me lol. It's late, I drove 10h43m today and I'm tired & foggy

Thanks for that example Turtle. Helps us new guys to see the numbers! At least for this new guy.....the split sleeper rule still makes my head hurt.....lol. Good thing it looks like I will be running for a company that has weekends off.....haha

Deke, just so you know, you will likely have to deal with these things at some point. My company also has me home on weekends but it's not written in stone. Some weekends are longer/shorter than others. Also, things can happen and you don't get back to the house that weekend, you may need to run off recaps. I've used the 8/2 a few times to meet a tight delivery time as well.