Biggest Mileage Week So Far!

Oops. Forgot to send the picture. Lol

What is the key to getting good miles? Truck speed can be a factor, but in my meager amount of experience, the driver themselves are much more of a determining factor. Keeping the door shut and not stopping for frequent breaks trumps truck speed. It is very time consuming to slow down, exit the highway and stop for a break and then to get back on the highway, and get up to speed again. Do this 4 or 5 times during an 11 hour shift costs a lot of miles. Plus, getting up to cruising speed from a dead stop is the hardest thing on fuel mileage.

I think I saw a good example of this dynamic yesterday, but I have seen it many times before.

I had a long trip ahead of me on I40 and I44 yesterday. Early in the day a truck passed me like I was standing still. I’m limited to 68 but he must of been at 75. Down the road a ways, here he come again and disappears into the distance. Then it happened 3 more times during the day, as he was traveling the same route as me. So, he obviously had a much faster truck, but apparently he was stopping for more breaks along the way. Maybe his bladder was weaker than mine, lol. But it was the old turtle vs. hare scenario. I didn’t see where he parked, but at the end of the day we had both gone about the same distance I think.

I think the steady driver who has minimal stops will frequently get more miles than a fast truck. Just an observation based on this thread. BTW, I clocked 697 miles yesterday @ 68 mph because I only stopped once for fuel and once for my 30 minute break. Doesn’t happen every day, but conditions were good yesterday.

Oops. Forgot to send the picture. Lol

Wow. I just saw this photo. Amazingly consistent mileage. Congratulations!

For me personally, the biggest factor in getting high milage weeks is my relationship with my DM. Making sure I'm on time, easycto work with, reliable and productive for them. They will hand me consistently solid loads in a time where others are struggling to stay moving.

On my side, I consider the long game, I balance out my 70, recaps or reset for next week, and drive consistently without getting burned out. I also be where my enemy is not. I hit cities and high traffic areas at night, drive around weather or wait it out. In racing there's an old saying, Slow hands win races.

I just did 4038 this week. And yeah, it’s work. It isn’t fun. But the check is nice.

Literally drive 11, do your 10, and roll. Over and over. Logging the minimum required by safety. And I’m an hourly driver. But honestly, I’m not giving up much. It’s all drop and hook.

Made it home today with 30 minutes left on my clock.

I am doing two runs a week from Avon NY to Ames Iowa and back.

Hell yeah that’s awesome man! You’re absolutely right it’s not much fun haha but the paycheck was good. Finally got it yesterday and I’m not complaining

Great week man!!

Heading to CT from upper MI this coming week. Hoping to break my prior regional record of 2827.

Stay safe buddy!

Have fun up there! CT is one of the few states I haven’t been to yet

BK said:

What is the key to getting good miles? Truck speed can be a factor, but in my meager amount of experience, the driver themselves are much more of a determining factor. Keeping the door shut and not stopping for frequent breaks trumps truck speed.

I wholeheartedly agree. For what it’s worth, on the days I was just driving and not delivering or picking up, I typically only stopped twice on those days: once for my 30 and once for a pee break for me and the dogs. I drive 3-4 hours, stop for a 30 and food and fuel, drive another 4ish hours and stop at a rest area for a pee break, then drive 4ish more hours and shut down. Trying to marathon it and only stop once doesn’t usually work well.

Davy said:

For me personally, the biggest factor in getting high milage weeks is my relationship with my DM. Making sure I'm on time, easycto work with, reliable and productive for them. They will hand me consistently solid loads in a time where others are struggling to stay moving.

I also completely agree with this. I think it’s really mainly these two things combined that leads to consistent high mileage. This is exactly what Brett and others have been preaching on this site for years and it works. Being hungry and efficient is everything in this business. Notice I didn’t say fast. Haste makes waste, and we all know that mistakes can be very costly, whether it’s dropping a trailer because you skipped a step or backing into someone because you didn’t want to G.O.A.L.

A lot of it also just has to do with the way your company runs. I never got anywhere close to 4000 miles in a week when I worked for System Transport but I made some pretty good paychecks there and worked my 70 down to almost nothing quite a bit towards the end of my time there. We just had a lot more localized work there so even though we were technically regional and home every week, we still did a lot of local deliveries. They paid well but the mileage on them was obviously very low. At my current company we’re mostly pretty regionalized in the northwestern states and most of my runs aren’t more than about 800 miles so it’s hard to even get more than 3000 sometimes because of that but I end up making more in stop pay those weeks. The stars just aligned this week because of the way the loads ended up working out.

At the end of the day I really don’t think it matters how many miles you get. I care a lot more about how much money I’m making and what my earning potential is at whatever company I’m at. If I need to run crazy miles to make money then I care about miles. If I gotta do a bunch of short runs to make that money then that’s what I will try to do.

Thanks guys.

Yes, it’s stopping as little as possible, and rolling as soon as your 10 is up, and pushing as far as you can every day.

I still want to break 800 in a 24 hour period. 😀

BK asks:

Arejay, you have a very unusual driving job. It would be interesting to hear more about it. What type of truck? What do you haul? Is it full time? Hourly pay?

Pianoman states:

Ditto. Sounds pretty interesting, you should tell us more about your job!

OK, here goes, I'll try to keep it brief LOL. I'm an hourly Warehouse Driver on the Merchandise delivery team at Universal Orlando Resort. We are a small team that delivers the resorts merchandise to each of the stores every night to the theme parks, water park, all the resort hotels, and three stores at Orlando Intl Airport.

We drive very little miles, each truck usually gets less than 40 miles a day, since the majority of our time is spent on the resort property going from store to store delivering pallets. I drive a class B 26' Mack box truck with terrible turning radius. It is definitely a challenge getting it to fit in the places where we have to drive.... though that is also my favorite part of the job. I mean, how many folks get to drive big trucks inside theme parks every night? I drive the streets of Hollywood, New York, London, and San Francisco then through Jurassic Park as well, pretty much every night :) I wish I could post pictures and video, but we are strictly forbidden from taking and sharing that kind of stuff online.

I like the job and enjoy the benefits, get decent pay and perks, vacation time, etc. But I find that I really miss being on the road and just driving. For this reason and then some, I've been considering for some time going back to OTR next year to get some time back on the road and to keep my OTR experience from getting stale. I'll post more about these thoughts at another time, to keep from writing a book, lol. By the way, if this interests anyone in the Orlando area, they are planning to double the size of our team in the next year or so preparing for the new park (Epic Universe) that will be opening in 2025.

Yup BK keepin the doors closed and maximizing your time. Now I learned from my mentor, to take my 30 while fueling, which is ok, I didn't need 30 minutes to relax. I could fuel, clean windows, do a walk around the truck/trailer, and grab a snack/drink and roll out in 15-20 minutes.

Usually burn up my drive clock to break 700+ (733 highest day) with CRST, my co-driver usually burnt up an hour or so fueling/breaktime. I didn't care too much, unless we were on a tight timeline. At least he could drive his whole shift.

Solo, I'd do the same, save time where I could, to keep rolling. If my clocks were on recaps, I'd wake up and roll as soon as I had hours to drive, pre-trip everything, and burn those hours/miles up. I got used to the odd hours, so it wasn't a problem getting some ZZZZ's when I had to.

Used to working long hours my whole life really, even turnin' wrenches, put in 12-16 hour days sometimes. Then for my own cars and projects, I'd do 20 hour days now and then. Like they say "Work smarter, not harder" especially as ya get older lol awwwwww retirement is good.