Running "hard".

Just how does one "run hard"? I get the concept, what I want to know is, what is an acceptable level of distance for a 10 hour day? What will keep my company happy? How does one manage drive time and on-duty time?

Just how does one "run hard"? I get the concept, what I want to know is, what is an acceptable level of distance for a 10 hour day? What will keep my company happy? How does one manage drive time and on-duty time?

The amount of miles on the trip and the delivery and pickup times and HOS dictate how many miles you do a day. As long as you are making your pickup and delivery appointments on time every time the company does not care how many miles you do a drive shift as long as you are making your appointments.

One of the bigger ways to prepare for the "What If's" or "Newton's Law" is all use your "extra time" on a trip at the END of your trip. What I mean is if you get the load and it only requires 5 hours of drive time and you don't deliver until the next morning you start driving as soon as you can and you arrive early for delivery. This means a few things can happen......1) You might get to deliver early (maybe) 2) if you get to the delivery point early enough in the day parking should not be an issue or you maybe you can find parking near the customer. 3) And if a break down such and blown tire or another issue pops up you can take care of it earlier and not have it effect your delivery times and you will not be late for an appointment. 4) you are at the customer and spent the night and have not started your logs yet for the day so after delivery you have a fresh set of hours to run for that day.

Had you of waited to the last second to leave you would not have the hours to run a full day and would have to do extra waiting or sitting til next day cause you ran out of hours to early on the day of delivery.

Thanks Guy. Always be leaving, so to speak. I know thats a green question, Im still in school with nothing but a permit and a prehire , but I want to learn the right way to do things.

There are a lot of variables to this equation and I promise you it will never be perfect I can only speak of my experience and what I do to continue running hard but of course every driver is different and we all do things differently.

I run hard by doing proper trip planning, knowing where I will be picking up and scouting the location via Google Map so that way I know entry points, parking spots, docking locations, how to get to the location once I'm withing a few miles and always check the address. Getting lost can really mess you up because if your late you become a work in and that my friend "Sucks!"

While I'm loaded I trip plan how far I will get and where I need to shut down to set myself up for the following day but I also make back up options just in case I get stuck in heavy traffic and start to run out of HOS. Once I wake up the following day I verify what I'll be doing, where I will be getting fuel and what major cities I will be going threw so I know how to battle traffic and see if there are bypass routes.

Once I've hit the delivery dock I usually know where I'll be going next and the cycle continues...

I'm sure I've left out a few things because I'm trying to not make this so boring but Communication is key in this industry and Trip Planing. I know Drivers that don't trip plan at all and they do just fine but for me I trip plan like crazy and run a Rolling 70 getting 3,200 plus miles a week.

Thats quite a bit to digest, but you mention the rolling 70. I assume that means your able to avoid the 34 hour restart somehow. Please explain how that works.

Also, how do you get such detailed information just from Google Maps? Are you using Google Earth?

Just to be clear i think i understand that process now and i haven't started at school yet( so if i am wrong please correct me) but if you keep your average daily drive time to no more than 8.75 hours you can avoid the 34 hour restart. So basically if you drive 11 hours on one day the next day you might want to only drive 6 hours and 15 minutes so at the end of 8 days you do not go over 70 and on your ninth day you have the same hours available to drive as the first day

Just to be clear i think i understand that process now and i haven't started at school yet( so if i am wrong please correct me) but if you keep your average daily drive time to no more than 8.75 hours you can avoid the 34 hour restart. So basically if you drive 11 hours on one day the next day you might want to only drive 6 hours and 15 minutes so at the end of 8 days you do not go over 70 and on your ninth day you have the same hours available to drive as the first day

In a perfect world this would be great if you could average 60 mph for 8.75 hours straight without stopping or slowing down for anything. That would be 525 miles @ 60 mph for 8.75 hours. This would be perfect.

Now lets add in 15 minutes on-duty for Pre-trip before you start driving for the day. Getting fuel that drive shift? That's another another 15 minutes on-duty. Remember any thing you do that is work is 15 minutes minimum on-duty.

So add up the above and you now to 8.75 hours driving. 15 minutes per-trip and 15 minutes fueling for a total of 9.25 hours off your 70. if everything went exact right, which we know does not happen you could work 9.25 hours a day and have 5.25 hours to work on the 8th day before hours start rolling back again at midnight of the 8th day.

I know this sounds like nit picking and being super detailed but its the way it has to be done to figure out how you want to use your hours.

Thats quite a bit to digest, but you mention the rolling 70. I assume that means your able to avoid the 34 hour restart somehow. Please explain how that works.

Yes I do a rolling 70 in a 3 week process till I get home but I do it by running an average of 9 hours a day but that includes drive time and on duty time. The more on duty time you log the less drive time you will have so you have to be careful with this. Just so you know you don't have to stick with just 9 hrs a day. You can run 8 hrs one day and 9 hrs the next and 10 hrs after that so long as you can keep an average of 9hrs remember that what you will be getting back.

Now for the other question about Google Earth I just use Google Maps with satellite images to look at things.

Https://cms.fmcsa.dot.gov/regulations/hours-service/summary-hours-service-regulations here is a link for hours of service