Company Drivers And Trip Planning?

I apologize if this has already been asked but I am curious. As a company driver do you have any say in when, where, after how long, you shut down? Other than hours of service I mean. Also fuel stops as well. Im going off to training tomorrow but the brain wants to know lol.

Also do most drivers have a gps with truck routes, or does dispatch give you directions or do you just read a map?

Thanks in advance for the answers, Im new to the industry and trying to learn all i can.

Logan, I drive for Swift, so the GPS info is for Swift. The Qualcomm (or QC) has a truck GPS built in. The dispatcher sends the addresses to the machine. You can also put in your own. (A Walmart on the way for instance).. By poking around you can find other ways to get information.

As for stopping places, you choose, limited by the HOS clocks. A really neat app I use to find truck stops is called Trucker Path. But you can never get a complete list of truck friendly places.

As a company driver, you'll probably get fuel stops included in your GPS dispatch package. I made a mistake once & went to a non-assigned stop. The pump would not accept my company credit card!

Logan, it's a challenge as a new driver to figure out and understand where the best places are to shut down, and how to manage your time profitably so that you can find parking easily.

Your dispatch orders should have some routing suggestions with it, and your fuel stops will be indicated. Most of the large carriers have some sort of a truck GPS system built into their messaging system. You can always buy your own truck GPS when you get a little more flush with cash from your new job.

You will always be responsible for your own trip planning as far as staying on route, making your fuel stops, and managing to find parking so that you can get enough rest, all while doing your dead level best to deliver on time. A current Rand McNally Motor Carriers Atlas is a must have and an investment that will save you many times over. When I was a beginner I would take my routing instructions from my dispatcher and write them down on a note pad, then find my destination on the Atlas and work my way backwards through the route to the starting point. I'm not even sure I can explain why I did it backwards, but it always seemed easier for me to follow it that way and for some odd reason it would help me to get a picture in my mind as to how I needed to run the route. Who can understand how my mind works?

Today I seldom use a GPS except for maybe the final few miles to a new receiver that I'm not familiar with. After a few years out here on the road you will begin to know what the freight lanes are and how you need to run your loads. I still to this day will make me a few notes on a piece of paper, especially information about my fuel stops.

My trip planning in the beginning some times took me twenty or thirty minutes to get it all settled in my mind and written down on some paper that I could refer to on the road. You should write down as much information as you will need because that way you can easily refer to it while driving if you need to. You would have to stop your truck if you wanted to look at it on the qualcomm , and that could be just enough time wasted to mess you up on a critical load, plus you are not only wasting time but fuel as well. Every time you stop and then have to get started back up to highway speeds you are using more fuel than you would have used if you had just stayed up in that efficient RPM range you were cruising at.

Now days I can trip plan in my head and just throw it in gear and roll. I'll make some calculations as I'm driving as to where I want to sleep, and what time I want to shut down in the day, depending on the demands of the load I'm under. You'll soon get to know places all across the country that you will become familiar with, and you will have your favorite destinations where you like to shut down for the night that work to serve your purpose of getting that load delivered on time.

I use a rand mcnally 720. i put my stops in and it does the fastest route, now it does not always agree with my quallcom as that does shortest route.

i have driven 15 extra miles and saved 30 minutes because i skipped a section of back roads that were slower speeds. after a while you will get the hang of it, its not hard at all and you get faster with practice

Logan, I drive for Swift, so the GPS info is for Swift. The Qualcomm (or QC) has a truck GPS built in. The dispatcher sends the addresses to the machine. You can also put in your own. (A Walmart on the way for instance).. By poking around you can find other ways to get information.

As for stopping places, you choose, limited by the HOS clocks. A really neat app I use to find truck stops is called Trucker Path. But you can never get a complete list of truck friendly places.

As a company driver, you'll probably get fuel stops included in your GPS dispatch package. I made a mistake once & went to a non-assigned stop. The pump would not accept my company credit card!

Errol, I did the exact same thing in my early days drove for swift. But I have another story. Don't know why though, my comdata card can't be used, so I swiped my own credit card for fuel and DEF, for a day or two. After that, I told my DL what happened, so them informed payroll, a couple days later, my comdata card was ready to use

Logan, I drive for Swift, so the GPS info is for Swift. The Qualcomm (or QC) has a truck GPS built in. The dispatcher sends the addresses to the machine. You can also put in your own. (A Walmart on the way for instance).. By poking around you can find other ways to get information.

As for stopping places, you choose, limited by the HOS clocks. A really neat app I use to find truck stops is called Trucker Path. But you can never get a complete list of truck friendly places.

As a company driver, you'll probably get fuel stops included in your GPS dispatch package. I made a mistake once & went to a non-assigned stop. The pump would not accept my company credit card!

Errol, I did the exact same thing in my early days drove for swift. But I have another story. Don't know why though, my comdata card can't be used, so I swiped my own credit card for fuel and DEF, for a day or two. After that, I told my DL what happened, so them informed payroll, a couple days later, my comdata card was ready to use

When I say "Comdata card can't be used", it won't work even I was right at the dispatched fuel stop.

I'm a company driver and I have an electronic system that gives me routing ad authorized fuel stops. I view this as a suggestion and always use my atlas to figure my own actual best routing.

I go off route quite a bit and actually follow the quoted route from start to finish almost never. What the computer routing gives me is staying on road that start with an "I" and bypassing every sizable city. I find that when I do my own thing, I can do it in a much more practical way. I love getting paid for 1200 miles and doing it in 1070.

Now the authorized fuel stops are set in stone, but I can get new ones every day at midnight. I can manipulate this to what I want to do if I need to.

I've never heard anything from my company about going off route but I've also never added miles or been late to a delivery.

Thanks for the replies everyone, i just got settled in springfield for primes training so will see how it goes. Thanks for all the tips and suggestions i love this site reading here has helped me feel way better prepared to start my trucking career

Thanks for the replies everyone, i just got settled in springfield for primes training so will see how it goes. Thanks for all the tips and suggestions i love this site reading here has helped me feel way better prepared to start my trucking career

Get a map! Just in case the GPS goes down for any reason.

Thanks for the replies everyone, i just got settled in springfield for primes training so will see how it goes. Thanks for all the tips and suggestions i love this site reading here has helped me feel way better prepared to start my trucking career

Get a map! Just in case the GPS goes down for any reason.

Yep.... Here's something us "old-timers" (anyone over 40, LOL) are familiar with...