Monday, October 12, 2015

Obeying The Rules, and Good Time Management

Time management is critical to this job.  It's crazy how many folks who are out here don't really even understand the rules and regulations that we are governed by.  My dispatcher has asked me several times if I would teach a class to the other drivers on our fleet so that they could learn to work their clock the way I do.  I'm flattered, but to be honest with you it's third grade math stuff.  The hardest part about it all is the discipline it takes to make yourself sleep when you need to, so that you can drive when you have to.  I've done this run up into Connecticut so many times that I have it down - my dispatcher says I have it "dialed in."  I'm not exactly sure what that means, but he sure is happy about it!  It basically takes 24 hours of driving time to get there from Delhi.  I drove all night last night (8 hours) to get myself to Rising Fawn, GA where I am now taking a ten hour break before I start driving again.

We are allowed to drive 11 hours per day, but it has to be done within a 14 hour window.  Once that 14 hour window has passed you can still work, or be on duty doing things like tarping a load or getting your truck unloaded, etc., but you can no longer drive.  I will often times make this jaunt up into the Northeast by running two straight days at ten hours a day of driving, and then finish the trip with four hours of driving.  That allows me time to get unloaded (usually a couple of hours) and then get myself back down to Cressona, PA where I will pick up my back haul load.  Of course all this is determined by what time of the day you can get away from Delhi, because that will determine what time you arrive in the Northeast.  You also have to calculate crossing the time lines in the various parts of the country.  Your time of driving is always calculated off of the time zone of your home terminal location for the record keeping, but you have got to make sure you get to your destination based on their time zone.

On this particular run I couldn't leave when I wanted to because I was forced by the rules to take a 34 hour break before I could start driving again.  That meant I could not leave until somewhere around nine o'clock at night.  If I ran the load like I usually do that would put me there at the wrong time of the day to get unloaded.  So, I had to come up with a different way to do it.  This time I am running up there by driving eight hours per day for three days with ten hour breaks in between each driving period.  That puts me there Tuesday night with just enough time to get my ten hour break in so that I can start working again first thing Wednesday morning.  That way I can make all three of my deliveries in Connecticut and hopefully still have enough time to get myself up to Amesbury, Massachusetts for a ten hour break before my Thursday morning delivery there.  By doing it that way, I will have enough driving time to get myself back to Cressona, PA for my back haul.  We have to think about this stuff sometimes three or four days in advance so that it will all work out efficiently.

That fourteen hour window is not the only restrictive barrier we face.  We also have a rule that states we can't drive if we exceed 70 hours of on duty hours during an eight day period.  That is what I was up against - I had already worked seventy hours in about six days, so I could not continue driving even though they had a load ready for me to take off with on Saturday.  I had to wait out the 34 hour break, which resets that seventy hour clock to zero.  In days past, when truck drivers kept a paper log book, they lied all the time about their hours, and it was a constant struggle for the D.O.T. officers to try and decipher the logs and figure out ways to prove the truck driver was cheating the rules.  Now everything is kept up with electronically - if that truck is rolling it is being recorded on your "electronic logs."  Not that I would want to, but it is no longer a viable option to do "creative writing" of your log records.

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