The Great Flip-Flop

Okay, I thought you might be interested in how I manage my time out here on the road so that I can do this job successfully.  It's probably a little bit of a boring subject, but since nobody reads this thing, I can simply amuse myself with what I choose to write about, and no one is bothered by it.  To be successful at this you must be able to "flip-flop" your nights and days back and forth throughout your work week to make everything come out right, and be as productive as you can.

Let me see if I can set this up so that it makes sense to a person who isn't accustomed to the rules and regulations that a truck driver has to work under.  We can drive for eleven hours a day, but we have to accomplish that eleven hours in a fourteen hour window.  Then we have to take a ten hour break before we can drive again.  That is just a small portion of the many rules we have to consider when out here trying to make a living, and serving our customers in a way that meets their needs.

I picked this load up on Saturday night in Delhi, Louisiana.  It is supposed to deliver in Farmington, Connecticut on Tuesday morning, and then it has an additional stop in Bristol, Connecticut immediately following the first stop.  I was not able to start driving until around 2100 hours (that is 9:00 P.M.) due to the fact that I was waiting for my ten hour break to come to it's close.  Since I just finished my ten hour break, I can now drive for a full driving shift of eleven hours.  So I drove through the night, and with fifteen minutes for a pre-trip inspection of my truck, and about fifteen minutes for a fuel stop in Meridian, Mississippi and a thirty minute break thrown in there at Fort Payne, Alabama I ended up my driving shift at around 9:00 a.m. and parked for some much needed rest at Dandridge, Tennessee.  (that thirty minute break thing is another regulation - we have to take a thirty minute break at some point in the first eight hours, but if you take it during the first four hours you will have to take an additional break before you can finish the eleven hours of driving)

Okay, so you can see that I worked all Saturday night and it is now around nine a.m. when I am starting my next ten hour break.  So, I can start driving again at 7:00 p.m., or 1900 hours as we truck drivers look at it - all our appointments with shippers and receivers are in military time for some reason unknown to me.  I assume it is to keep us marginally intelligent truck drivers from getting confused over all that a.m. and p.m. stuff.  So I started out this next driving shift with my fifteen minute pre-trip inspection of my truck (another one of those regulations) and then spent the night by driving through the remaining part of Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, and on into Pennsylvania.  I stopped in Fort Chiswell, Virginia for a fifteen minute fuel stop, and took my thirty minute break at a Wilco Hess truck stop in Toms Brook Virginia.  I managed to get myself to Scranton, Pennsylvania where I stopped at the Petro Truck Stop at around 6:45 this morning to start my next ten hour break.

Now, at this point I am approximately four hours from my final destination, maybe even a little less.  So what I will do is start my way over there tonight so that I end up arriving there at about 2100 hours or 9:00 p,m. tonight.  I will then start up another ten hour break while I spend the night in their parking lot - actually I will park my truck in the unloading area which is a covered portion extending off the back of their warehouse.  This eliminates the possibility of any other truck driver getting in there ahead of me and delaying me at this location - remember I have another stop to make after this one, and the slightest delay is going to make me late for the second stop.  This account that I am on is so strict on delivery times that you have got to do things like this to stay on top of the game.  My company gets charged some big fines for drivers being late, and we the drivers have already agreed in our employment contract that a service failure (being late is a service failure) is grounds for termination.  We are not allowed to be late.

If all this sounds extremely strict to you, well it is, but you have to realize that this is what we call a dedicated account, and because of that the company gets paid more for servicing this customers needs, and we the drivers are getting some of the top pay there is for what we do.  We are expected to conduct ourselves like professionals, or find something else to do.  Incidentally this customer has often times called my dispatcher and requested me as the driver they want delivering to them.  He once told me that I had really made a name for myself here and that it is unheard of for this customer to actually request a certain driver - they are known for constantly complaining about everything and being in general just an overly demanding customer.  Also, just so you know, if there are extenuating circumstances such as a bad accident on the highway or severe weather we can get our schedules re-set with a simple phone call.  But if you just stayed up too late at the truck stop watching John Wayne movies and couldn't get your tail back on the road, well you are in some big trouble on this account.

Now, if you've been able to keep up with the math that is woven throughout this wandering post you will realize that at this point I am able to "Flip-Flop" my schedule back to daytime hours once I am unloaded here.  You see they will start unloading me about six thirty in the morning and since I will be parking at the site around nine p.m. that means that ten hours later it will be seven a.m., and I can head on over to my next stop and "git er done."  I hope you enjoyed this little journey through some truck driver math, it's really just third grade stuff, but at times it seems quite magical to my happy little dispatcher who is so pleased that I can do this stuff.  Just last week he said again to me that he wished he could put a class together so that I could teach some of the other drivers how I do this stuff.  The other benefit to getting myself back onto the daylight hours at this point in this journey is that when I am unloaded at my second and final stop, I will then need to go to pick up my next load, my back haul load that helps pay the bills for me to return to the plant in Delhi, Louisiana.  Most of the shippers and receivers are loading and unloading in the daylight hours, so if when I am ready for a load I need to be on the daytime schedule so that I can get in and out of those places efficiently.

Here's a shot of my truck with this current load on it.  Underneath those tarps is 43,000 pounds of aluminum extrusions.  I am parked high atop a mountain ridge near Scranton, Pennsylvania at the Petro Truck Stop there.  This is where I-81 running north through Pennsylvania intersects with I-84 which will take me east over into upstate New York on my way over into Connecticut.

This is exactly where I wanted to get to today so that everything would work out right with my timing of my schedule as I just laid it out for you.  The other benefit to running this particular load at night like this is that you avoid all the terrible traffic that is so prevalent during the daytime hours up here in the Northeastern parts of the country.  My friend Paul Anderson does not like this run at all - he prefers not to drive at night, and to do this one right you just about have to.  Not too long ago he did it as a favor to our dispatcher because I was unavailable (at home) and the dispatcher told me that Paul told him next time you ask me to do that run, slap me real hard so that I will remember how much I do not want to do it again.