Load pre-plans and final plans

[trux]

I frequently get this type of load pre-plan action:

"Pick up live load in xyz city at 15:00 Tuesday, early OK, deliver in abc city 760 miles away from shipper 06:00 on Thursday"

So far it doesn't look bad. The problem is it's already 14:00 on Tuesday and the shipper is 95 miles away. So I really can't get there till about 16:00. A probable 2 hours to load gets me out of there at 18:00.
Once that has been agreed to I get the final plan:

"Pick up live load in xyz city at 15:45 Tuesday, deliver in abc city 795 miles away from shipper 06:00 on Thursday"

So my HOS constraints are leaving me 15 hours to drive 890 miles. I've got to average 59.3 mph to pull it off. BTW, the trucks are governed at 65.

Today they tried to give me a 1200 mile run where I would have had to average 63 mph to get it there in their time frame. The run included at least 130 miles of 55 mph speed limit highways.

Am I missing something here? Is this normal? How am I supposed to be reacting to these kinds of load plans?

TIA

[flood]

i see no big deal with doing it.. how much driving time do you have after you pu..? 1hr - 8hr's..?

just pu the load run for 1hr (50-60 miles) and stop. take your 10hr break (that should be about 1900 right) start driving at 0500 till 1700 (thats 11hr driving pre-trip, fuel, and two 15min breaks) you should have run around 625miles (or more) now so at 1700 (thats wed) take your 10hr break, you can start driving at 0300 that gives you 2.75hrs to drive the rest (what maybe 120 miles).

btw thats 14.75hr's at 53.89mph = 795miles

[Uturn2001]

Preplans are just that. Pre-plans. They are given for two reasons. One to give you an idea of what is next, and secondly to make sure you can do it as dispatched.

Anytime you get a preplan or dispatch that you feel you can not do or would be cutting it too close send your FM a message saying that you can not do the run as dispatched, let him/her know why, and when you can do/complete the run.

Also if you are enroute and find that you are not going to be able to make it on time, let your FM know ASAP what your new ETA is going to be.

[Rawlco]

I can routinely put out 700 miles in twelve hours, with a 15 minute pretrip, 15 minutes for fuel, and two "15" minute breaks (dead run from the truck to the restroom and back, 8 to 10 actual minutes) Keep your foot on the floor and the left door closed.

Yes this is a 65 mph truck with a full load in minor hills even. If you are getting into mountains then all bets are off.

As for 55 mph states: I regularly seem to run I70 between the Indiana/Ohio line and Breezewood PA (fuel stop) Given the PA miles at 65 mph and the Ohio miles at 55mph it should take a certain number of hours. I can do it in exactly that many hours (I forget the number) That includes the hills in PA. My average is 62 mph for that leg. Look at the 55 mph states as a chance to catch up to your logbook if you have been slowed down by something. :wink:



Okay, down to your exact problem.

"Pick up live load in xyz city at 15:00 Tuesday, early OK, deliver in abc city 760 miles away from shipper 06:00 on Thursday"

So far it doesn't look bad. The problem is it's already 14:00 on Tuesday and the shipper is 95 miles away. So I really can't get there till about 16:00. A probable 2 hours to load gets me out of there at 18:00.
Once that has been agreed to I get the final plan:

Okay, with that preplan I agree with your loading times. What will you have for driving time left at 18:00? I will assume 2 hours.

So two hours will knock off 100 to 120 miles from that "760" making that an easily doable 650 miles in 11 driving hours tomorrow. If you sleep at the consignee you will be all set.

So then you get the actual load info:

"Pick up live load in xyz city at 15:45 Tuesday, deliver in abc city 795 miles away from shipper 06:00 on Thursday"

And you have 30 more miles than you planned on, is that your issue? 680 miles instead of 650 isn't too much of a problem barring 55 mph states. I would have no problem doing that load in any way, even with a long delay at loading. You could arrive to load and take your ten hour break while loading, then be ready to pound out 700 miles between 2 am and 4 pm. You will have about 130 left probably, so head out 3 to 3.5 hours before your appointment Thursday.

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Today they tried to give me a 1200 mile run where I would have had to average 63 mph to get it there in their time frame. The run included at least 130 miles of 55 mph speed limit highways.

130 miles at 55 mph instead of 65 adds twenty minutes to your drive line.
1200 miles at 63 mph is 19 hours. Do I assume that you only had 29 exact hours to get it there? If so that should have been a team run. I believe that the planners when setting up the load expected it to be picked up at 8am this morning, and you to get 600 miles today, 600 miles tomorrow, and deliver at 6am the following morning, which makes perfect sense from a planners point of view. If they didn't get it loaded until 4 pm and the driver only had 3 or 4 driving hours avilable that day then it will be very tight. I am having a hard time visualizing the other factors along with this load, perhaps because it is 3am. If I think a delivery is going to be close I let my FM know immediately. "I can make this if I don't get delayed in chicago, or by weather. If I do it could be late " is the way I approach it. I have never had a problem. If it is a important delivery they will team it, or relay it, but most freight isn't that time sensitive.

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Getting miles in is a mindset. On a long run I plan things down to the minute on my first ten hour break. I write on my pad what my time frame is for driving the next day. It will look like this:
0800-0815 pretrip
0815-0945, drive 92 miles
0945-1000, fuel abc city pilot.
1000-1200 drive 123 miles
1200-1330 unload bcd city.
So now that I have my plan I make sure I stick to it. At seven minutes before 8 am I am out there starting my pretrip. My logbook is already to go and I only need to draw one line when I am ready to go. At 8:10 I am pulling the truck out of it's parking space. I want to be on a road no later than 08:12. At 8:15 I want to see that speedometer reading 65 mph. With 92 miles to go to get fuel in 1.5 hours that is 60 mph. I should be early enough to be ready to swipe my fuel card at 0945. Since I fuel at pilots mostly I have the trade off of fast fuel pumps for crowded truckstops. If all goes well I will be again reaching 65 mph at 10:00. Another 123 miles at 60 mph will get me to the consignee. With good luck I should get there in 1 hour and 53 minutes from when I got back on the road.

This is how I plan my day. With this comprehensive a plan I can see where I lose time. I have found that in a 65 mph truck that rolling to a stop for whatever reason costs seven minutes, without getting out of the truck. Stopping and getting out of the truck costs 15 minutes. Stopping at a truckstop to drop off a trippack and grab some food to go costs 30 minutes plus heartburn. If you aren't logging those breaks because "it's only a few minutes' then you are losing miles in a hurry. I also figure 60mph minimum average, and every minute wasted is another mile lost.

Now don't get me wrong, sometimes a 60mph average isn't possible, and there is traffic, and weather, and other delays. I plan to have enough time for those as well, but I always try to beat the worst case scanario by several hours. If you are delayed more than a couple hours somewhere then you should not have a chargeable eta change.

[coastie]

Simple, your so many miles away, Tell Dispatch on the way and ETA to pick up.

795 miles to the Receiver and you have Tuesday , Wednesday and Deliver on Thrusday, a Piece of Cake. Many times I had gotten dispatched at 5PM in Alto, Ga, Go to Atlanta load and be in NJ by 8AM the next morning, 800 miles away.. After emptied, reloaded and back in Atlanta the next morning at 8AM.

Then I started to tell Dispatch, No can do.. I started to get better runs...

[trux]

Thanks for the input, sorry it took so long to get back.

I guess I misstated my complaint, the time frame for delivery isn't usually a problem, but the constant pickup time presented as at least an hour before I can possibly get there is an irritation.

I've come to two conclusions, one, I've got to have the same conversation each time about how I'm unable to drive 90 miles in one hour. And, two, I've decided both my dispatcher and planner are both amateurs.

Neither one makes any attempt to match expectations to my location or the actual time. Yesterday, 06/08/07, the pre-plan stated to pickup on 06/07/07 60 miles away and deliver at 15:00 on 06/08/07 229 miles away.

It was already 12:00.

I just responded that, sorry I can't pick up yesterday and I can't drive 289 miles and do two drop and hooks in 3 hours.

Another company driver explained that if I accept a pickup/delivery time that I can't make, if the pickup/delivery location delays me I won't be elligible for detention pay as I was late. He recommended to throw the ball back in the dispatcher's court and make them give me a reasonable time frame.

So I'm just going to accept that my dispatcher and planner are divorced from reality and on each plan I'm going to have to remind them of what is actually possible.

[Uturn2001]

One thing you have to realize is that load was probably set up by a customer service agent (aka sales) in the department. The load was more than likely set up several days, or even a couple of weeks ahead of time.

All too often you have two load instructions. The "real" ones that you will not see and the "dispatched" ones that you get via the QC.

The real ones will have all the special instructions such as "Can pickup anytime between 07/01 and 07/04 by 22:00. Deliver 07/05 at 09:00.

The "dispatched ones" were entered into the system as Pickup 07/04 at 14:00, deliver on 07/05 at 9 am.

It would make things so much easier on all concerned if they would put in the system, P/U 07/04 00:01-22:00, Deliver 07/05 09:00. The reason they do not though is because of the handful of drivers who will see this and pizz away the time and manage to be late even though the had the HOS available to make it in plenty of time.

Add to that the lazy dispatcher(s) or load planners who do not look at a load assignment before sending it and adjust or send additional info and you end up with a lot of frustration for the driver.

As mentioned before, when you get load assignments like this, simply send in an realistic ETA for what ever end of the load you are going to have a problem dealing with.

[BigWheels]

One thing you have to realize is that load was probably set up by a customer service agent (aka sales) in the department. The load was more than likely set up several days, or even a couple of weeks ahead of time.

All too often you have two load instructions. The "real" ones that you will not see and the "dispatched" ones that you get via the QC.

The real ones will have all the special instructions such as "Can pickup anytime between 07/01 and 07/04 by 22:00. Deliver 07/05 at 09:00.

The "dispatched ones" were entered into the system as Pickup 07/04 at 14:00, deliver on 07/05 at 9 am.

It would make things so much easier on all concerned if they would put in the system, P/U 07/04 00:01-22:00, Deliver 07/05 09:00. The reason they do not though is because of the handful of drivers who will see this and pizz away the time and manage to be late even though the had the HOS available to make it in plenty of time.

Add to that the lazy dispatcher(s) or load planners who do not look at a load assignment before sending it and adjust or send additional info and you end up with a lot of frustration for the driver.

As mentioned before, when you get load assignments like this, simply send in an realistic ETA for what ever end of the load you are going to have a problem dealing with.

Bingo -- well said Uturn! 8)

Trux--don't get frustrated (easier said than done!). Simply tell your dispatcher what you can do...put the ball (politely!) back into their court!

[trux]

Uturn, thanks, your description of "real" versus "dispatched" plans is just about what I suspected. With that in mind I'll just plan on dealing with it each and every time.

BigWheels, yes "politely" is important. And it's the main reason I communicate as little as possible at the end of my day when I'm tired. That's when my sarcasm knows no bounds.

For instance, this morning after a 15 hour wait for the weekend crew to find me what they claim is nonexistent freight, and when they finally get me a pre-plan and the pickup time is....... YESTERDAY??

Even with a well rested mind I could barely resist the obvious "this freight's been waiting at least one day" and/ or accusing their mothers of repeatedly dropping them on their heads. :shock:

Instead, I just QC'd "I'm going to be unable to be on time for this pickup yesterday. I'm also unable to drive 291 miles and do a drop and hook in and hour and a half.
Please advise"

Which is actually sarcastic as h***, but it was subtle and had a decent amount of good natured humor mixed in. And it was polite. So after staring at it and considering it for 10 minutes I decided to go with it.

Then they gave me the "real" numbers: "pickup anytime, let us know your expected ETA." And off I went.

[BigWheels]

Yeah...I've often wondered what exactly the weekend dispatch crew does....

[uglymutt]

depends alot on the consignee, most have a 4 hour window for delivery and some are first come first serve, i have had a delivery time at 14:00 and get there at noon and unload, same as shipper show up a day early or a day late, time does not mean much, my pretrips say pickup yesterday and delivery tommorow and i still make it ontime most of the time, just got to plan your trips and call them to confirm your time if you want or tell them your eta ..... i never leave it up to the dispatcher to fix anything, they tend to make it worse anyway

[trux]

The dispatch I got last Sunday 06/10/07 at 10:20 AM is the winner so far.

"Pickup 06/08/07 (forget what time) deliver 06/10/07 at 11 AM, 450 miles away."

As I wasn't done with a previous delivery, and it was about 120 miles to the pickup, I said I could deliver at 17:00 on Monday. The dispatcher QC'd me 3 times saying she was sure I could make it by 11. I finally figured out she hadn't read it very carefully and told her what it said.

That got me a long silence out of the QC.