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.
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"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"
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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:
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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:
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"Pick up live load in xyz city at 15:45 Tuesday, deliver in abc city 795 miles away from shipper 06:00 on Thursday"
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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.
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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. :lol: 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.
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Nothing is foolproof to a talented fool.
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The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.
-- J R R Tolkien
Load pre-plans and final plans
