I know this probably sounds ridiculous coming from someone who's been in the industry for three years but I still have significant trouble with trip planning, productivity and efficiency.

A little background. My training three years ago didn't include anything in depth on trip planning or maximizing productivity and efficiency. The school only gave me a basic formula (miles/50+10%+10 hrs for each DOT break). My trainer wasn't interesting in actually training me but was hell bent on cranking out the miles. When he was in the driver's seat I was to be in the bunk, when I was in the driver's seat he was in the bunk not to be disturbed except for an emergency. The only things he ever spent any time with me on was smoothing out my shifting and the basic backing maneuvers (on resets only) When switching shifts I would ask questions and always got "We'll talk about it later". Later never came. I was denied multiple requests to change trainers. Everything I know about truck driving came either from a book, manual or my own trial and error experiences and what little I've overheard from truckers at customers, terminals and truck stops. Once out of training, every question I ask to anyone in the trucking business seems to be met with the attitude that I'm an idiot for not already knowing what I'm asking about. No one will ever actually answer my questions.

It's made for a very rocky past three years. I barely make ends meet money-wise. I average 1800-2200 miles per week. I've tried every way I can figure out on my own to reach my goal of (and I know the freight is not always there) a 3,000 mile per week minimum and preferred 3,500 miles per week. But I'm stuck and I very much need help to get my game stepped up.

As far as my trip planning goes, in addition to it taking way too long to plan the trip, I also have difficulties with being able to run out my full 11. I'm always afraid of going over if for some reason I can't make it to a planned place to stop or if I can't park there once I get there and have to drive an hour or two to get to the next parking place. I have no clue how to find the (lesser known) parking places ahead of time. The companies I have worked for forbid parking on exit ramps so that option is out. I'm always afraid to go straight to the customer when I can't call them for fear of not having a place to park if I can't park on their property. I also have trouble planning multiple preplans at once to know if I can accept and do them all successfully. I also have trouble doing the math quickly. I could go on and on, but the bottom line is that I have pretty much every problem there is when it comes to planning, productivity and efficiency.

I will state for the record though, that I am bound and determined to make this career work and my goal is to one day (however many years or decades into the future it is) join the ranks of the best truckers out there. But I have no problem admitting that I need all the help in the world getting there. So is there anyone out there willing to take me under their wing and teach me the skills I need?

Do you run all 48, or regional? This makes a world of difference, as I can plan down to a few minutes on runs within 200-300 miles of where I haul out of. When you DO plan trips, where do your errors tend to be? How does your plan stack up, compared to what actually happens? How many different scenarios do you plan?
At the beginning of each day, I factor in my driving distance (and city vs. highway, rural interstate vs. metroplex, hills vs. flats, etc.), stop count, case count at each stop (since I unload my freight at the stores), and backhaul (if any) and can determine where I'd like to make it to at the end of the day, and where I will make it to if something goes wrong. This process is rather quick for me, but I only run four or five states with any frequency, and four or five more on rare occasions.
By the way, what company did you train with?

Thanks for your reply VPIDarkAngel. I've been mostly Western 11 for my three years. But I was full 48 as a team for a couple of months and I did a dedicated account out west for a short while. I've been running mid-west regional for the past couple of months and have plans to move back out west again. I am considering running full 48 (and possibly Canada) solo for a while to see how I like that.

My errors tend to be in where I will be when. A big part of that is uncertainty about having a place to park where I plan to stop or at the customer if I plan to go straight there and will be out of hours when I get there. My plans often used to get busted by unexpected delays such as traffic, mountains, weather, etc. It seemed when I planned for higher mph I ran into every delay out there and when I planned a "cushion" into my route to account for unexpected delays it wasn't needed. Now I just automatically build in the cushion to avoid service failures. I always only plan one scenario because there is never enough time to plan other ones. I get a preplan and have to be rolling within 10 to 20 minutes at least 80% of the time. I will say that I'm a slow reader, especially when it comes to tallying mileages on an atlas. I tend to take the mileages on my Qualcomm and average them with what my gps says and then use the formula from the school (mileage\50+10%+breaks). I also have to write everything down on paper. I can't hold anything in my head for very long before something makes it fall out. So a lot of my time trip planning is spend writing down the route, directions, etc.

The vast majority of my freight is no touch, so I very rarely do any counting and never have any backhaul. My loads are either drop and hook or live on one or both ends. But that leads me to another hangup I have which is I never know how long a customer is going to take to offload me. That's one of my biggest stumbling blocks when it comes to determining if I can accept back to back to back preplans. The company wants an answer as soon as they send me the preplans so I can't wait to see how long my consignee is going to take. Most of the time it's ok, but there have been a few times where the consignee took way too long and screwed up my subsequent appointments and I caught the hell for it. It's worse when I'm running low on hours and if eveything goes right I can just barely do it, but if one thing goes wrong I'm screwed. Then I run into a scenario of, "You've got the hours to do it, why do you say you can't?" and then after agreeing to take the load and something going wrong, "Why did you accept a preplan you knew you couldn't do?!" Sometimes I feel like no matter what I do there's somebody waiting to club me over the head. I think I'm going to change my handle to "Catch-22".

As you've probably already guessed by now, I trained with Swift Transportation. Cringe. I'm with a much better and much smaller company now.

Do you have a Truck Stop Guide? If not get one! While your at it also pick up a book called "the Next Exit" The TS guide list the TS and what they are and things like scale/showers ect, the next exit lists Wally worlds , fuel stops, ect mostly for RVs but it come's in handy for big trucks too.
When I was OTR I would plan my day at 50-55 mph and find 3 places about 30-50 miles apart that I could stop at. If I was running behind or just tired I stopped at the first, if I was makeing good time then I kept going to the third (or wherever). That seemed to take some of the stress out of the day cause I had a plan (not much of one but it worked).
For the trip plan/pre plan, you know how many hours you have avilable for the next couple days right? You know you can turn 500+ miles aday, so when a preplan comes across for 750 mi + 50 mi deadhead you know its going to take a day an a half to two days. Just jump on it THEN plan the trip , as you get close to the shipper and then the con. Call them and ask if you can p/u or del. early.
Make sure you send your mt call ASAP and keep your hours up to date so you know exactly what you have to work with.
Other than that keep the door closed and the wheels turning, learn when to shut down an hour or so early to beat traffic and then leave early next day. Don't just sit and wait for anyone! If you can't del early call your co and see if you can T call the load.

Yeah, what he said.
Learning which cities have traffic problems (and when they happen) and which ones that don't can take a while. It always amazes me when I'm heading south on I-95 away from Washington, DC on a Friday after noon (Yes, from noon until about 2200) and the traffic is bumper-to-bumper and somebody on the CB says "Hey, what's up with this traffic?" Someone else, who sometimes happens to be me, responds with "Typical DC traffic... Oh, and it's Friday, too."
It always helps to call customers to find out the parking scenario beforehand. Also, if you can see the load, take note of that. Is it palletized? Slipped (like paper towels, toilet paper, etc.)? Flood loaded? Palletized and slipped freight takes a LOT less time to load/unload than floor-loaded stuff. If they'll take you early, then take advantage of it.
I don't know how accurate your GPS's ETA feature is, but try writing that down before you start driving (and add necessary time for fuel, 10hr. breaks, and visits to the roadside outhouse) and then compare it to your actual arrival time and see how well it stacks up. I use this feature a LOT when I'm going to unfamiliar places (even though that doesn't happen much).