When a week started to go like that I would take my ten hour break at the shipper after I was loaded and hit the road fresh about 2am. That way I would arrive at the consignee after the morning rush and still get an early afternoon load appointment. That didn't always work out, but it is an option for running legalish.

 

yes but when you arrived that day you had burned 8 hours of driving and you are still in the same boat with 3 hours to drive and you will get a load that will be loaded after your 14 hour rule which makes you illegal

 

The 14 hour rule does not prevent you from working on line 4 getting loaded, it only prevents you from DRIVING. Once you are loaded you take the ten hour break. I also kept my Fleet Manager informed on how many miles I would have available to bounce empty. I would phrase my message to my FM like this "With my hours I will have 150 miles available to bounce empty, and can do 500 loaded miles by ten am tomorrow" This streamlined my FM's job and I was covered if they tried to give me a load that didn't work. I let them know what was possible and they gave me a load to match it. Of course that was with TMC.

 

o no you cannot load or do ANY WORK after 14 hours (and why would they have a seperate driving rule of 11 hours if that were true)I went rounds with this and night dispatch till he called safty and they told him do not let him load This is one law alotta people get mixed up on

 

I think you need to re-read that rule. You can preform ANY work for ANY amount of time EXCEPT driving after the 14 hour work day rule. After which you MUST do your 10 hour break before you can drive again. This maybe why you are having a problem making any money.

 

Hey ridgerunner your RIGHT!!! MY BAD I never went and looked the law up It was the company telling me that and I guess I screwed up believing it blind without investigating you know it was the company that told me that and refused me to load I wanted to!! as far as making money I was at my consignee every morning and money wasnt the issue it was the fact that you had to work alotta hours to make so little im not downing anybody who does this in fact more power to you

 

Ridgerunner, that is the way i understood it as well, during a class on log books it was explained to me that way, but that's been a while ago so i might have my facts wrong. But as far as the original post is concerned, that's just the facts of driving, i've been driving 5 years now, and by no means does that make me a veteran of this trade, but i can honestly say now after 5 years i've finally learned how to keep an open mind on this whole driving deal. I'm a local driver, but did do my fair share of OTR driving, and my current situation keeps me in a truck anywhere from 12 to 15 hours a day, not my dream job by any means, and i definately don't agree with everything that goes on surrounding the job, but at the end of the week it pays the bills, and puts money in the bank. I might be one of a hundred drivers who can put up with this job, but i don't feel it my duty to convey my sore feelings about the job, or the things i don't agree with just to "warn" other drivers of what to expect. Your story is just like a million others, and there's going to be a hundred other guys, no matter what you or I tell them, who dive in head first to this OTR deal. I made the mistake when i was 21, and i'm sure a lot of others have done the same. I don't feel negative posts like this do much of anything to make an impact on prospective drivers, and no offense it just seems typical of new drivers. I did it when i didn't agree with the way things were, and i've bad mouthed company's in the past, but after all this time i realize it will do no good, just take it as it is and move on, come out the better person when it is all said and done, and take it as one of life's many experiences.

 

Yes you can do non driving related work after your 14 hrs but you still need 10 hrs off before driving again and all hours worked go against your 70 so you still have to watch it. Another little known rule for local drivers is, if you start and end your day at the same location every day you're allowed to drive up to your 16th hour once every 34 hr reset, as long as your driving time is still at or under 11 hrs.

 

[quote="millersod215"]
Your story is just like a million others, and there's going to be a hundred other guys, no matter what you or I tell them, who dive in head first to this OTR deal.

yeah thats true the human being is the most plentiful and easily obtained commodity. so it dosnt matter how they are used and discarded. The big companies know this and its just how it is I was never told when I took this job I would have tons of non productive non paying time I think that if I would have read my story when I got into it I would have tried something else so maybe its a folly but you can always try plus I love to piss off gung-ho dumb asses and company licks

 

yeah, that is fun...lol