If you know your clock, and the other rules, you'll never get swapped out unless you want to.
Not necessarily. If they want it swapped to meet the delivery time, it will get swapped. Unless they screw it up and want you to take a 5 hour break
and then swap it. The two are mutually exclusive and should be covered in dispatch school. If you take a 5 hour break, there is no need to swap. If you swap, then there is no need for a 5 hour break. The whole reason for swapping is to avoid a 5 hour delay due to the safety break.
A couple weeks ago I accepted a 1037 mile load that I knew was going to swap. There was a
logical swap point, a city with an ABF terminal, that would give me about 575 loaded miles. It was 118 miles to the shipper, mostly 2 lane that took me 2.25 hours. It took 30 minutes to get loaded.
When I left the shipper I had burned 2.75 hours on my 16 hour clock and safety sent me the obligatory QC message stating I must take a 5 hour break no later than 07:00. About 5 hours out from the
logical swap point, and having not heard from dispatch, I inquired via the QC: "is this load swapping?" A few minutes later I got a reply from dispatch: "NO." Cool! The delivery time on the load offer must not be the real delivery time.
I send another QC message inquiring what the real delivery time is. Dispatch replies that it is 16:00, the original time on the load offer. I inform them that I won't be making that delivery time because I have to take a 5 hour break. Dispatch tells me they will work on a swap point.
Several hours later I am 33 miles beyond the
logical swap point . I haven't heard anymore about a swap. I'm tired so I take my 5 hour break and inform dispatch of that. 3 hours into my break I get a QC receipt for the load showing 575 miles. This is the mileage from the shipper to the
logical swap point. Only problem is I am now 33 miles beyond the
logical swap point. I call dispatch and tell them this. The dispatcher I was dealing has gone home or where ever it is he goes after work. Probably back to a halfway house in Cleveland. I tell the new dude that I need to be paid for 66 loaded miles to go back to the
logical swap point and ask what the swap time is. He tells me whenever my 5 hour break ends to go to the swap.
I ask him if that makes any sense to him? He doesn't get it either. Him and the night dispatcher must be slip-seating the same bed at the half-way house in Cleveland. Where do they get these people?
I end up getting to the consignee several hours late and of course they are closed. I call dispatch and talk to someone who knows what's going on. He said he expected them to be closed and within 5 minutes authorized me to leave the consignee, collect detention time and set up a 07:00 delivery time. I went 3 miles down the road to a Wally World and collected a $135 while I slept.
