Life On The Road

[driverdog]

Being new to all this, I have a quick question. Is it realistic to be an expeditor, out on the road for several weeks at a time, and be able to get to a gym regularly. I have a CDL w/ hazmat, I would be looking to drive a D (straight) truck (for an owner operator). Is it reralistic to think I could get to a gym 3-5 x a week? I belong to a couple gyms plus most gyms will let you use the gym for a small daily fee if you are not from the area. I guess my question though is: is it realistic to think in my down time this is do-able? I posed this question once b4 a while a go b4 I went and got my cdl license and it seemed that everyone said it is realistic and possible.

I put an add in the classified for driver available and the couple of responses that I received seem to indicate that it is not possible or realistic. Obviously I wouldnt be looking to deadhead tons of miles, but i'm sure chances are good on being not too far from a gym. Or am I not being realistic?

 

[Rollinout2]

If you run your equip, you can run all the extra miles(burning fuel=money) u want to get to a gym. If you drive for a fleet owner, take up running. That can be done out of a truck stop.

If you are that much of a work out buff, work locally. Chicago is a good market for air freight and p&d work.

 

[ATeam]

You can answer your own question by picking a few cities of various sizes at random, pretending you are delivering a load to each of them, and then using Google Maps to locate your gym brand(s) of choice to see how many they are and where they are located. For starters, use the airport in a city as your pretend delivery location, or a truck stop near the city, as you would likely go there for fuel anyway. That will give you an idea of the deadheading regular gym use might involve.

Scheduling is another issue. Free time for the gym will vary with the amount of freight your carrier has available.

 

[driverdog]

Thanks for your advice. I'm going to do that random cities expriement, thats a good idea. It would be a deal killer if I cant get to a gym regularly, in which I would just stay locally. Money would be about the same it seems. Though I would prefer the open road of expediting, I wouldn't be miserable staying local. I am looking into options like carrying weights and workout equipment on board as well.

How much extra weight poundage would be ok to carry on board If I were to do that after you factor in 180pnd driver, tv, microwave, refrigerator, etc.... the usual creature comforts and driver supplies?

 

[ATeam]

Carrying extra personal gear in a D-unit is not likely to cause a weight problem, unless you are carrying thousands of extra pounds of the stuff.

To get more specific, start with the payload requirements of the carrier you are (or will be) with and the truck you are (or will be) driving. For example, a D truck leased to FedEx Custom Critical must be able to legally scale with 13,000 lbs of freight on board. A given truck will have a GVWR (gross vehicle weight) assigned to it which can be found on the label inside the driver's door. This number varies among trucks and is determined by how the truck is configured when built and subsequently modified, if it is modified (as with the installation of a lift axle).

Start with the GVWR number. Subtract the actual weight of the truck, with all fuel and water tanks full (known as the curb weight). Subtract the weight of the personal gear you plan to carry. Subtract 13,000 lbs (or other number if your carrier of choice has a different payload requirement for a D truck). If your result is greater than zero, you have a truck that legally meets your carrier's payload requiremements.

Note also that the weight must be distributed among axles in a certain way. With the majority of D-units, you want to keep the front axle of a fully loaded truck under 12,000 lbs (because that is how they tend to be spec'ed from the factory). This means it might be best to carry your weight-lifting equipment in the back of the truck and not in the sleeper. Doing so moves the weight off the front axle and onto the rear(s).

Personal gear stored in the truck box has been known to cause problems in some cases. For example, a shipper that hires an exclusive use truck for his or her freight might wonder why there is also a motorcyle or a couple of bicycles in the truck.

We carry a lot of freight handling equipment in the truck, which is easily explained if a shipper asks. We also carry personal gear back there but keep it secured in black shipping cases where it will not raise questions or interfere with the shipper's freight. That approach has worked like a charm. Never once has a question been raised. You can see those black boxes in the attached photo.

I would think that a box or crate designed to carry your weight lifting gear could be easily purchased or made, and carried with no problem.

 

[british380]

A Team that looks like a nice set-up you have in the back of your truck. Being a newbie I know most of the expediting companies say 99.5% no touch freight but from the looks of the supplies in your truck it looks like you do a lot of moving freight? How much do you really touch freight?

 

[driverdog]

Hey thanks ATeam. Actually a set up like that would be perfect! I was planning on doing my workouts in the back (or outside on good days anyway). Thanks Ateam for at least giving me hope and possibility. I was looking forward to doing expediting but was ready to write it off thinking it just wasnt legistically possible to combine weight lifting w/ expediting. I was just going to transfer everything from the sleeper to the back or outside evertime I worked out. This would be easier. Spacewise it would take up just about the same amount of space as your gear does. poundage wise including all workout eqioment + weights would be between 400-500 pnds at the very max. Thanks again.

 

[TeamCaffee]

With FedEx Custom Critical on how much you touch freight or fingerprint the freight depends on what division you are in. We are an Express truck but we have a lift gate and we get several loads a month that are lift gate and/or inside delivery loads. We choice to add our lift gate because of the income potential. If a customer needs any extra services they are charged for that and that income is also passed on to the truck. We enjoy the lift gate loads, the challenge this can present, the exercise we get doing this, and the extra pay we receive. We purchased a large platform lift gate with several safety features. and this a great decision for us.

 

[ATeam]

A Team that looks like a nice set-up you have in the back of your truck. Being a newbie I know most of the expediting companies say 99.5% no touch freight but from the looks of the supplies in your truck it looks like you do a lot of moving freight? How much do you really touch freight?

As a FedEx Custom Critical White Glove Services(r) team, we physically handle (fingerprint) many of our loads. Just this evening, for example, we picked up three crates brought to us out of a building onto a sidewalk, downtown in a major city. I used our liftgate and pallet jack to get them on the truck.

Other times, we may be presented with freight that requires a fair amount of special handling and securement before we move it down the load. An example would be an operating table being moved from one hospital operating room to another. We've walked into the operating room to get the table that is sitting there totally unpacked. We wheeled it out of the building, liftgated it into the truck, pad-wrapped it and secured it there and transported it to the hospital where this specialized piece would next be used.

Crated or uncrated, prepared for shipment or not; by our own choice, we load the truck ourselves and secure the freight every time. That is because we like to keep forklifts out of the truck. They have been known to do serious damage.

Handling every load is not a big deal in a CR-unit. CR loads tend to be small enough that loading/unloading them takes little effort. If we were driving a D or E truck, we might be more open to letting the shipper load and unload the freight.

 

[british380]

Thanks A Team....that was the information I was looking for

 

[vipra]

When you live on the road gyms are hard to find and hard to get to. I doubt you'll get to a gym 3-5 times a week like you asked- once or twice a week is more realistic.
I have a mountain bike, a 40-pound dumbell and 15 pounds of weights that wrap around my ankles. (I weigh 150.) Every other day I bike for an hour and lift weights for an hour. This combined with eating right keeps me in very good shape. When there's snow and ice on the roads I'll jog if it's not too dangerous, if the weather is so bad I can't jog on roads I'll stand outside my van and jog in place.
Carrying around a 500-pound weight machine like DrivingDog mentioned is overkill unless you're going to use it 4 hours a day. You have to be seriously into body building to do that. I just want to keep fit and healthy, and what I do accomplishes that.
By the way, good for you for wanting to exercise. Very few drivers do.

 

[driverdog]

Hry thanks for your reply. Hey cingratulations on staying motivated to keep exercising while out on the road, I'm sure it can be tough to get going sometimes. I am more into the bodybuilding aspect so I would need the more weights. The 500pnds is including bike, the actual bar bells themselves, portable punching bag, plus I overestimated jut to be safe. I'd rather be out on the road, but a company/owner may not be cool with 300-500 pnds of weight so luckily I live in Chicago area so I have local options. Good luck out there.

 

[Pruittplum]

Oh, this one is funny. My husband has been an avid weight lifter for over 20 year that we have been married. We thought he would be able to make it to a gym also, WRONG!
Even tried putting some weights in the truck! don't work!
If you decide to drive, give up lifting. They don't go togeather.
Busy times you sleep, eat and drive. Slow times you sit in the parking lot of a truck stop with not so pretty girls banging on your doors.