Fuel for Thought
The Next Load
I start thinking about how to position myself for the next load before delivery of the previous load. The highest priority is sleep. If I’ve driven overnight or most of the day, I’ll head to a parking lot for a nap, so I’ll have sleep in the bank if by chance a load offer comes up. If I really need sleep, I’ll even pull into the employee parking lot at the delivery location if it isn’t the hyper-security sort of place. One place I never park for a nap before, during or after a load or any other time is in a place that has a gate that locks. The one exception to the rule is if I’m at a customer and I’ve checked-in and made sure that I’m at the correct location.
Sleep taken care of I head towards my first place of wait if I’m not already there. At first I try to stay as close to the delivery location as possible. It minimizes deadhead. During the day most shopping center parking lots will do. This is also the time I spend at the library. For overnight sleeping I’m usually looking for Wal-Marts, rest areas and truck stops, in that order. Google Maps and the Wal-Mart app are my friends in this regard. The first night doesn’t take much strategic forethought, since it is based on the delivery location. If it is an unproven freight location, I’m only staying 18-24 hours. If it’s a good freight area, I’ll stay two and maybe three days depending on the day of the week and sometimes the weather. I’ll move for weather if it is bad sitting weather, which for me is any of the extremes.
At my first location I set my general plan to improve my position. I mark all my pick up locations in my motor carriers atlas. Over time it has developed into a good tool for seeing the concentrations of freight. I pick a location that is perhaps a day away and use that as my aim point. Towards any aim point there is usually going to be several concentrations of previous pick up locations. I don’t head towards a particular location, instead I head towards a central point between a group of locations, and I try to stay on a major route or interstate highway. I try to stay between locations because my odds of finding something are better if I’m in range of several places, instead of putting all my chances on one location. I use my recent deadhead numbers to determine how wide a net to cast. Once I start moving toward the general, long range aim point, I move every day or two. Rarely do I make it to the final aim point before a load comes up.
Through this entire affair I’m always in service. The only time I might go out of service is if I’ve had a number of back-to-back runs that didn’t allow me time to get enough sleep. If the load gods were that good, and I’m really in need of sleep, while on the last load I’ll send in a message to dispatch that reads something like this—I’ll be going out of service after this load to catch up on sleep. This can allow dispatch to concentrate on loading other vehicles.
All of this comes down to personal technique. I’m not a big truck stop customer, but other drivers like using the truck stop apps. Tim (?) says he goes straight to his MyPilot app, and then uses Foursquare for food and attractions after that. I get most of what I need off of the Google products, but Foursquare is an editors’ choice and has over 10,000,000 downloads, so it has to be a well developed app.
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