TForce | Got our 68 mph back. {sort of}

Imo all of this new fangled "safety equipment " was created for new drivers and those who lack the ability to pay attention to the task at hand DRIVING! I think the perfect speed is around 70mph to 75mph you can pass in less than a mile and aren't fast enough to get a ticket in most cases.
 
Imo all of this new fangled "safety equipment " was created for new drivers and those who lack the ability to pay attention to the task at hand DRIVING! I think the perfect speed is around 70mph to 75mph you can pass in less than a mile and aren't fast enough to get a ticket in most cases.
Dont get me going on that.

"Dont be late, dont call me. Dont break the damn truck."

later...

"Be Professional we are one big happy family...."

and again...

" Modern trucks, fully equipped for your comfort..."

finally...

"20,000 dollar sign on bonus..." WTF!

This ranges from the 80's through to the current years 2020's

What they are really saying is in the early time, dont be stupid and break my stuff driver. Comes out of your paycheck. The professonal bit in the 90's is corporate decorated BS talk for you are too expensive driver, you dont idle, you freeze, burn or otherwise pay for your own stuff. And dont be late. And finally the modern trucks. After a life time of driving both sweethearts and total ironbitches... I cannot be bothered to put up with the modern computer crap choking on emissions while going at speeds not supportive of coast to coast time freight.

Thats the last big burr under my saddle. They scream and beg and demand that west coast freight yesterday THERE in Jersey.... but lets not speak about how they waited three damn months on a slow boat from China across the Pacific. Then casterate your tractor at 63 or whatever...

And you wonder why yer late. Get going already, yer late again.

Sheesh. I should have jined the ahrmy for all that trouble. At least the abuse would be within regulations.
 
The geniuses who come up with all this tech for vehicle's, have never driven a truck in the real world.
Everything that can go wrong will go wrong, every new item added is another that will potentially break.
The savage beating a truck takes on a day to day basis, knocks the ::shit:: out of it.
Every sensor(which there are now dozens) becomes jolted and beaten, going from 200° to sub zero, day after day, week after week, month after month.

Simplicity is genius, and these newer trucks are over complicated with too much tech. I have already seen the trucks breakdown because of sensor issues. It's pathetic.
 
I feel sad for that you that you seem so obsessed with speed and time that you feel the need to calculate crap that way. You're what's wrong with drivers these days IMHO

After spending the first half of my commercial driving life running long haul under President Nixons' 55 MPH national speed limit, I appreciated 65 mph. Once they raised it in the mid-nineties, I never really got too excited about it.
Some don't remember the 10-hour day, 520 miles on a 10-hour log. Took just short of 24 hours just to cross Texas, if you ran it on one log. Almost 100 hours to turn the west coast from SE Pennsylvania, not including sleeper time. Just a thought...
 
I have enjoyed it. Accident and ticket free for over 40 years
Amen. My last ticket was 1984 in Iowa, 71 in a 55. Paid the Trooper cash on the spot, $45.
My only chargeable, I tagged an illegally parked car and knocked off a $30 dollar side marker light. in '96 I think....
 
Speed?

It was more of a symptom of dispatch culture than anything else. Fire those who are too slow and late.

Tickets? I paid em. No one paid no mind for a while anyway. Long ago I had a judge knock a few points off to keep the Class A from getting suspended statuary after some of those accumulated.

Im happy at 70-75. But it does not matter when dispatch has you sit on your ass for 5 hours waiting a dead anywhere to load. It could be 10 miles or 1000 miles late already.

Thats one reason I found the high dollar pharmacy drop hook and reload straight back to shipper the best in my lifetime. It disposed of all the waiting. at the same time you could not stop for anything.

I had one load I will never forget. This is in a 75 mph governed tractor. Loaded in Lancaster PA, aluminum. They were telling me that Idabel OK needed that stuff 8 am monday or there will be absolute hell to pay.

I had it off the deck 10 minutes to 8. Three shrink wrapped spools covered in dew from the overnight straight through run. Since it was Uncle Sam's Aluminum somewhere in the system logs be damned. She was pegged at 75 straight through. I dont know what the total miles was but its in four figures and pretty much used all of my fuel. They were happy to have it that morning. More than happy actually.

I guess its worth it. I did have to slow for Little Rock 440 because in those days they had the law everywhere hoping you do 56.

Fast forward to today, if the freight was THAT hut, they can just stick it all on a C17, chain it down and fly it into a field next to the customer down there. Why not? It would be there in 5 hours.
 
Well, I'm going to make the mistake of involving myself in this thread because y'all are missing the point of 3 mph.

Yes, an extra 30+ minutes a day adds up. 2 1/2 hours a week for free. 130 hours a year for free.

Our contract specifies an hourly rate and a mileage rate. For a city driver, it's a win win! An extra 130 hours of pay a year! For a road driver, you can equate mileage pay to an hourly rate based on speed. We are taking a pay cut.

One of the big comments is "what's the damn hurry that you can't afford 30 minutes extra a day".

Imagine you work for just about any employer out there. You agree on an hourly wage as your pay. Then one day, the company decides you need to work an extra 30 minutes a day, but you don't get paid for it. That's a pay cut. Not one damn person would stand for that. If you say you would work for free 30 minutes a day, you are a liar.

Every one of you would demand to be paid, or you would quit and move on. Facts are facts, that little 3mph adds up to free time.

Now, the crap about 65 on the pedal and 68 on the cruise. If the truck didn't take over for every car, truck or obstacle in the road that slams on our brakes if they are within our 6 second following distance radar, we could maintain that speed and not **** off every vehicle behind us.

Try to imagine even maintaining 68 in a 70. You have to change lanes a 1/8 mile when you approach anyone to maintain speed, or get dropped to 65. You sit in the left lane, then get swerved around by all the super truckers and 4 wheelers because you're camped out in the left lane.

"Booo Hooo, just stay right and do 65". Might as well not even give us 68 on the cruise. Which we shouldn't be using to pass others!

That's my one and done opinion. My 2 cents for free. The contract spelled out a wage, and we got a pay cut with that 3mph. Once again, that's for the Road drivers. I may just go to the city and wipe my tears with the extra pay.....

*mic drop*
 
I worked with wife about 306 days our last year together as a team. 306 x 24 hours OTR with the truck. Not home, not hotel not anything, but in the truck doing something.

Thats 7344 hours for me, and wife. We put that into the IRS tax return jointly with a income of some 70,000 gross for the year give or take.

$9.53 a hour. For two truckers. Or... $4.76 a hour for me and for spouse 24/7 for 306 days.

Leaving aside all the other minutae there is no money in trucking. NONE. Some weeks less than 0.00 paid due to company paper work screwups despite 6500 miles run in the previous 7 days. The third time FFE Lancaster did that we quit them. Flat. That was almost 6 weeks at a average of 6000+ miles every 7th day. We should be drowning in money at about roughly .75 to the truck. But that never happened for a vareity of reasons ginned up by the company.

Even today wages are similar to what they were 20 years ago. My last company that year I was at about .48 or so a mile as a base rate as a top hand. Today they still pay people .50 if they can get away with it.

There is no money in this industry. Might as well robot everything and burn the rest.
 
Well, I'm going to make the mistake of involving myself in this thread because y'all are missing the point of 3 mph.

Yes, an extra 30+ minutes a day adds up. 2 1/2 hours a week for free. 130 hours a year for free.

Our contract specifies an hourly rate and a mileage rate. For a city driver, it's a win win! An extra 130 hours of pay a year! For a road driver, you can equate mileage pay to an hourly rate based on speed. We are taking a pay cut.

One of the big comments is "what's the damn hurry that you can't afford 30 minutes extra a day".

Imagine you work for just about any employer out there. You agree on an hourly wage as your pay. Then one day, the company decides you need to work an extra 30 minutes a day, but you don't get paid for it. That's a pay cut. Not one damn person would stand for that. If you say you would work for free 30 minutes a day, you are a liar.

Every one of you would demand to be paid, or you would quit and move on. Facts are facts, that little 3mph adds up to free time.

Now, the crap about 65 on the pedal and 68 on the cruise. If the truck didn't take over for every car, truck or obstacle in the road that slams on our brakes if they are within our 6 second following distance radar, we could maintain that speed and not **** off every vehicle behind us.

Try to imagine even maintaining 68 in a 70. You have to change lanes a 1/8 mile when you approach anyone to maintain speed, or get dropped to 65. You sit in the left lane, then get swerved around by all the super truckers and 4 wheelers because you're camped out in the left lane.

"Booo Hooo, just stay right and do 65". Might as well not even give us 68 on the cruise. Which we shouldn't be using to pass others!

That's my one and done opinion. My 2 cents for free. The contract spelled out a wage, and we got a pay cut with that 3mph. Once again, that's for the Road drivers. I may just go to the city and wipe my tears with the extra pay.....

*mic drop*
Time is money paid by the mile the faster you go the more you make hourly the slower you go the more you make.
 
All I can say is I'm glad I worked at a time when we ran the road and stopped and talked over coffee or a meal or we worked P&D and looked forward to lunch time to socialize with other drivers for an hour and we never at any time freaked out over a couple of mph of speed or nit-picked calculating how many hours in a year we gave the company by stopping. What a pathetic way to go through life.
 
The geniuses who come up with all this tech for vehicle's, have never driven a truck in the real world.
Everything that can go wrong will go wrong, every new item added is another that will potentially break.
The savage beating a truck takes on a day to day basis, knocks the **** out of it.
Every sensor(which there are now dozens) becomes jolted and beaten, going from 200° to sub zero, day after day, week after week, month after month.

Simplicity is genius, and these newer trucks are over complicated with too much tech. I have already seen the trucks breakdown because of sensor issues. It's pathetic.
CF had the most simple trucks on the road, not fancy, built to do a job. Many of those old dogs still running around.
 
All I can say is I'm glad I worked at a time when we ran the road and stopped and talked over coffee or a meal or we worked P&D and looked forward to lunch time to socialize with other drivers for an hour and we never at any time freaked out over a couple of mph of speed or nit-picked calculating how many hours in a year we gave the company by stopping. What a pathetic way to go through life.
I say this respectfully, if wanting more time at home than on the road is pathetic then call me Mr Pathetic. I enjoy my work but my home life even more, and as a Linehaul driver that time adds up. I am jealous of you old guys that grew up in a slower paced world, that must have been something to experience. Unfortunately the same ones who enjoyed that world destroyed it for the rest of us that came behind them and here we are.
 
I never have finished my Linehaul run in the morning after being up all night and half the day before and thought to myself , gee I wish this truck was just a few mph slower so this trip would have taken an extra 15-20 minutes longer. If only if only.
 
Imo all of this new fangled "safety equipment " was created for new drivers and those who lack the ability to pay attention to the task at hand DRIVING! I think the perfect speed is around 70mph to 75mph you can pass in less than a mile and aren't fast enough to get a ticket in most cases.
^^^^THIS^^^^^

1) i'm opposed to the cutting down to 65, however i don't think 3 mph is really going to make a difference in time; Anyone who has done linehaul knows each night is different. Even IF you run niteliner, do your homebound trailers get closed at the exact time every night? Are they hooked up everynight by the jockey, or do you have to hook them up----and how fast can you find them? Every night is different.

What speed does do, i think, is give you FLEXIBILITY. With a "faster" truck i can take naps and STILL get the run done in under 14 hours.....usually.

The whole "argument" of 3 mph adds to the workweek: That's only IF everything goes exact and perfect on time every night. And you know this never happens.....

Now,, there are meet and turn runs and set terminal to terminal runs that are NOT niteliner. In those cases, yes 3mph can make a difference in time. But only for these runs.

2) As far as safety, i also don't think 3 mph is really going to make a difference?

Wouldn't having the cruise be at 65, and the 68 on the pedal be safer? A driver is less likely to have their foot on the pedal all night vs. setting the cruise? Yes?


Like i've been saying, i think each terminal should set their own speeds. With most outfits i've been with that have 20 drivers or less, the drivers were very responsible with the speeds even up to 75-77mph.

With smaller terminals, it's easy to monitor/police/discipline/rescind etc.

If there are tickets/accidents etc., then the speeds get lowered until safety improves, but like i said, with smaller terminals, it's usually not a problem.
 
I say this respectfully, if wanting more time at home than on the road is pathetic then call me Mr Pathetic. I enjoy my work but my home life even more, and as a Linehaul driver that time adds up. I am jealous of you old guys that grew up in a slower paced world, that must have been something to experience. Unfortunately the same ones who enjoyed that world destroyed it for the rest of us that came behind them and here we are.
I dont know about that.

Deregulation changes things a bit back then. We had order in a way. Be somewhere next monday sunrise. Call when empty. Otherwise dont bother me. Might be 9 days to California.

Today you cannot hardly get 4 effing days to be in Cali by appointment time with a load that is meaningless and pays very little.

Some of us such as myself am glad we had our run when we did. But I for myself am pretty angry when I think about a wasted life dealing with suits intent on molding a professional driver fleet in their precious company crap. If I wanted to be ass deep in that crap I would have taken the offer to go Union at the docks in Seagirt at 21. Or perhaps gone into O/O when I had the chance then a bit later. I should have. But you cannot cry over spilled milk.

I would HATE for anyone to take up trucking now. ESPECIALLY NOW. If you want to be in a cab full of computers designed to dictate to you what to do or not do and so on go ahead. Its not for me.

By 2003 with it's new changes to HOS and so on... I told the wife this is the end of a era for trucking. Specifically me. We are finished once those rules go into effect and then become increasingly absurdly computerized.

They can have the robot trucks. I'll be snug at home when they crash and burn all over icy wyoming. Serves them idiots in the industry right.
 
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