Thursday, July 3, 2008

Salinas,CA

That is where we are headed to pick up our next load. Then we have until Monday at 0430 to make it 2700n miles. Piece of cake. The rest of today and then three full days of driving before it is due.



Joel I think it was asked about our 70 hour rule. Let me see if I can explain this. Per DOT a driver can not work more than 70 hours in an 8 day period. There are two ways to gain hours back. The first is to take a 34 hour restart when you are out of hours. This essentially wipes your 70 hour clock and you start with a clean slate. The other way is to gain hours back. At midnight on the 8th day, you gain back the hours that you worked on your first day. For instance here are the hours I worked this past week. Day 1-10.75 Day 2-12.75 Day 3-11 Day 4-13 Day 5-9.5 Day 6-9.25 Day 7-3.75. At the end of this 7 day period I have worked exactly 70 hours. On Day 8 I can't work because I have hit my 70 hours. Now, at midnight on the 8th day, Day 1 drops off and Day 2 becomes Day 1 and Day 3 becomes Day 2 and so on. So now, if you look back at the hours I had, now it looks like this: Day 1-12.75, Day 2-11, Day 3-13, Day 4-9.5, Day 5-9.25, Day 6-3.75 and Day 8-0(because I couldn't work). Add all these up and you get 59.25 so you subtract that from 70, so 70-59.25=10.75. 10.75 are the hours that I dropped from my first day and gained back to work. So now I can work 10.75 hours today. There you have it. The two ways that you can gain back hours. Do a 34-hour restart and completely wipe the 70 out and have a fresh start, or gain back hours on midnight of your 8th day from what drops off of that first day. Clear as mud? :) It is easier to do a restart if you have the time. A lot of the time, you are under a load and just have to work off of the hours gained back. After a while that gets real tiring because you don't really get any time off, even though you are working legally. We try to run about 2-3 weeks and then at least take a 34-hour restart. This time I just blew through my hours and was forced to stop. I did manage to get a 34-hour restart out of this but J didn't. But somehow he still has hours that he can work off of. I must be working harder then him I guess. As his boss, I am going to have to light a fire under his ass!

To those that answered where Justin is stationed at, THANK YOU!! Now if we can just get a mailing address for him we will be all set!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Happy 4th of July !!!!!!!!!!

If you can read this, thank a teacher.
If you are reading this in english, thank a veteran.