High Hopes And a Big Let Down

Before I begin, let me give you a brief explanation of a portion of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations (FMCSR):

If a driver has worked 70 hours or more during an 8 day period, he may not drive (he can still work, but not as a driver). On day 9, the hours worked on day 1 fall off, freeing up however many hours were worked on day 1… in other words, the 8 day period is “rolling.”

The 70 hours reset to zero if the driver takes a break of 34 consecutive hours.

Also, a driver may not drive more than 11 hours in any 14 hour period. This means that if a driver starts his day by fueling his truck and inspecting it, the 14 hours have begun. He should have the truck fueled and inspected within a half hour, and should be able to inspect it periodically throughout the day (whenever he stops at a rest area, for example). Any of this “stopped” time, or any time the driver is loading or unloading the trailer is considered working but not driving and counts towards the 14 hours.

Again, the driver may work past the 14 hours, but may not drive if he has worked 14 hours. The 14 hours reset to zero after a break of 10 consecutive hours.

Now, with that out of the way, I can tell my tale.

We’ve been pushing kind of hard all week (which I’m ok with… the sooner I get my 300 hours in, the sooner I get my own truck, and the sooner I get to go home and see my family again). As of last night I have only 45 minutes left on my available 70 hours for the 8 day period. At midnight tonight, I’ll gain 10 hours from last Thursday, but today, I really don’t have any available time to do much of anything, except ride in the truck.

Well, conveniently, we picked up a load in northern California that was headed to Salt Lake City. I was going to finish my available 70 hours where I’d need to just sit around for 34 hours in my home town, where I could very likely get to see my wife and child. It was very exciting. Of course, my trainer has a few hours left, so we may have had to take a load elsewhere, though he would have run out of hours before I got mine back… so it wouldn’t have been terribly productive for us to pick up a load right away.

Additionally, the driver side mirror broke as soon as we picked up our load in Denver last Friday (see my post “A Mile High”). We’ve been trying to get it fixed ever since, but every time we have an appointment approved and scheduled with a Peterbuilt dealership, we get within about 100 miles and dispatch contacts us and tells us we need to go swap our trailer with somebody else, who for one reason or another is unable to get their load to the customer on time, but will be able to get our load on time… I take that to mean we’re doing a better job than the other drivers….

Anyway, there is a Peterbuilt dealer in Salt Lake, so it was looking good. We were going to make our delivery on time, get the truck into the shop during hours when we were going to have to just be sitting around waiting on the FMSCR reset anyway, and I was going to sleep in my own bed and play with my angelic princess. Not to mention snog my wife. As they say in Harry Potter.

Well, as we passed through Sacramento, (yeah, you guessed it) we got rerouted to Battle Mountain, Nevada (which was on our way), and told to swap our load with some guy there who didn’t have enough hours left on his 14 days to get his load to Camp Sharp Depot (near Sacramento), but who would be able to get our load to SLC on time.

So, my hopes were dashed asunder. Now I have to spend my downtime in California. My brother lives somewhat close by, so I may give him a call to see what he’s up to.

7 day recap: I’ve been through Sacramento 3 times, through Salt Lake twice, into Colorado twice, through Wyoming twice. I have, perhaps obviously, been through Nevada and Arizona numerous times (as I-15 passes through them from Utah to Fontana, California – my dispatch location). So far, I haven’t been into Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, or Texas; all of which are supposedly within the region I’ll be driving when I go solo. But it’s only been a week. We’ll see what next week has in store.

I’ll take a picture of our duct-taped mirror when I get a chance, and post it here later, so check back. If you care, that is.