In a driver’s typical 14-hour day, they will spend nearly as much time waiting for pickups or drop offs, handling inspections, and dealing with paperwork and other tasks as they will actually driving.
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration Hours of Service regulations say that drivers can spend 660 minutes of a 14-hour day driving, with a 30 minute break and 150 minutes on duty handling things like prep time, pickups and drop offs.
In reality, though, drivers aren’t able to make full use of their available drive time. Other sources of wasted time include time spent driving empty containers (there are numerous online freight marketplaces aiming to solve this problem by reducing empty drive time) and appointment inflexibility, according to a recent study by BB&T Capital Markets.
They found that drivers typically spend 108 minutes at shipper and receiver locations waiting for pickups and drop offs. However, turnaround times at ports can take even longer. At Los Angeles-Long Beach, for example, 40% of truck visits to the port took more than two hours this past fall.
We help drivers eliminate some of that wasted time so they can get on their way to their final destination more quickly, and ultimately, save them time that can be spent completing another delivery. By providing automatic container availability notifications, drivers are informed about potential problems and can address them before they arrive at the terminal gate. Streamlined workflows around gate tickets, communications and route planning can save additional time.
By saving a driver just 60 minutes a day through more efficient planning and communication, that’s a potential increase of 10% additional time available for driving, the equivalent of 50 miles per day or 12,500 miles per year.
For more information about how Crux Systems can help trucking companies, dispatches and drivers be more efficient, contact us. Or sign up online for a free trial.
