"The Truckers Trip Planning App!"

The Truckers Trip Planning App allows truck drivers to see within minutes whether they have the required hours of service to safely and legally run a load while at the same time it allows Owner Operators the opportunity to see immediately whether the load is profitable enough to sustain a successful business.

Young and Healthy Marketing LLC, a software development company in Virginia, first introduced the "Truckers Trip Planning App" to the trucking Industry in March of 2016 as a tool to help professional drivers analyze loads based on hours of service prior to accepting loads that they had no way of delivering on time or loads that were not at all profitable. The original "Truckers Trip Planning App" was the first app on the market to incorporate hours of service trip planning tools and load profitability tools to help truck drivers see if they have the required hours of service to run the load, if they can deliver the load on time, and determine whether that load is profitable in less than 5 minutes and thus coined the workflow as "Putting The Horse Before The Cart In Trucking!" The overall purpose of the Truckers Trip Planning App is to eliminate the stress and frustrations that truck drivers face on a daily basis in making load decisions and to create a cohesive and win, win relationship between Professional Drivers and Dispatchers.

The Truckers Trip Planning App takes into consideration that when the Dispatcher assigns a load, they need truck drivers to respond quickly as to whether they will accept the load so that they can begin planning their next load and likewise, Lease Operators and Owner Operators that get their loads from load boards need to decide quickly as to whether they will run a load before someone else grabs it.

The Truckers Trip Planning App is simple to use. Yet, it delivers powerful results that help Professional Drivers make informed and accurate load decisions:

In the Truckers Trip Planning App initial setup:

Company Drivers, Lease Operators, and Owner Operators can setup their Hours of Service Recap Calculator so that it is up to date and only need to add their hours for the current day when calculating their hours of service recap to determine the hours they have available for the load.

Lease Operators, and Owner Operators can setup their Operating Cost Per Mile Calculator and determine their operating cost per mile so that the tool is up to date each time they need to analyze a load.

When using the Truckers Trip Planning App to analyze hours of service,

Company Drivers, Lease Operators, and Owner Operators can simply check and make changes to their hours of service recap, and make changes to their operating cost per mile worksheet when needed.

Company Drivers, Lease Operators, and Owner Operators can simply type the load's requirements into the Trucker Trip Planning Worksheet and review the Hours of Service and ETA Calculator which automatically reports:

• the load's drive time requirements,

• the load's on-duty not driving time requirements,

• the load's rest breaks requirements,

• the load's Estimated Time of Arrivals (ETA),

• the Next Available Time (NAT) after delivery,

• and the remaining hours of service for their next load.

When using the Truckers Trip Planning App to analyze the load's profitability,

Lease Operators, and Owner Operators can simply input their trucks average miles per gallon, the average cost of fuel, their percentage of the load's pay, and their percentage of the load's fuel surcharge into the Trucker Trip Sheet and the Truckers Trip Planning App will calculate and render:

• the load's actual load pay,

• the load's actual fuel surcharge,

• the load's rate per mile,

• and the overall revenue that the load will generate.

To determine whether the load is profitable, Lease Operators, and Owner Operators can then go to the Profit and Loss Spreadsheet to review;

• the total amount of fuel needed for the load,

• the per mile cost of the needed fuel,

• the total cost of the needed fuel,

• the salary cost for the load,

• the operating cost for the load,

• and most important the profit or loss for the load.

When using the Truckers Trip Planning App to measure the success of load decisions,

Lease Operators, and Owner Operators will appreciate that the Truckers Trip Planning App includes Success Metrics which records data from all of their accepted loads and provides a visual tool to help them keep their business on track towards success. Using this tool, Lease Operators, and Owner Operators can easily see where and when improvements need to be made on their load selections.

Company Drivers, Lease Operators, and Owner Operators alike will surely find that if they want to be successful, that the Truckers Trip planning App is the best and most useful app to have in their truck.

Plan To Be Successful! Get Access to the Truckers Trip Planning App and make informed and accurate load decisions.

Hours of Service, Not Drive Time!

Professional Drivers who want to consistently deliver on time need to focus their trip planning on hours of service, not drive time.

Are you making the number one mistake being made by almost everyone in the trucking industry; trip planning based on drive time rather than trip planning based on hours of service?

#ProfessionalDrivingSchools are teaching it, #AppDevelopers are still building apps based on it, #Dispatchers are still assigning loads based on it, #Shippers and #Receivers are still tracking loads based on it, and it's been a consistent cause of stress and frustration throughout the trucking industry for years.

We have always been taught that we could easily determine the time it takes for anything to travel from one place to another mathematically by simply using a formula to calculate the Estimated Time of Arrival, (Distance / Speed = Time). When walking, running, riding a bike, throwing a ball, or even driving a car, everything can be timed based on this formula. For most things, it gives a perfect solution. But, Don't be misled! This does not work for Professional Driving when seeking to determine your ETA to your destination.

The formula, (drive time as it is referred to in the trucking industry) has not worked to assist Professional Drivers in planning trips since the Hours of Service for Drivers Final Rule on February 27, 2012, and the compliance date of it's remaining provisions on July 1, 2013. Why? Because Professional Drivers have restrictions that interrupt the formula called "Hours of Service Rules".

For years drivers have compensated for the belief that the root of the on-time delivery problem rested on them and resulted to manipulating the hours of service requirements by changing their logs to add back the time they needed to complete the run. Now, they can't cheat on their logs anymore!

After numerous injury's, incidents, accidents, and major court cases exposing hours of service violations as the root cause, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (#FMCSA) decided enough was enough and mandated the Electronic Logging Device (#ELD) with a compliance date of December 18, 2017 to prevent drivers from manipulating their hours of service clocks. And yet,

Many Professional Drivers still take chances believing that the Company they drive for does not allow them to turn down loads that may be unsafe or cause them to violate the Federal Hours of Service Rules and expect that they will be terminated or left sitting in the truck stop without loads if they do. Who is it that's willing to take the fall for this, the Dispatcher manipulating them to accept loads that they can't legally deliver, or the Trucking Company, while knowing that Section 405 of the Surface Transportation Assistance Act (#STAA) enacted in 1982 provides protections for Professional Drivers reporting this retaliation?

Trucking Companies have already found out the hard way when the United States Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration (#OSHA) in one case had them to pay a Professional Driver back wages of $23,203, plus interest, $50,000 in compensatory and $50,000 in punitive damages and reasonable attorney's fees and in another case more than $276,000 in back wages, damages, and forced them to take other corrective actions such as re-instating the driver.

The Bottom Line:

The hours of service rules require that all work while not driving such as vehicle inspections, loading, unloading, and fueling be recorded in your logs. Furthermore, Professional Drivers have a limited number of hours that they can work or drive and are required to take mandatory rest breaks. Because of these restrictions, everyone in the trucking industry need to once and for all realize that Professional Drivers cannot be expected to turn the switch, start driving, and go directly from start to finish based on the drive time calculation.

Professional Drivers need to trip plan based on hours of service, not drive time.

Get Access to the Truckers Trip Planning App and Use the Hours of Service Calculator to help determine whether you have the required hours of service and whether you can successfully deliver your load on time before accepting the load.

Hours of Service Calculator

The Hours of Service Calculator from the Truckers Trip Planning App allows solo and team truck drivers to recap their hours of service to see how much time they have available to run a load and the remaining hours of service they will have after they run the load.

As Professional Drivers, we all know that the most stressful part of driving is the constant race you have with time and it stands to be the reality that no matter how fast you drive, time will always win that race. Based on that fact alone, your safety and the safety of all those around you is dependent upon your ability to eliminate the risk of driving while under the tremendous stress of trying to reach your destination before time runs out on you.

Needless to say, stress is the root cause of driver fatigue, driver injuries, accidents, and road rage. With the developing of the Truckers Trip Planning App, you now have access to the tools you need to get at the root of this problem.

While most truck drivers would argue that they don't need an hours of service calculator since they can get their remaining hours of service from their logging device, it is obvious that they have not yet realized that "eliminating the need to race time and the elimination of not knowing if you can deliver your load on time" is an essential element in eliminating unnecessary stress while driving.

The Hours of Service Calculator is included on the Dispatchers, Company Drivers, Leased, and Owner Operator Truckers Trip Planning Apps and it is very simple to use.

The #HoursofServiceCalculator the #TruckersTripPlanningWorksheet and the #HoursofServiceETACalculator from the Truckers Trip Planning App works together to help you see what the load requires and whether or not you have the remaining hours of service to fulfill those requirements. Your Electronic Logging Device doesn't tell you that.

All you will have to do Initially is to copy your 8 days log from your ELD and record it on the hours of service calculator and (if necessary) check the date of your last reset. This is the same approach no matter what #HOSRules you use. From there, each night at midnight when the day changes over, the date, hours, and minutes will drop down to open up day 8 for you to record your new hours. Unless you do a total reset this information is forever persistent and feeds into the Hours of Service ETA Calculator for load related calculations.

While it may seem unnecessary, the Hours of Service Calculator is an integral part of the #ETACalculator and together they can help you to eliminate unnecessary stress.

Get Access to the Truckers Trip Planning App and Use the Hours of Service Calculator to help determine whether you have the required hours of service and whether you can successfully deliver your load on time before accepting the load.