Trip Planning 101

          A few posts back, someone asked me how I teach trip planning.  I gave a quick answer in the comments so as not to write a whole new post there, but I felt the topic deserved its own post.  Now as I sit here thinking about everything I try to instill in a new driver about trip planning, I realize that it probably won’t all fit in one post either.  This is going to end up a series of posts.

          The four main things I teach about trip planning are:

     1.   The physical routing

     2.   Time management

     3.   Weather

     4.   Fuel stops

I don’t think anyone has climbed into my truck with a solid understanding of what all goes into trip planning.  Most people’s experience with driving halfway across the country has been for vacation, if they have ever done it at all.  They go with the idea of “I will get there Tuesday,” not “I have to be there at 6:00 Tuesday morning.”  They go when they go, as far as they want, and they stop when they feel like it. 

There seems to be this incorrect notion that this job is easy.  Just get in and drive, right?  An experienced driver I know once joked, “This is the coolest job ever; I drive their truck around and they put money in my checking account!”  Trip planning is - in my opinion - baptism by fire.  It’s the first piece of evidence that this job takes more than repetitive motion.

Over the next few weeks we will dig deeper into what all goes into trip planning.