Re: FAA To Finally Ditch Floppy Disks & Win-95

On 6/16/25 12:11 AM, rbowman wrote:

On Sun, 15 Jun 2025 22:40:00 -0400, c186282 wrote:
 

    USA, they DID make some revisions about 20 years ago limiting driving
    times. The truckers and employers did NOT like it. The tradition was
    to push through on strong coffee, sugar and amphetamines, get it
    there as fast and direct as possible. One of my first jobs was at a
    truck stop complex ... I know

 Most OTR truckers are paid by the mile which is an incentive to get the
goods delivered and move on to the next load.
 https://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/regulations/hours-service/summary-hours-service-
regulations
 They did switch it up a little. In the '90s you could drive 10 hours with
a half hour break and then had to show 8 hours off. You also had to show
15 minutes for inspection so it came out to 18.75 hours.
 We could log 62 mph, or 620 miles for the 10 hours. This was before all
the electronic snooping so you averaged 62 mph, end of story. LA to Denver
is about 1000 miles, or about 16.25 hours driving time. So, in theory, you
drove 10 hours and had to take an 8 hour break in Utah, technically at a
rest area on the San Rafael Swell since there is nothing between Salina
and Green River, and I mean nothing. Of course you weren't tired and
couldn't sleep, so after 8 hours of admiring the scenery you could
continue on your merry way.
 Or, leave LA early in the morning, drive straight through, get into Denver
Sunday afternoon, have supper, and get a good night's sleep after some
creative writing in you log book. Ski season sucked because you had the
traffic coming back from Vail and the other resorts but 78,000 lbs.
rolling downhill beats a BMW any day.
 Diet Coke and Mini-Thins. It was a set back when the ?US banned ephedra
around 2001 because some high school jock died after chugging several cans
of energy drink.

   "Some High-School Jock" will ALWAYS die of SOMETHING,
   ANYTHING. Alas it gives the nutters a route of attack.
   Some of the current "energy drinks/shots" ARE a bit
   worrisome. For jocks with a certain cardiac neural
   anomaly I suspect they CAN cause abrupt heart failure.
   We've seen a significant increase of late.
   As for truckers, the official rules have been rude and
   crude and rarely in sync with either biological reality
   or economic realities.
   But I *do* remember all those truckers totally BURNT
   and SHAKING from long-term amphetamine use - they'd
   sometimes spend DAYS in like a coma recovering. They
   essentially drove all the way across the USA - large -
   without stopping just to make some money.
   There is SOME sane combo of reality and puritan
   bullshit out there ... but DON'T expect it to ever
   become legal reality. It NEVER works that way.
   Took a couple of bennies once ... at Xmas, in a big
   shopping mall. It suddenly became SO EASY to weave
   through the consumer throngs, like a super-power.
   But they're NOT good for you at all.
   Umm ... we seem to have departed Linux again .....