How hard is it to learn a rural route?

[gear-guy]

Pro's and Con's just like any route. I have run rural's for 25 years. Winters suck, boredom between stops, long walks to the front door, more dogs to deal with ect... Less packages, a little easier on the body, but not much, not as much time stress, aka not as many businesses. My advice, take it and after a couple years you don't like it go back to something else. One important note, if you think that you are going to burn a rural route up and get in early, think again. Rural routes are for drivers who know they will be one of the last drivers in. Just a thought.

 

[wayfair]

Pro's and Con's just like any route. I have run rural's for 25 years. Winters suck, boredom between stops, long walks to the front door, more dogs to deal with ect... Less packages, a little easier on the body, but not much, not as much time stress, aka not as many businesses. My advice, take it and after a couple years you don't like it go back to something else. One important note, if you think that you are going to burn a rural route up and get in early, think again. Rural routes are for drivers who know they will be one of the last drivers in. Just a thought.

you need bluetooth..

 

[UpstateNYUPSer(Ret)]

Pro's and Con's just like any route. I have run rural's for 25 years. Winters suck, boredom between stops, long walks to the front door, more dogs to deal with ect... Less packages, a little easier on the body, but not much, not as much time stress, aka not as many businesses. My advice, take it and after a couple years you don't like it go back to something else. One important note, if you think that you are going to burn a rural route up and get in early, think again. Rural routes are for drivers who know they will be one of the last drivers in. Just a thought.

I punched out at 3:15 pm on a full rural route so it is possible to burn them up.

 

[brownmonster]

Pro's and Con's just like any route. I have run rural's for 25 years. Winters suck, boredom between stops, long walks to the front door, more dogs to deal with ect... Less packages, a little easier on the body, but not much, not as much time stress, aka not as many businesses. My advice, take it and after a couple years you don't like it go back to something else. One important note, if you think that you are going to burn a rural route up and get in early, think again. Rural routes are for drivers who know they will be one of the last drivers in. Just a thought.

Unless there's a late pickup our rurals are in at the same time as city drivers.

 

[Operational needs]

Agreed, there's 3 routes I do that avg 160 to 190 miles with 60 to 80 stops... I love being out in God's country. The snow is tough to deal with, but worth it.

The best things about routes like that imho are no traffic, no bulk (walkthrough truck everyday), and in the summer you're under the canopy of the forest all day so even on the 90+ days it is bearable.

The things that aren't so great... bouncing down dirt roads all day long, the dust, no signal to stream music, kind of boring/lonely, and goats climbing in and out of your pc haha



View attachment 67230

This is exactly how I feel about my rural route. Another negative for me as a woman is, few bathrooms. But being able to see something like this makes up for all the negatives.

 

[gear-guy]

I punched out at 3:15 pm on a full rural route so it is possible to burn them up.

Wow never like that here, I heard that there were good center manager;s around we just don't have one.

 

[UpstateNYUPSer(Ret)]

Wow never like that here, I heard that there were good center manager;s around we just don't have one.

I didn't have any chasers, all of my pickups were light and the packages seemed to fly off the shelves.

 

[Rack em]

I didn't have any chasers, all of my pickups were light and the packages seemed to fly off the shelves.

Thats because you left your rear doors open

 

[UpstateNYUPSer(Ret)]

Thats because you left your rear doors open

You joke but there were times when I would leave all of the doors open if I needed to clean out the cargo area.

 

[DumbTruckDriver]

You joke but there were times when I would leave all of the doors open if I needed to clean out the cargo area.

There are some very dusty routes I wish I could do this on. Damn telematics!

 

[TooTechie]

How many kinds of routes are there anyways? These are the ones that I'm familiar with:

Rural
Industrial
Residential

Routes don't always fit into neat categories. Aside from a country run, most other routes are usually a mix of different attributes.
I've run routes that are
1) pure heavy industrial followed by easy residential
2) high stop count resi only (usually split routes only in a couple days a week)
3) rural (but not qualifying as a country run) with lots of miles, lots of stops and only about 6 business stops
4) urban in an actual major city with low stop count spending whole day getting paid to wait for freight elevators and traffic lights.
5) office building route (aka handtruck hell) where you're constantly loading up hand trucks all day going in and out of office buildings (but not in an urban/city setting) followed by average resi
6) "whole town route" where you're delivering everything in an entire town so you have a mix of everything doing business and res together as you loop through the whole town seeing everything from "suburban" type resi to woods to mom and pop stores to office buildings to industrial.

 

[onehandsolo]

Routes don't always fit into neat categories. Aside from a country run, most other routes are usually a mix of different attributes.
I've run routes that are
1) pure heavy industrial followed by easy residential
2) high stop count resi only (usually split routes only in a couple days a week)
3) rural (but not qualifying as a country run) with lots of miles, lots of stops and only about 6 business stops
4) urban in an actual major city with low stop count spending whole day getting paid to wait for freight elevators and traffic lights.
5) office building route (aka handtruck hell) where you're constantly loading up hand trucks all day going in and out of office buildings (but not in an urban/city setting) followed by average resi
6) "whole town route" where you're delivering everything in an entire town so you have a mix of everything doing business and res together as you loop through the whole town seeing everything from "suburban" type resi to woods to mom and pop stores to office buildings to industrial.

Wow what region of the country do you work in? Your center has a lot of options.

 

[TooTechie]

Wow what region of the country do you work in? Your center has a lot of options.

New England

 

[Dr.Brownz]

I punched out at 3:15 pm on a full rural route so it is possible to burn them up.

Only a brown nosed individual can do that and not get 40 more stops the next day

 

[onehandsolo]

My area is 100 stops with 170 miles. Best thing for me. After you learn the area. Then learn where you can pawn as you go. Stuff mailboxes and in the winter. Tie to trees in at the end of driveways. Have houses I don't see from November to March. Then I get the Xmas tips in the spring.

That is similar to the route I may take. What I really like about it is you can line the the p700 truck up stop for stop after you run the 20 or so business stops at the beginning of the day. A lot of times on my current route I will have 100 plus stops left at 200pm plus a ups store.

 

[3 done 3 to go]

That is similar to the route I may take. What I really like about it is you can line the the p700 truck up stop for stop after you run the 20 or so business stops at the beginning of the day. A lot of times on my current route I will have 100 plus stops left at 200pm plus a ups store.

I 'd bail off that asap. Go for the seat time. Your body will thank you. More relaxing

 

[jr32bad]

Some country routes blow some are great depends if you have Orion , it makes a country route tough

 

[govols019]

I have a country route...ORION is awesome. I just go where the DIAD tells me to go.

 

[UpstateNYUPSer(Ret)]

Only a brown nosed individual can do that and not get 40 more stops the next day

I should have provided some background before posting this.

I had bumped the bid driver off of this route and he proceeded to talk smack about me to all of the customers. I ran it for 3 years before I decided to bid on another route and he took it back over. He had the day off and my on-car asked me if I would cover the route for the day. It was an ideal day----no chasers, pickups were all ready and the packages seemed to fly off the car.

The best part was the bid driver happened to be at the building picking up his pay check when I pulled in. I saw him, looked down at my watch and laughed at him. The look on his face was priceless. I quickly punched out so that they wouldn't send me back out to help someone.

 

[Purplepackage]

My station has a country route from hell (express station)

Leave the building drive about 35-40 minutes for your first stop, the first area your in is about 50 square miles of country and a town at the edge. You cover 5 towns and 2 or 3 little village type towns and end out in gods country. This route averages about 250 miles a day and ideally 50 stops and around 10 pick ups.

The issue is with Amazon the route has exploded to 90-100 stops at least 3 times a week which is slightly impossible