Our recrew rate hit 18% this month after we pulled a yard job and cut two road slots, and I’m juggling HOS resets with a thin extra board living on 2 a.m. callouts. For those who’ve bent the curve, did lineup accuracy tech or tightening taxi/van dispatch at MP 402 move the needle more — and how did you protect the 10-hour rest without blowing up dwell?
We dropped recrews from 18% to 10% by staging a dedicated van at “MP 402” 2200–0400 with a 90‑min pre‑HOS alert so @dispatch could swap before the law. Lineup tech only helped once the yard stopped thrashing; to keep the “10-hour rest” we fenced no-calls for the first 8 hours and prebuilt the outbound block — do you control the van SLA at 402?
What moved it for us was metering 2–3 mph in the last 80–90 minutes on HOS to “land the plane” right at the change point, plus a hard no‑new‑work‑inside‑90 rule so terminal doesn’t bolt on a pickup. When the lineup drifted, we staged the relief 10–15 miles short and swapped at the first siding instead of camping at MP 402, which protected the 10 and didn’t spike dwell. Can your RTCs throttle around 388/412 and will ops back a strict “no‑work‑inside‑90” flag, @pauande?
Push a 120‑minute ‘go/no‑go’ ETA to crew caller and auto‑dispatch vans; protects 10‑hour rest, especially on those 2 a.m… callouts.
Try fusing your lineup accuracy tool with a 35‑mile geofence: when predicted time left <75 minutes, auto‑lock ‘no extra work’, pre‑assign a track, and ping van dispatch to the first safe meet… @pauande, did you ever tie your van trigger to a geofence instead of a flat clock? Sliding one flex yard job into a 0000–0400 window every other night kept dwell steady and kept crews on a full reset.