Unless you live on an island, and a small one at that, you’ve probably had occasion to drive at least a few hours non-stop. On a proper road trip, perhaps your driving stints go as long as six hours, assuming you’ve got a co-driver to switch off with.
But what about really big solo hours? Not necessarily alone in the car, but a single driving session where you didn’t relinquish the wheel? Perhaps you’ve gone eight or ten hours.
Or even longer?
Mind you, I’m not trying to determine who among us has the biggest fuel tank and/or bladder. Ya gotta stop for gas and the call of nature, and while that may count as a leg-stretching, it’s not a proper break if you just gas up, hit the head, and grab a snack that you only unwrap once you’re back on the interstate. Side note: If you’re picking up a brisket sandwich at Bucc-ee’s, I recommend you just take the extra 15 minutes to eat it in the parking lot or else you’ll be wearing it.
The longest I’ve gone with only quick gas and/or drive-thru stops is about ten hours, in an effort to make up time when the first two legs of a Dallas to Newport, RI road trip took longer than expected. After that much wheel time, I’m just too tired to keep going. I don’t really fall asleep, but my brain does this weird thing where there’s a lag between what I’m seeing and what I’m doing. Maybe it’s a sleeping-with-eyes-open thing. Anyway, that’s when I ask my wife to take over or ask Waze to find a motel.
Your turn: what’s the longest you’ve gone/can go in a non-stop driving session?
Top graphic image: DepositPhotos.com
24 hours from DC to Houston a few times year ago. Last time I did a 17 hour haul it felt about at my limit.
With that criteria, 13 hours. We were on one of our many road trips and realized we could get home if we pressed on. So we did. Pretty good for two guys in their mid 60s, and I’m the sole driver..
With the caveat that gas stops & pee breaks don’t count. I think the best I have done is 18 hours. Cars are immensely more comfortable than motorcycles. I thought I would easily be able to join the iron butt club but have failed on multiple “hey, I got this” attempts.
25 hours, 1,600 miles, with a co-driver.
Me behind the wheel straight?
17 hours, same trip.
Me completely solo? 14hrs
I do 540 miles straight solo, 7 hrs, about twice a month.
I feel necessary to add that 25hrs wasn’t in a cushy GT car, but in a manual Saturn SL.
My record was 20 hours in one day. It was only 750 miles, and I was planning on stopping for roughly 20-30 minutes every 3ish hours giving me a roughly 12-14 hour trip. What I didn’t plan on was a semi overturning onto its side at the end of a very long bridge not far ahead of me. Was stuck on that bridge for 5 hours, then another hour waiting at the gas station just past it as It was 40 outside and everybody needed to keep their cars idling for heat. I think I fit 15.6 gallons into my 15.9 gallon tank.
It took 3 hours for the first person to get out of their car to poop, but by hour 5 there were napkins being shared between cars and people holding up sheets and towels for others to give them a “private outhouse”
Not behind the wheel, but on a motorcycle (Honda NC700X). I did 690 miles the day after hiking 27 miles round trip up and down Pikes Peak. The hike took nine hours, the ride home was 11. My body hated me for the next week.
This hurts to even think about!
I had this crazy idea to drive from SE Houston to NW Phoenix in one shot, by myself, at night. I slept all day and left at 6:45PM to avoid rush hour which I thought was smart. I traveled a little over 1200 miles in 17h 47m and was effectively a walking zombie for the next 2 days no matter how much sleep I got.
If you think I-10 west of San Antonio is boring during the day you should try it at night. There’s this yellow line you can stare at for fun and when that gets boring…well there’s this white line you can look at for a little while. I did this all to pickup a motorcycle so no real regrets.
The next day I made the return trip only this time I left in the morning and drove during the day. The motorcycle in the back of my 4cyl taco slowed things down quite a bit going through the mountains so I didn’t make quite as good time. I also wasn’t fully recovered from the drive out so I stopped in a rest area some 40 miles before San Antonio and passed out in my truck for a couple of hours. That trip took 20 hours including the nap.
This was before smartphones and cheap GPS so I did this on paper maps, a stack of CDs, and whatever FM stations I could pick up along the way. Hou > Phx > Hou in 3 days can be done and I can say I’ve driven solo almost 18 hours straight but I ain’t ever doing that again.
Since my grandkid and their parent live 715 miles away, that drive is the longest I have done solo. While under regular mental conditions I drive that in 14 hours, in one deranged session, I did it in 10 hours. And yes, there are a bunch of stretches where the speed limit is around 45 MPH (never again, too stressful watching for authorities).
492 miles when I was 17 and a senior in high school.
Flagstaff, Arizona to San Marcos, California.
My old college roommate drove from Newport News, VA to our college in Laramie, WY straight through. That’s about 28 hours. He said he pulled over to sleep in St. Louis, but was too wired so he kept driving. The kicker though is his car didn’t have a radio. He was a pretty normal guy otherwise.
I was never behind the wheel myself… but maybe some will enjoy this.
Drum Corps International world champs in 1999 were in Madison Wisconsin. We (135 of us kids, around 30 staff and support) had been living on our buses and school gym floors for the last 2 months. Finals were over and it was time to head back to Concord CA. Staff flew out, so the 3 member buses were loaded with two coolers of stuff to make sandwiches, the spare bus drivers would sleep in the staff bus (which was all converted to bunks) and we would not stop at all except for fuel. We would save plastic soda bottles to pee into because we weren’t stopping to empty the bus toilet either.
It was a long time ago, but I think it only took around 32 hours. Time had ceased to have much meaning and I was a pro at sleeping on the bus.
Probably only about 10 hours or so, because that’s about as much as I’ve been able to get without stopping for gas. If you don’t count quick stops to top up, then 14 hours from a nap stop in Fayetteville to Key West
1,486 miles in 23 hours. Energy drinks and beef jerky that’s too spicy for most humans made it possible. I don’t recommend it and I apologize to anyone that used the restrooms after me. The plan was to take turns driving with my wife. But her version of taking turns was her sleeping in the passenger seat, then sleeping in the back seat. Joking aside, by the time I was ready to swap after the first or second pit stop, she was more exhausted than me. Driving keeps me awake and lulls her to sleep.
10+ hours.
Grand Canyon to Amarillo – in mid-March during the beginning of lockdown in 2020.
It was the second leg of my drive from Palm Springs to Virginia – and the longest day ever. Arrived in Amarillo about 10PM – because I had spent the morning at Grand Canyon when the National Parks were wide open. Till people started showing up and it began to snow.
I never want to drive that long in one day again – 4 hours is about the most I like to do, but 6 hours is do-able as long as it’s not dark.
Because I’m old now.
900 miles solo was about my limit when I was younger- FL to VA. My wife hates that I’ve got a lot of mile markers along I95 memorized (“yeah, you told me that already.”).
Did further distances with buddies running continuously but switching off to catnap.
Now, I’m lucky if I can do 7 hours without wearing out.
When Dad and I were doing track days five times a year, we had our routine down pretty solidly. When going to Watkins Glen we would stay the night just outside of Cleveland, then the next day do the stint to Watkins Glen in one uninterrupted shot. Was typically five hours. When going to Road Atlanta, our day before was Murfreesboro to Braselton, again in one nonstop stint of about five hours. Towing a trailer, that’s about all I’d want to do.
My longest day in a car was about 14 hours, San Francisco to Myers Flat, California, along the PCH. I’d stopped too many times to take pics of the scenery and there was no way I was making it to my planned stop of Brookings, Oregon. This was on my 17-day 1993 road trip around the western U.S. and Canada as a much younger man. Turns out Myers Flat was interesting. Accidental stops always produce the best stories.
The longest I’ve gone with only short washroom and food breaks was 13 hours… it was on a camping trip drive home from Frankenmuth Michigan that should have only been 7-8 hours (with breaks included), but we made a wrong turn due to incorrectly reading the paper map we had.
This was in the days before smartphones and Google. Hell… it was even before MySpace, MapQuest (which came out on the internet in 1996) and Altavista.
Also it was just my mom, my dad and myself. And my dad, at his age at the time, had a habit of falling asleep at the wheel after 30-60 min of driving. So I really REALLY didn’t want him to take over because I feared falling asleep… and not long after, my dad would fall asleep at the wheel and we’d crash.
Part of the reason why I could do it was because I was young… still in my teens and driving was still new and exciting to me.
These days, I think I could still do it. I did a 10 hour drive (stops included) just last summer to Mt Tremblant in Quebec.
I drove from Chicago to Bowling Green, KY and back in one day, solo. Stopped for gas once on the way down and once on the way back. Worked out to just over 12 hours.
With my wife as a co-pilot we have done 17 hours in one day, switching every fuel stop.
my question is…. how do truck drivers do 10+ hours/day 5-6 days/week. in a massive loud shaking truck? They are super human. and putting up with jag off car drivers.
Well if you look at the cabs of those trucks, they have their own independent air suspension. And they equip them with comfortable seats as well.
So while those trucks look like they ride rough, it’s actually pretty comfortable inside… at least for the long haul trucks.
Through building up endurance. Most new drivers are good for 5-7 hours and still be safe.
After enough miles, you get where when someone says they work 40 hours a week, you ask what the do the other 3 days.
Seriously, though, by federal law, truckers can only drive 11 hours a day within a 14 hour window from the time you start until you have to be off the road. You can still be ‘on duty-not driving’ fueling, inspections, repairs, etc after 14, but can’t be behind the wheel. You’re allowed up to 70 hours (combined driving and on duty) in 8 days. If you run out of the 70 hours before the 8 days, you park it. You can still do the ‘on duty-not driving’, after 70, but can’t be on the road.
If you can budget your hours correctly and only work an average 8.75 hours a day, you can do that for as many days as you want.
If we are allowing nothing but pee and gas breaks, I’m good for 12 usually. I’ve done PA to MA round trip no breaks which is about 12 maybe 13. I’ve done NJ to MI straight through no breaks, 12 hours a few times. I used to do PA to ME all the time Friday night after work 9 hours spend the weekend then Sunday after dinner 9 hours back and go to work in the morning on a few hours sleep.
When I moved from Chicago to Austin, I made it as far as Dallas before I stopped for a few hours. That was about 20 hours (in a slow U-Haul). I felt pretty good the whole way, but went down hard when I stopped.
31 hours solo – Las Vegas, NV to Cincinnati, OH
Hit the halfway point of Oklahoma City, feeling okay so pressed on. Also didn’t know how much I had left on the credit limit on my card, so a motel wasn’t going to happen.
Got propositioned at a rest stop in Missouri.
Started hallucinating in Illinois.
Catatonic in Kentucky
For the last 12 hours I had to listen to the exact same Devo mix tape over and over. It was the only thing keeping me awake.
Did you whip it… and whip it good?
So, my lesson learned about this.
30+ years ago, I drove for 5.5 hours straight without a break. I felt find, it was all a bit of a blur. I listened to music, had some light snacks and a bottle of soda and just made time (lower speed limits back then).
I absolutely paid for it. When I did stop (low on gas), I thought I could just jump back into the car and go back into that zone. I could not. I struggled to get more than 30 minute stints for the rest of the trip and felt absolutely awful the next day.
But wait, there’s more. I started getting tinges when I peed. Then it got cloudy and painful. Went to a doctor and I had a raging bladder infection. I was allergic to the meds I got and ended up with some scars in the bladder. Now, 2 hours is the absolute limit to my drives in a single stint.
My record for time/distance in a day is about 900 miles. As I went to bed the night before, I saw that the weather reports indicated a massive nor’easter was coming and was predicted to take the exact route I was on. My plan had been to drive 500 ish miles, stop for the night and drive the rest the next day. But with that storm, I figured if I stopped for a night, it might turn into a week. So, I left at 4 AM and just hauled ass. I sped as much as I dared and stopped for quick drains and refills every 2 hours or so. I never stopped for breakfast or lunch or dinner, just drove and ate in the car. There were times that it started snowing heavily and I would put my foot down to get as far as I could ahead of the storm before I had to stop for gas and to pee. I remember once that as I was refilling the storm showed up and started dumping snow and I just stopped filling the car at about 3/4 of a tank, jumped in it and took off before the cops could block off the on-ramp. I got to my final hotel late at night / early in the morning and as I was checking in, it snowed about 6 inches in no time at all. It was the most intense drive I’ve ever done. Today, I would have just called my boss, told him I was going to show up when it was safe and found a nice hotel with room service. But back then, I was so scared of being fired for any reason that I felt it was critical that I get to my assignment on time no matter what.
Probably 14-16 hours back when I had a commercial license as a satellite uplink truck tech and driver in a two person tag team.
The driving limit was 10 hours, but since we used paper logs we’d generally drive till exhaustion then switch out. Did that soooo many times.
Nowadays, 8 hours is about as far as I can push it.
I drove solo from central Florida to Cape Cod and back only stopping for gas and a single 90-minute nap. Probably not more than 45 hours total.
I was delivering a piece of high-end furniture that I built. The drive up was towing a uHaul trailer. When I dropped the trailer off, the uHaul people couldn’t believe I made the drive that fast.