Ferris there are many cases here where people are transferring frequency way before the boundary and this alllows the receiving controller to control up to a degree when they are ready for the aircraft. Also the aircraft will flash for 40 seconds before it times out, so if I am on a coord line and don't want a call right in the middle of it, I might wait 10 seconds, finish the call and then accept. Ferris I hope you realise that in a lot of cases the States have smaller sectors than we do here and with a more congested route structure than we do. On the traffic loading it may be as simple as I have the limit of aircraft without calling a planner, I see an aircraft flash at my Eastern boundary and I have an aircraft approaching my Western boundary so I switch him to Bahrain (no handoff facility with them yet) and then accept the other aircraft.
This practice also will help on West where the whole convoluted West Max procedure can be simplified or even removed as the reason it went in was the West controller had no non-verbal way of controlling his traffic numbers. Now if he still has his max number in the stack he doesn't accept the handing off aircraft until he transfers one to Dubai, and until then the aircraft holds with North sector.
If used properly and with the correct discipline it can work just as well as it did in Oz, and by the sounds of it in the US. Thanks heaps for all the info Av8boy.