Trucking Isn't For Everyone.. But

Hey Daniel, I sent you a PM. Hope to hear from you.

After over 3 years of OTR , I finally landed a cushy local job driving double tankers. Home daily, 2-3 days off per week with hourly pay. If you work hard, the sky is the limit!

Daniel,

Congratulations on your new job. You are a great example of hard work and perseverance.

Inspiring post, Daniel. Thanks for sharing!

Call me crazy, the the things that people end up hating about the job are the things I'm joining for. I need to feel the road moving under me. I miss touring, and this will be a great replacement. I prefer working by myself, and I prefer some measure of solitude. My love my husband dearly, but it will be nice to be gone for a while and just be alone. It's always been my nature.

Every week there are thousands of drivers going into trucking, most won't make it. Most go into this industry not having a clue about it. A big mistake that I saw as an Instructor at Prime was how the older folk usually underestimated the challenges of the job, they compared their previous life experiences with trucking and thought "if I did that in my life then this will be nothing". I don't care if your age can be compared on a graph to the old age of the trees in Yellowstone National Park (looking at you OS), or you're a kiddo at the young age of 21 going into this industry - you will struggle.

Which brings me to my point, its not for everyone. Over-the-road is a nomadic lifestyle that is extremely rewarding for the right individual, but can be a nightmare to someone who isn't after that. Bob and Bobby can go through the exact same scenarios but Bob can end up loving it, meanwhile Bobby can hate it.

We simply don't hear enough success stories because Bobby usually voices is opinion louder than Bob can. You see, Bob is too busy earning a living, meanwhile Bobby quit and is now home, frustrated, and wants revenge. He voices his strong opinion about trucking loud and clear, blaming both the company and the job for his mess.

When I got into trucking I was struggling with life. Still without regret, I married my fiance at the young age of 20 and we both moved out immediately. We were both working full-time and we just put $2,000 on the credit card for furniture. Unfortunately, the very next day she had lost her job. Here I am, just married with my own place - single income of $9/h with an hour commute. You can spell out the rest, we weren't making it. Life was giving me a harder spanking than my dad ever had. I got a new job paying $10.50/h working night shift and that still didn't help much. Trucking was always on my mind, but I didn't believe in myself that I could do it. I even talked to my dad about it at one point and he shut me down, stating that I was too young and immature for trucking and I simply could not do the job. Being an electrician was his chosen profession for me, however that wasn't mine.

We moved back to my parents house and I felt like a complete loser. Overdue bills were still floating above our head like a rain cloud. This was my best chance.. trucking was my best chance.

I went to school with motivation and confidence to both re-obtain my Man Card and to get my own place again for us.

To read about my schooling experience, Click Here!

Then I switched to Prime Inc and had a great time there. To find out how much I made my first year, Click Here!. I have no thread of it, but I net 49k at Prime which was my second year of driving. For some reason, some folks have a hard time believing that I made that much but I can assure you guys, I know the difference between net and gross - and I net 49k at Prime my second year of driving. My third and final year of OTR was a lot better, but I won't post it because no one will believe it.

I have seen so many beautiful places in my life, I feel like I can write a book about it and still not run out of stories. I have made so many friends our there and on this site that my contacts page has tripled on my phone. OTR was amazing for me, it put me out of debt and gave me financial stability in my life. It showed me just how beautiful and awesome life really is and how fast it can be taken away. I walk differently, I talk differently, I think differently, trucking made me grow up. We bought a second vehicle and our bank account has enough in it to make me proud. And with hard work and patience, I finally landed a job where I'm home every day and that I can stay at for a very long time driving this beast

In conclusion, trucking isn't for everyone. We read a lot of negative views about trucking, too many if you ask me, but here's a positive one. This is what trucking did for me! Boy, it sure was a God-send to me!

This was a great read, thank you for sharing. I am looking to get into trucking as well, but much later in life than you did. I am going to be 50 in a few months so this is new territory for me. It's nice to read stories of success when making this decision, but ones that are not so pleasant are also needed to see both sides of the coin.

This is one of the most important areas of the website I think. I went straight from the Army to trucking after 16 years everything that a wartime Army can dish out, and I had volunteered for every crappy and difficult assignment that I could handle. Trucking has continuously humbled me on an hourly basis because NOTHING has ever seemed to qualify as predictable, regular, reliable, easy, etc. In my region, even the interstate isn't too reliable. Farmers have gotten the best of me, the asphalt in Canada will at times seem to attack you in your seat (think "intermittently paved"), I had to train a guy who just wasn't able to grasp how to properly feed straps into ratchets well at all, I've slipped off of a trailer at a shipper , I found a pile of gravel on my trailer at a truck stop once for some reason, I even had a truck that had the DEF tank on the passenger side of the tractor for whatever reason so I was constantly pumping DEF into a 5 gallon gas can so that I could get it into my DEF tank. What I learned is that you can really get a feel of how chaotic our society can seem and still function this well. I can say that trucking will make people and break people according to their own resilience and fortitude, and if any of us feels like we finally "made it" we should hand off the keys and clean out the truck.