I Was Offered A New Job Hauling Livestock In The Rockies

After hearing about my situation at home, a former supervisor of mine in Vegas contacted me. Her sister owns a small trucking company out west here hauling livestock. She has got me a job offer waiting, the pay is way better then I would make OTR , (49k+) after a year. I'm off every weekend because of their personal beliefs, I still earn extra home time for every five days I'm out. They will provide all the livestock handling training (I lived on a farm with 1600 head of cattle) and run late model trucks. I'm also forgot I will be home almost nightly. And last but not least them will pay off my student loans for my CDL school.

SCORE !!!

Just don't be crazy like the nuts on I-80...lol. Best of luck and be safe.

Personally, I couldn't haul livestock. I'd rather get out of the industry. I'm way too much of an animal lover. That, and my wife would kill me.

But good luck on the job and congrats! This is definitely the job that is absolutely golden for you since you have a child on the way.

(I lived on a farm with 1600 head of cattle

WHOA!!!! That's a lot!!! I have two head of cattle I raise every year for beef. That seems like waaaaaaay fewer than 1600!

That sounds like a sweet job! Congrats!

Personally, I couldn't haul livestock. I'd rather get out of the industry. I'm way too much of an animal lover. That, and my wife would kill me.

Raising animals for food doesn't mean you don't love animals. In fact it's often just the opposite. People who love animals want to raise animals. For people like myself who love animals and raise some ultimately for food it's obviously not about trying to make them live forever. It's about giving them the best life possible while they're here. It's also about taking the responsibility and burden upon yourself to help feed others. I donate close to 1,500 pounds of beef, chicken, and turkey every year for free to my friends and family, most of which have children to raise and are struggling financially to make ends meet. The meat I provide is 100% all natural and it's the best quality you can possibly get. No hormones, no antibiotics, no garbage. Just 100% natural feeds producing delicious, nutritious meat. The people I give it to simply couldn't afford it otherwise.

Nobody loves animals more than I do and I treat mine like gold. I raise my steers from the time they're four days old, my chickens and turkeys from two days old. I even bottle feed my calves twice a day for two months before they're finally off the bottle. These past two weeks we got blasted with real temps down to -14 and wind chills down to -50. I was out working in it trying to shore up the barn to keep the wind off the steers and even brought a few of the older, weaker hens and one rooster into the basement for a few days. You do what you have to do to make sure they're ok.

And it pains me when it's time to let them go just as it would anyone.

But life isn't always about doing what's easy. A society of people with a high standard of living depends heavily upon those who are willing to step up and do what's hard so that others may have it easier. I'm one of em that's willing to take on that burden. There's nothing easy about it. But when you see your nieces, nephews, your best friends, and all of their young children eating healthy foods they wouldn't have had otherwise it makes it all worth it.

You don't love animals too much to haul em. You're just too soft.

Someone should make a video like this for truckers. Truckers and farmers are probably the two most valuable and yet under appreciated workers you'll find anywhere.

The video is a classic and yes they should make one for truckers. I raise my cows for the same purpose as Brett and hate to see them go, but that is what they were raised for. Have a friend who hauls livestock and loves it, went with him once to see if it was something I would like to do, the only draw back is your load moves around alot, but would do if I could find someone to take on a soon to be a new driver. Just remember you have to wash that trailer out after most loads before you reload, specially if you don't just haul cows. Good Luck

I've loaded livestock...cows, and hogs...I don't mind driving the truck, washing it out...what I hated was getting in the trailer to close the belly door, or the upper deck ramp...its kinda dangerous...and the hogs...well...they ARE dangerous..carnivorous critters that they are....

That sounds like a deal and a half right there! Good luck to you!

I've always wanted to pull a bull rack but never had the opportunity. My uncle O/O's for L.W. Miller out of Logan, UT. He drove for them as a company hand for years before starting his own company. When I was in junior high, a lot of my summertime spending money came from washing out his trailer and laying fresh pine chips down between loads of cattle and hogs.

Brett, there's absolutely nothing wrong with what you're doing. That's what it's about, give the animal a great home until it's his time to be eaten. You're not a mill that feeds his animals strictly with hormones for faster growth. So let me elaborate, there's nothing wrong with farmers or with what you're doing. My family had a giant farm in Russia filled with animals. Those are my roots and I very much love the idea of living in a farm!

My problem stands with the large corporations like Cargill. The animal is born into a small dirt field vastly overpopulated with diseased and sick animals. Then gets transported in a steel cage with no room to even stretch a leg. Then it's heartlessly slaughtered.

That's not showing a love for animals, that's cruelty. There is no highlight to a cows life unless it's being raised by an independent farmer.

That's exactly why I refuse to haul animals. They've had a terrible life where they're basically injected so that they can become too fat for their joints to hold them up. And then I'm going to transport them to a slaughter house. I will not have a role.

It's interesting the directions these threads take some time, but I just had to jump in here and say that most of the stories you hear from animal rights activist groups are so extreme and out of the ordinary that you can't lump all the commercial meat raisers into the stereotypes that they try to present. I was in the cattle business at one point in my life. Had a partner in East Texas and we raised cattle for beef production on a local farm. We never injected our cattle with growth hormones, and we also discovered that very few of the other producers we knew did that either, but the stories you hear are that everyone does that and mistreats their animals just so they can make gobs of money off of the innocent animals who have no control over their miserable lives.

We had a bout 800 cows and sold just about that many calves each year strictly for beef production. Our cows lived on a beautiful spacious farm, drank water from clear running streams, and were so tame that they would come running up to us to get rubbed on the head or the back anytime they saw us approach one of the pastures. They would eat right out of our hands, and were never afraid of us because they knew from experience that we would treat them right. I have some great memories and stories from those years with my girls out there bottle feeding calves whose mothers had dried up for some unknown reason. I use to love watching the calves skipping about and running and playing in the fields on a cool morning. They have such a comical way of running around with their tail held up high as if they were saluting the morning sun with their gay antics in the field. I can't tell you how many nights I couldn't sleep because we had a pregnant cow in labor somewhere and having trouble with her delivery. I've pulled many a calf out of it's struggling mothers uterus thereby saving both the calf and the mother from an agonizing death. I've worked so hard at delivering a calf that I was totally given out and barely able to get to my feet after the whole experience was finished. I once built a sled so that I could roll a cow on to it that was cripple after giving birth, and drug her up to a pen in the shade where I had built a sling for body so she could be up on her feet with the sling supporting most of her weight until she could get over the temporary paralysis. I brought her food and water every day and massaged her legs to keep the circulation moving until she finally got better after about two weeks of being supported in that sling.

Most people involved in animal husbandry care very deeply about their animals and will do just about anything for their welfare. It's kind of like all the B.S. you hear about trucking companies, once you've actually been exposed to it you understand what the truth is and how it really works. Well I can tell you that most of that garbage you hear about mistreated animals is from just a few places and it is not rampant in the industry.