Hello Truckers,

I am a 22 year old vocalist/performer who has been trying to find something to do financially to fund my music career. OTR trucking sounds REALLY appealing because basically my company is paying for my fuel to go to all 48 states. Now, being that I am not extremely familiar with trucking lifestyle, I was hoping some experienced truckers could tell me whether or not my envisioned lifestyle is realistic or not. I will be signing with Schneider as a tanker company operator by the way(possibly dry van too).

Here is my envisioned scenario.

-I will drive roughly 10 hours a day leaving 6 for sleeping. That leaves me with 8 hours a day to do with as I please.
-Being that I will be traveling from state to state, I planned to spend my nights at the local cities, performing my album songs and selling my demo cds.
-At the end of the night I sleep my 6 hours and repeat the drive cycle again.

Is this realistic? Do you think I can properly market myself across the areas I am delivering to? Do you think I will have enough time to do this? Or is there some hidden scenario I may be leaving out?

Your song is very nice. Driving and performing is a difficult mix. A lot of the time that you are expecting to be able to perform, you are going to be sitting at a shipper waiting to be loaded. Or you will be running around town trying to find an empty trailer. I am not saying that it cannot be done. It isn't going to be easy. You may have to save your performing for when you have hometime.

I will soon be a newbie to trucking. I can only hope to do well and prosper in this very difficult occupation. I imagine it will tax my toughness, both physicaly and mentaly. So when I'm asked if you can "market yourself properly" as a performer, I am taken aback a bit. I don't know you, try not to judge people. Who knows, you maybe a better man than me. But I really take it hard when you suggest you maybe able to drive truck as a cash horse to support your entertainment career. I'm gunna sit back and listen to what others have to say. But in any case, i wanna wish you luck. And I do admire your ambition. Music lover and all.

I guess I jumped the gun. i thought maybe you were thinking about performing on the road as well. This makes a hug diff, and I apologize. That said, I think you will absolutly have an opportunity to do some marketing. The question is to what degree. Once again, good luck and look forward to hearing more on this.

Will I have the same problem of wasted time waiting for unloading and loading if I drive a tanker instead of a dry van? Or will driving the tanker eliminate this problem and allow for me to use my nights for performances and marketing?

Couple thoughts here:

I think Schneider will pushing you to drive 11 hours a day and work up to 14.

You will likely run out of hours in places far away from cities where you could market your songs.

In cities, how would you be getting to the places to market and perform your songs?

As I understand, trucking is a 70/hour per week job. I would probably want a job that took less hours each week to concentrate more on my true passion.

Best of luck!