HEY GANG:

I'm a man that would love getting into trucking at age 56. I was a welder for 33 yrs and if I had not had surgery on my neck I would still be doing just that as I really loved the trade. At age 50 I went back to school and became of all things a nurse LPN. I am such a people person that it was a perfect fit. But most of the nursing bosses are women and we think all different than the gals. If it makes any sense at all they won't do it unless they think of it first which they seldom do. Don't judge me yet I have been married to a wonderful woman for 36 yrs. But it's a fact that guys and gals do things different. I am hearing of the shortage in drivers and it's hard as hell to even get a listen from a recruiter unless they are wanting the big money from some Training school. I know the benefit of school as it took me a solid year, 8 hrs. a day 5 days a week just to get my LPN. I have applied to several firms to get help with my CDL training and maybe it will happen soon. I am more than willing to pay my dues to be a better than average driver. I have not had a moving violation in 30 yrs. and no wrecks in over 10 yrs and that one was not my fault. No DUI or DWI's and no felonies or misdemeanors. My health is better than average, and I can go and go like the energizer bunny.My work record sucks as nursing was a real change and challenge and my longest employment is 1 1/2 yrs. and 1 yr before that, but my 2 last welding jobs were 7 and 9 yrs in length. If any of ya'll can help or forward to your recruiter or company it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

catfisher56

LPN ?????? your name wouldn't be Gaylord Focker would it ?.................lol

Catfisher:

Try Schneider National. They train. You don't pay unless you stay for less than a year. If you leave you get to pay them back. Unless you are a California person. Then, starting May 1 (unless it has been changed) they will payroll deduct $12.50 per week for one year ($640). If you stay the year, you get the money back.

dave

Prime Inc out of Springfield, MO also has a CDL school. That's where I got my training, been out here 4 years lovin it. At that time they loaned you $120 for basic expenses while you got your CDL, then they took that out at $20 a week. Training was one on one with an experienced instructor. You only paid for the school if you quit before a year. They also have a company side and lease side available now. I'm on the lease side and made $100,000+ take home last year running team with my son.
I truely believe that trucking companies are like shoes - there are many sizes and styles you must decide which fits you.
Good Luck

Now, was that $100K total net towards the truck or $100K net to each of you? Either way not bad.

Susan and I now thinking that maybe she will go to local community college to get LVN (LPN in many states) while I go back to college (I have a BA in Urban Studies and a Master of Public Administration Degree) and take several upper division history classes (and/or social studies). Then continue on and get single subject teaching credential.

Univ. of Montana has what they Northern Plains Transition to Teaching Program. Instead of taking the year long program on a full time basis then getting a teaching job, in this program you take the first three required classes. Then you get Montana temporary teaching license and find a full time teaching job. during the first year of teaching you go ahead and finish up the rest of the teacher training courses online. If one stays in the program for three years, teacher training program becomes free. If you leave during the second or third years repayment is prorated. Anyway, after the first year after completion of the training classes, you get regular full Montana license (or license for Motana or South Dakota).

Program is designed to get teachers into the more remote, rural, poorer school districts (program is designed for where at least 20% of the students live below the poverty line). This way the schools have teachers and it enables more student teachers to earn their full licenses.

Right now, if I do this, need to apply to Cal-State San Bernardino to enroll in the necessary history and/or social studies classes (about 40 units for history, don't know how many for social studies).

dave

dave

Good topic, good thread.

Would I or wouldn't I?

I think it depends on how far back I can go. I often wonder if I could have wound up in a better place if I had made better choices along the way, but then I also look around, and wonder what I have now that I would lack if I had made those other choices.

Life is a complicated game.

I'm going through the whole love/hate thing very much first-hand right at the moment. I got into trucking as an emergency measure, to try to provide a "real" income for my family, so we could buy a house, have cable TV, and all that jazz. It worked. I got in with a good gig for a family guy, where I was only spending 2-3 nights on the road, almost never four, and kept my days full to where I only had one chunk of wasted layover time out on the road every other week. The pay was on the low side, but it had the right balance to keep me there for 10 years, even though I constantly thought about going somewhere else.

I can't say I was exactly happy doing it, but I didn't exactly hate it. Mostly, I could just come home, throw my briefcase in the trunk, and forget all about it until about an hour before time to leave again. There were few surprises, and I did a lot of living in between working. I was very content at home, and largely successful at compartmentalizing my life so that the two versions of me didn't think about each other very much.

There in the last year, however, I made a serious bid to get out of the truck and into the office side of the business. I'm not sure how much of that was me, and how much my family wanting to get me home every day, and off the road. Even though I wasn't on the road nearly as much as most, I still missed most birthdays, concerts, PTA meetings, etc., and it always seemed I was gone when something came up. I published a book in the interim, and I thought that book might be my ticket out of trucking, and that was the lever I used to try to get into the office with that comany. I thought I had the job, but "two weeks from now" never came, and I eventually wound up out on the street like everybody else. We all got laid off, and my decision was made for me. Time to move on.

So I sat out here for six weeks, putting in applications for everything and anything I felt I could remotely A) live on, and B) talk my way into. Out of dozens of hours spent tweaking up résumés for IT jobs, writing jobs, dispatching/safety jobs, etc., I only got one job interview. I felt like it went well. At the same time that was going on, I got a phone call about a dedicated run. I had to play to win both games simultaneously. I had to go through all the company BS to get set up to go back to driving, and I had to wear the tie and talk like a highly educated professional to try to get that job. I fit right in, and I felt like I belonged there, and came away from the interview feeling like I had nailed it.

At the time, I felt more than a little bit of the lure of the road, and I felt like since I was having to cave in and wade through all this BS to get the driving job, I might as well just do what I can do and make the best of it. It was novel, because I had never driven for a "real company" before, but just a weird little niche outfit that fell through a lot of cracks.

So I was more than half hoping that job I interviewed for wouldn't call me back, and that I could just forget my tie and my 9-5 lifestyle daydreams, whoop whoop truck it up and live happily ever after as a freight jockey. That was four weeks ago and change. I'm in the middle of week five of my return to trucking right now, and my thoughts have gradually been shifting the other way, and I'm starting to regret that the other job never called me back, and wishing I had been able to make a clean break after all.

I think maybe what I want to do is be a weekend truck driver. I like driving a truck, but I hate working 70 hours a week. I'm getting home every night on this current gig, but my future is perpetually uncertain. The bottom could fall out any minute, and may have just fallen out already. I'm sitting on a load right now I can't deliver because the two people on the ends of my run are fighting about something. Every day this week has been messed up, and the air just doesn't smell right. My fight or flight instinct is telling me to run before I get stuck running the system, and staying out who knows how long, which is not what I came over here to do. I never have done that in my entire career, and I have no desire to start now.

If this falls through, where can I go from here? 10 years and a clean driving record isn't enough to get you a phone call from one of the LTL companies around here. I see young guys working there, and I don't know what the trick is, but I'm not going to get in the front door certain enough. I'm at a point in my career where I feel like I should at least have a "real job" as a driver, but I don't see a way to get one. It's all the same old schlock I never wanted anything to do with, which kept me at that first company so long. Long days on the road, long hours of sitting around waiting on people to do something so you can get cut loose, pay that works out to $8 an hour for all the hours you actually have to spend tied up with the job to earn it.

After a year or three of experience, it's all the same. Most of the stuff on this and other forums talks about how great the pay is for people with low experience. Well what about the people with lots of experience? The problem with this business is you hit the ceiling fast, and there you are at the ceiling forever. There's no such thing as a regular 3% good performance raise in this business. You go up fast in the first three years or so, and then that's that. Now you're on a slow descent, watching your earning power decrease in inverse proportion to inflation and the rising cost of living. Everything goes up but your paycheck, and there are only so many ways to make your paycheck fatter. Work longer, do more dangerous work, etc., and even there you will still eventually find a ceiling sooner than later.

I can say I've definitely gotten all the mystery and adventure back out of my system, and I'm just doing what I have to do.

Would I do it all over again?

I'd like to go back and slap myself for ever having this hare brained idea. It did work, but this business is slow quicksand, and if you're a deep and contemplative sort like me, it erodes your very soul the longer you do it.

But what else could I be doing to earn this much money?

Sigh.

That's why all my plans for the future involve getting things to a point where I can survive on a third of what I make now, and only work 40 hours like a normal human being.

Then maybe I get sick of it and go back driving. Who knows. This stuff is a lot like cigarettes. They hook you, make you crave them, and they slowly kill you from the inside.

There's a bright and happy thought on this morose Wednesday if there ever was one. I have trouble believing the more up-beat me and this me I am at the moment are the same person too, but today I'm definitely a glum chum.

Silvan that was a very good post. I understand your frustration. I just left Landstar a very solid company, sold my truck, sold the house and moved 700 miles to take a local job that requires a lot of physical labor in an effort to be home with my wife.

One thing for certain every thing we've been thru the last few weeks both of us must have wanted me home pretty bad. This has not been easy. Both in terms of physical and emotional stress. I had lived in the previous area for 12 yrs. Its where I had bought my first house and had a bunch of good friends and most of my family ties. My wife had been there for 3 yrs.

Keep your chin up and keep looking, I hope some thing comes along that works out for you.

__________________

Thanks. Me too. I really do think part time trucking would be my holy grail. I like trucking, but I don't really want to have to work this many hours. That's what drags me down (that and all the gray hair I have trying to resist Mother Nature's attempt to kill me.) I had a couple unexpected unpaid vacation days, and today felt great getting back out there. Problem is when I run straight through every day next week to make this up, I'm going to be a glum chum again come Friday.

Good luck to you and the wife making your own deal work out for you!

Ive been running long haul for 30 some years and even seeing the changes in the industry I would still do it all over again

Yesterday Susan and I talked with a Swift driver at a Carl's Jr. here in Moreno Valley. I asked him how long he has been driving...eight years. Took his training in Dallas with Schneider and drove for two or three years. Got fired because he decided to bring home to his daughter a little puppy and Schneider found out so they canned him. He tried a couple of other companies but settled in with Swift for past few years. Been married three times. Trained his second wife to drive...still got divorced.
Right now he delivers those intermodal tailers (or whatever you call them) between LA county ports and out to Phoenix. He also does the triangle between Calif, Arizona, and Nevada. Sometimes out to Dallas. He spoke highly of Swift, not too highly of CR England and Heartland.He said he likes it, that driving is addicting...at least to him.

He felt that for learning the two best companies to go with are either Schneider or Swift. Also, he felt that best companies to drive for are Schneider and Swift, primarily due to their large size (yes, you can get lost in the shuffle) and large freight volume. He also felt that those who complain on the websites are people who probably complain about things anyway, would complain regardless of what type of jobs they have.

Appraisal business seems to be tanking. Only did three appraisals last week (must average five per week to break-even) and I have to refund one of those (turns out house is on lot zoned Lt. Industrial, so needs to be appraised by a General appraiser not a residential appraiser). I fee-split with about 12 appraisers scattered around the state and they are all saying that volume has almost died. After talking with the Swift driver I called and left a message with the Schneider recruiter that I have been talking with for him to re-schedule or visit to the Fontana terminal for May 16 (Susan is taking that week off from work). If appraisal volume fails to get back to normal within about two weeks, will have to go ahead and apply to Schneider.

dave

dave