I am a 48-yo retired Navy vet who holds numerous college degrees, blah, blah, blah. Since childhood, I've been fascinated with driving long-haul. Now that I've raised my family, am now divorced, and will be relocating to Memphis from Seattle in a couple of weeks to start over, I've been thinking seriously about actually going through truck driver training and hitting the road.

Before I head in that direction, however, I was wondering if I could get some honest feedback from experienced long-haulers out there as to whether or not I should follow through. Would it even be possible for me to ride shotgun for awhile just to see if this would be the life for me?

Help me out people, please...

On this part I can say it would be a big NO... for the simple reason that the majorety of the companies out there do not want the liability.it would not be up to driver.

To boil it down to the basics long haul driving is hours and days isolated from most if not all contact from all contact to the outside. You said you retired from the Navy...Would it be from subs? Thats the closest thing I can think of...

I'm retired Navy as well, so I can give you some info on starting out in this business. First thing is to go back through some of the previous posts on here and read through them. There is an awful lot of good info that hads been posted previously, and it may answer a lot of your questions. It may take a little bit of time and sitting at the screen, but the effort is werll worth it. From there, you should have enough info to come back with specific questions, and we can take it from there.

Feel free to PM me, and I'll go into more detail. But read through the old posts first, there's such a wealth of info there.

I was in orientation with a guy from that northwest area, he had just moved to the Carolina's 'cause there was not much trucking work up there.
However, if you think about a career in trucking you must have the ability to handle a lot of responablity, the first thing that you will notice is everybody has an opinion aboout what you should be doing. I was a graduate in 1998, drove for three companies over ten months and decided trucking was not for me. I recently started driving again with a good company that has good equipment and I have a differrent attitude now. I found it was needed to make more money and trucking has allowed my wife to retire and take care of her mother. I get all the work I can handle and I am home almost every weekend, most of the time if I do not make it home is 'cause I messed up. Trucking over the road provides a good venue to talk to poeple about places to live, we are going to move soon, and we are not sure where we are going. Trucking has changed a little but most of the time if you do your homework and pay attention to detail you won't have any trouble, do your paper work and keep your mirrors, windows and lights clean,.good luck if you climb aboard. drive55cat

Company I was driving for before (small outfit) wouldn't even let my wife ride shotgun due to the insurance ...

Retired, divorced and relocating. You sound like a good candidate to me.

I hope he made up his mind by now.... this thread is almost 2 years old