Is it possible

it all depends on what you really want to do. if the carrier is 80 miles (one way), and offers good pay, benefits, schedule, i say why not?

but to me, that's only if it is with a sleeper truck, doing line haul, OR regional, that way you don;t kill your ride with all those miles if it were a daily P&D work day.

 

I don't think so, I just left LTL doing a 35 mile commute in each direction, and while that's not really that bad of a drive, those nights on the bottom of the board where you're sitting at the hub for 2-4 hours before returning (resulting in coming within an hour of your 14), the drive home was almost more miserable than the trip back from the hub.

I can't imagine the misery of it being 160m round trip for work though, unless you're coming in at top scale for UPS (not UPS Freight) as a permanent driver, but even then, you're living to work and have little chance of just working to live.

 

I live 72 miles from my terminal and commute back and forth every day. Depending on the price of gas it will cost me around $12 a day. It takes me between 1:07 to 1:15 on a normal day to get in to work. I run 618 miles on my linehaul bid. It's well worth what I get paid to make the commute.

 

Personally I couldn’t do it, unless maybe it was a regional gig. Even then, I’d be looking to move closer because you’ll get stuck covering a home daily bid at some point and might eventually bid on one.

I’ve always had a short commute to every job I’ve ever had. Right now it’s about 20 minutes and that pushes the limits of what I can stand, even though I make great money. I think I just put a higher value on my free time than most people.

 

Before you apply to a company read their driver requirements. Some carriers such as Estes, require the applicant to live within 50 miles of the servicing terminal they are applying.

 

Funny that you mention that. About halfway through my time at FXF, after I had begun developing friendships with the guys on the road board, there was one guy that became someone for me to look up to.

This driver, a driver of over 40 years and in his sixties, has spent his life doing all kinds of tractor trailer work, and the last 20 years of his career has been within LTL freight. He's a bit of a curmudgeon, comes to work every day cleanly shaven, hair Brylcreemed and wears the button down woven uniform shirts. His tractor is immaculate from bumper to pintle hook, the interior in showroom condition at all times. The exterior routinely cleaned twice a week at the hub's washbay that drivers aren't supposed to use. City dispatch doesn't put city drivers in his tractor because they don't want to hear him gripe about a city driver that wants to drive with their greasy or diesel soaked gloves on. His pre and post trip routines are extensive, and he makes no bones about being willing to give drivers a butt chewing if he is dispatched the next day with a trailer that a driver brought back the day before with a blown air bag that wasn't reported.

That man took a liking to me for one reason or another, and during the course of him taking me under his wing and teaching me so many things that I'd never thought to seek to learn, he made a point to keep drilling in me to "work to live, don't live to work" when he would see that I would always take extra work, and run run run.

It wasn't until he began to preach this to me, that I learned to value my off time as a driver, and I'm forever grateful that he did, because the quality of my professional life skyrocketed from there.

 

I wouldn't commute that far. It's not just the time you spend driving to work, it's also the wear and tear on your vehicle. I think more than 30 minutes is too much.

My daily commute to work is about 15 minutes and 14 miles round trip.