If you don't recommend trucking then what?

Trade school if anything. Welders/plumbers/electricians can do a wide variety of ownership/employed work.

 

If I did it all over again it would be plumbing or electrical. Probably electrical. You can pay yourself by working on your own house, and do cash jobs on the side. Just look at Nextdoor or your neighborhood Facebook group, people are constantly looking for recommendations for trade people. Nobody's looking for a trucker recommendation. That could be a lot of cash straight into the pocket, plus there's always the possibility of running into a hot soccer Mom.

 

Depending on your age and your hands on abilities The trades is an excellent career choice. 2009 housing/mortgage fiasco forced me back in to trucking. my $34. An hr job went away permanently. Spent 18 swinging a hammer i found it very enjoyable work. Journeyman in the trades today are around $45-50 an hr

 

Problem is we don't know where you are in life and how old you are. My recommendation is if you are just starting out say you are in your early 20's ,.dont have a family give it a shot. You got a girlfriend or significant other..? Hit the road a few years, stack that cash live in your truck and enjoy.
If you are married, got kids? Forget it until you retire or get older and your kids are grown. Now on the other hand..if you are married...got kids etc..get your experience, go otr...for a bit, get your experience, then get a local ltl type job with a company like Old Dominion,.Estes,.etc, where you get good benefits and be home more with your family. We just don't know enough about your current situation to guide you in the right direction.

 

If ya wanna stay in a rig, and learn a new trade, there is always heavy wrecking.

But ya gotta be half dern crazy already to enjoy wreckin', I am older so I run a light/medium rollback, and I love it.

 

I was told to never become a driver. Nobody never told me why I shouldn't drive a truck though. Trucking is all about what an individual makes of it. I've come to learn that ones who discourage trucking seem to be the ones that can't adapt to change.

 

How do you watch sports for money?

 

In person. Data stuff and scouting.
I posted some pics over in the cfi thread the past few years.

 

I would recommend trucking. Just like any job it has good and bad things. If someone thinks they need to get paid every hour just because they are not home. You might not like trucking because you don't usually get paid to sleep or taking showers on the road.

Technology has help trucking and took any some of the fun. Automatic transmissions are nice. ELDs took some of the freedom away but also help stopped some of the abuse of driving longer hours or what ever it took to get delivered on time. People seem to forget we never got paid for detention time. We use to sit 5-6 hours to load or unload for free.

Remember when satellite radio was new and driving cross country and listen to same radio station was unbelievable. Now people are like Satellite radio is to expensive. When we can stream every song available for $10 a month or download podcast. I like talk radio but their not much talk radio on today like we use to have.

If you were single and no kids driving cross country was an adventure seeing different states. Experiencing the difference weather. We use to just idle the trucks all night for heat or a/c. Diesel was like $0.85 a gallon when I started. No Apu's, no idle laws to worry about.

The roads seemed a lot smoother then today from what I remember. If you are in your 20s you have unlimited energy and can drive 11and 14 every day. Before ELDs the company could not see when your 10 hour break was up and complain saying you should not be taking 10+ hours off.

Truck stops had 24 hours restaurants even buffet. Today since COVID and ELDs nobody has time stop for restaurant since most closed but with 14 hour and ELDs you can't really stop and lose that driving time also. So there is more pressure to keep driving every day.

 

Combine them. Get folks liquored up and then check their blood alcohol.