16 year old wanting to be a trucker

Another piece of of EXCELLENT advice that you may really need to heed: Do NOT get a lady pregnant unless you married her and she is your wife.

While this is a PERSONAL choice, it may be advisable to remain single for some years while persuing your dream to drive a truck, especially over the road, (OTR). Many OTR truck drivers who are married, especially those with children, have had serious family issues due to their long periods of being away from home.

If you should end up getting a lady pregnant, this could put a severe damper on any of your dreams and ambitions. By law, you will be saddled with child support payments for 18 to 21 plus years.

I personally never had this happen to me. However, I do know a few men who are legally forced to meet mandatory child support payments, ranging from one to several children, sometimes from several different women. It is an EXTREMELY tough situation for these men.

If any of these men even as much as misses one of their child support payments, they run the risk of being sent to prison.

Believe it or not, some employers do NOT want to hire a man saddled with mandatory child support payments.

Good luck!

God bless you and your family! God bless the U.S.A.!

 

LOL, stay single... thats some really good advice!!! I'm divorced and it will cost me money for another 5 years... Have girlfriends, as many as you want!!! Just take care of yourself first.

Okay, one thing that you can do at age 16 is to go around to the trucking businesses in your area and see if you can make friends with them and do some odd jobs around the yard or in the shop. Back when I was your age I would help out some people for free or even for some trade because I either liked what they were doing or was interested in the stuff. One good thing about doing that is that you get to see the real thing and how it really works, it won't take long to decide if you like it or not.

Keep your driving record clean. My only two tickets in life were collected when I was 16 y.o. One for a crash and one for a improper pass..no more tickets after that. And whatever you do do not drink and drive and don't mess with weed or anyother illegal substance, that will DQ you like quick.

I did not like college much so I joined the Air Force (Michigan guard) at age 19 and went into their security forces, that was super helpful in my career plus I am a veteran now and learned a lot. I know there are a lot of drivers who get trained in the military. Might be worth a shot doing a 6 year enlistment in one of the services. Get a big GI BILL together, all the drivers training you can handle and get paid for all of it. I'm sure you could do that as a guardsman or reservist too. Just some ideas.

 

Hey guys, wouldn't it have been great to ...
1. have the brains to ask the op's quedtion in the first place...
2. get the very good realworld advice posted you gave...
and,
most importantly...
3. Have the brains to actually follow that advice?

Y'all have a great Easter!
Mary

 

The best advise that I can give to a young person that wants to get into truck driving is to make sure you keep yourself out of trouble. Do not get a ton of traffic tickets, DUI's, wear your seat belt all of the time. Dont get yourself into a "bad situation" that gets you into legal trouble. When you actually go to pursue a truck driving career these things can really come back to bite you. The first thing that a trucking company will do is check your driving record and run a background check.

 

I'd have to disagree. I enjoy those episodes of Maury.

 

Yeah, hindsight works really well when a person hits senior citizen status... LOL
Kudos to the kid, good luck!
Y'all have a great day!
mary