local driver misses the otr driving

I guess each carrier might do it differently, but for us line haul is 100 times less stressful than P&D. My daily deliveries are just filled with stressful deadlines I gotta meet before people shut down. And bringing undelivered freight back cause you burned up the clock is highly frowned upon where I work. Even worse when you don't make a pickup.

Only issue I had with line was dealing with the chaotic winter weather and chaining up. As for waiting... Yeah, 1-3 hours of waiting at a terminal for my meet driver was fairly common.

Those $20 for each hour waiting helped ease the sting just a little bit... I am an expensive date... I used to charge wait time as soon as my last trailer was disconnected.

 

Running out and back, out and back, same roads and route every day? Sounds like torture. Plus what Big Don said.

 

What he said. The way they use that word. You have to earn the right to be at your own house. Makes you feel less than human sometimes

Trucking has this whole grass always greener problem. Op, trust me, you will be much happier making an hourly wage for all delays that pop up and being home at night vs the thrill of otr.

Example: picked up a 600 mile run yesterday and ran out of hours with 200 miles left. In the morning send in an eta to the company complete with how many hours I will have when empty. Later get a load buzzed out that picks up tomorrow at 11 and delivers at 21:00 same day. 250 miles. So for 2 full days of being away from home (with a cold) I get paid for 450 miles or about 200 bucks.

I have a wife and 2 kids and we are on food stamps. Behind on a few bills. Almost got electric shut off the other week. For the love of God op, stick to the local gig

I can't wait to make the change to ltl

 

that is because at one LTL i worked at, doing linehaul, they had a policy that the shipping was free if it was late.

i'd still prefer line haul or like what i have now, a regular dedicated account, over going back long haul.

 

This post sums up why LTL linehaul generally pays so well.

 

You what sounds like to torture to me? Sleeping 3 feet away from where you work while sleeping 1000+ miles away from where you actually live.

I had a friend that spent three days in a parking lot somewhere in New Jersey waiting on a load. His home terminal in Cali shut down early on a Friday for the fourth of July weekend so his dispatchers and office people could spend time with their families. "Call back Monday" they said.

Just that thought alone makes me happy I return to my own bed each night.

 

Our terminal didn't have a 24 hour shop. In fact those guys have bankers hours! Anyway, the point to this post is to agree with you about not only trusting what is on paper but also trusting someone else to set you up correctly. We had three line haul runs that left during night hours, when nobody but that driver was there. Created definite problems when linehaul's petrip came up with mechanical problems. Particularly for the two heading towards Vegas, considering the scales at state line.
So they started having the local guys set up the combos and do the pretrip (Of course, in theory, the line haul driver would also do a petrip before leaving.) Maybe they did, maybe they didn't. Don't know as nobody else was around.
But I always did think it made a driver too dependent on someone else. I always figured that with it being my backside on the line, I'd rather not have to do that.

 

Some of you people must work for some terrible companies. Good thing all OTR companies aren't like you people describe. And I'm glad I've found a pretty good one. 65k last year. Probably about that this year. Home when I want to be. Within reason, for as many days at a time as I want to be. Good trucks, plenty of loads. Often with a choice of where I want to go, depending on what's available. Oh, and they'll hire you too, if your worth hiring, anyway.

 

Just like anything else, RR. Some people like salad, others prefer soup. OTR has It's problems, just like local does. It's all in what a person enjoys, or at least is used to. I enjoyed my OTR time, even though it wasn't very long.
But I understand where the OP is coming from. Sometimes I'd get that urge, particularly when I'd make a delivery to a company shop, at an outfit I had enjoyed working for.
Sometimes situations change, and you have to adjust...