CROSSROADS IN LIFE

Well written stories are always good to read, keep us posted.

 

I'll have to agree with you and why I hit the thanks button on his original post.

 

I did two years. Hats off for going 7. Easily the hardest job ever. And I once spent a year being lowered in silos on a home made rig with a wooden seat to scrape rotting flour from the sides...

 

Personally, I'd get EVERY endorsement (perhaps not a passenger) AND your TWIC card. Make yourself more marketable and earn the most money possible. Of course, you will see other folks that do OK without endorsements. Except for Haz Mat, they're yours once you have them. Just my opinion.

 

Good for you. Keep us all updated.

 

Good luck in your pursuits Sgfulton! I would encourage you to reread your posts especially about the stay at home part! Read it as if someone else wrote it and offer them advice. Sounds like typical boredom from your post? I would offer to look at anything local and part time in my opinion! Remember that credit card commercial a few years back? Well being with your kids as they grow truly is "Priceless"! Trucking is great don't get me wrong but I was encouraged to wait until my youngest Graduated and I'm glad I did! Also continued to follow Chinatowns advice about Tankers and that's were I ended up in Drybulk.

 

I carried everything except Doubles and we had no TWIC prior to 9-11 go right up to the Ship or nuclear reactor etc.

I did deliberately discard the hazmat endorsement after abuse and verbal mistreatment from a dispatcher in or about 2000 when one city required me to take the hazmat bypass which adds about 40 minutes plus traffic to the problem, plus another 20 plus miles (Key Bridge, baltimore rather than the tunnels, the other option is the 3/4 loop round west and north side beltway)

If a dispatcher loses his #### over a hours inconvience following a law everyone knows about it's time to find another company. But I chose to discard the endorsement. I hauled the stuff enough over the years there was nothing more left for me to it anyhow. The ... novelty or excitement has gone out of it. No joy in it anymore. Plus it removes nasty dispatchers.

It's best to have all your endorsements and there is one more.... Manual Transmission. Some states put a restriction against your CDL if you tested in a Automatic. That really limits your usefulness as a trucker. SO if you have done nothing but automatic and have that restriction, go back and take a manual truck, retake the test to show the state you can drive one and remove that restriction.

There will always now and into the future a additional value if not actual pay given to truckers who are not restricted to just Autos. The Carriers have been buying auto trucks since the late 1990's as a way to get more people recruited and to eliminate the hassle of teaching people who wont learn or cannot drive at all with a manual for a variety of reasons. It backfired on them when States started to write restrictions on CDL for strictly automatic.

We run autos once or twice in our time it was useful to get the spouse rolling as a team that first year but her next company had a 13 speed. And for her it was a learning process with tears to match and a problem for me to teach her. She learned eventually. But she would never be a precision shifter. And it's nothing against her personally at all, she'll get it down the road but it's not pretty. I suppose in time if she drove long enough the precision part will come along when she got good.

 

That's the correct answer.
When I pulled reefers, was the highest paid driver every year because I was the only driver with hazmat endorsement. While the other drivers were waiting for a refrigerated load, I was rolling down the highway with a hazmat load; maybe spray paint, fingernail polish, etc.