How much do you spend a week to live on the road solo?

Simple answer: buy/prepare as much food beforehand as possible. Eat fresh food and don't just drive and sleep, move around as much as possible when stopped. Get a 12v cooler if no fridge. Buy as little as possible a the truck stops. If you get fast food stick to the little sandwiches.
Good luck.

 

Yup...I used to work making $100k/yr. Had one guy so cheap. All he ever ate for lunch was cheese sandwiches. He didn’t have much of a retirement.

 

I'm with @tucker. Including smokes and drinks.

 

This is spot on. I think one if the "perks" of being over the road is being able to go out and eat America. So many great places to eat out here I couldn't imagine not leaving my truck to get out and eat some good food. Of course I dont mind walking a little bit either. Its generally well worth it.

I have a refrigerator in my truck and the only thing in it is water.

 

Food worked out to around 7000 a year give or take.

In later years we depended on one day each week three complete meals properly fixed in a quality eating place. The rest was food taken from walmart once every 6 weeks give or take a week including 10 to 20 gallons of water. This was for two people with a complete cooking kit etc. Fridge was the most important, that one held food temporarily and a big improvement over excessively expensive food in the old days.

Keep in mind food prices went up also. When I started it was probably in the range of 4 to 6 dollars for a good big breakfast which easily now would run almost 20.

People talk about making annual income, I prefer to consider the losses to food, fluids and necessary hygiene etc. on the road. I also recalled that Petro and others were very patient replacing burnt out cooking kits with new ones free according to warrantry so that kept our cost down. The inverter came in handy as being able to make hot water in a short time or coffee which worked out to less than 16 cents a cup compared to what? 2.00 or more? It was supplemented by hot water from the coffee pots inside the truckstop etc which generally were free in several thermoses.

The things we have today, microwave etc did not exist in my time until late. That was the one item we did not have room for and still relied on a case of MRE's from online sourcing to support the monthly or two monthly tours out on the road. Usually we would get home for a week or two time off and by the time we pulled the food etc we had plenty to carry us over. Then it was restocking time.

We tried to cook certain things that came out of the two dutch ovens in a proper way that takes most of a day to cook and two to eat on. It has a meat item, a green and a potato of some sort in a form easily stored and kept until needed. The meats were the most perishable and usually gone in less than a week. I think we bought quality meats where possible. Virginia Mt Vernon comes to mind west of Alexandria. You can chop on that ham for a period of time.

Shippers supplied candy (MM Mars, Waco and Jersey) and other shippers were generous with food items that are pretty good. Even today we still talk about some of that apple from Yakima Washington for 15 cents a pound and salsa for free. And so on. Weight gain was a possibility even though we worked really hard.

Once in a great while a storm in the mountains will come up and slow things down. Many people in their cars have nothing. It would be a little something to be generous and feed them where possible. That helped them alot for morale etc. By the time 30 or more people have had something to get through the evening we still had plenty left over.

Smokes were Kings Mountain SC exclusively. You could legally take 299 cartons out of there provided they all have the stamps on each packs out of them. But we did not need that many, just a few menthols for the bums in certain areas that did not smoke regulars as well.

 

Ramen, bottled water, Gatorade, dried meats, 12v water boiler, granola bars, peanuts, assorted sugar free candies (quitting smoking), and powdered drink mix for the waters when I need variety. Costs? About $20-30. Eating out only on rare occasions or when I’m sickly and just want to chow and pass out. Most of the truck stop food is barely passable as food nowadays, fast food or otherwise.

 

No more and no less then I needed.

 

The biggest downside to ramen is the hypertension.

 

Or having to eat them all the time.
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There could be prisoners in Michigan City or even Turkey reading this thread in the rec room who are laughing at how terrible OTR driver’s lives are.

 

Lots of MSG, and salt.