What's a day in the life of a local driver like?

Wake up at 10-11 am. Do a workout, eat breakfast, hang out with my toddler and soon infant son. Go to work at 2pm. Deliver 8-10 stops, total of 35-90 miles a night depending on the day. Home around 230-3 am. Wind down for about a half an hour, then bed.

 

Thanks to everyone that posted. The last 4 to 5 post were very informative.
Food Service seems challenging for sure and I am currently 35, so I figure it might be worth me giving it a shot and then as I age maybe switching. Problem is you never know if you made a mistake until after the fact.
I am looking for some local routes.
I would preferably only like to deliver to large chains like Red Lobsters, Out Backs and similar outfits. Usually they are easier to locate and are larger neighborhoods/plazas.

If I don't go the Food Service route, what else is there local?
I know there are Beverage Delivery Guys, Propane Delivery, Ice delivery but they don't pay great at all... I was considering them for a starting point just to gain some experience so some of the better companies would look at me.

Other than that I know there are LTL Companies to look at, Fuel/Tanker but I would probably need to get some experience under my belt before I go for that.
I also know they have some shuttle drivers for Food Service that run shuttles from one terminal to another an back so that is an option as well.

Am I missing any other local jobs to get starting in trucking?

 

Might I ask how OTR drivers have it easier? Is it because they get on the road and stay there? I would think only being home for two days in a week or month long period would be more frustrating in the long run.

 

Food Service Shuttle Jobs are usually length of service bids I.E. seniority gigs those jobs are bid on by people who have been around usually have to be hired in work as a route driver, gain some senority and then move up the ladder.

There is local truck load work. The beer distributor I worked for had a truck load division the one guy his job was to do nothing but to go to Great Lakes Brewery all day he would make 5 trips a day back and fourth Monday-Friday swapping trailers all day.

There are truck load runs that do nothing but shuttle trailers between plants and warehouses.

Look at FAB Express they are local there hiring on the radio day cab, no touch freight home every night work during the day. You take a load from the plant and you drop off at the customers.

FAB Express and First Fleet both have a lot of local truck load stuff that is alot of no touch freight.

Grocery Store fleets you take a trailer to the grocery store unload the trailer and go back to the warehouse it's pretty simple. Don't worry about unloading the grocery store stuff is all on pallets you just pull pallets off with the pallet jack usually there the electric power jacks it's not a big deal.

You could get into hauling garbage taking garbage from the transfer station to the landfill that's mostly day cab local work. Same think with dump trucks and stuff. There's all that.

 

I think for some it is and usually they move into another line of work if it's a problem. A lot of people over the road like it, that's what they like doing and they do not always have much at home or much back at home to go back to so they stay out instead.

Usually the people who stay out on the road for long periods of time do not have family obligations. If you have a wife and kids and stuff or vise versa it's hard, but if you're just some man or woman or someone who's kids are old and grown and gone and you're divorced going over the road isn't as big of a deal.

 

Right here City of Wadsworth, Ohio transfer station truck. This is a local job working for the city. Certain cities have big garbage hauling operations cities such as Shaker Heights, Ohio, Wadsworth, Ohio, Rocky River, Ohio and Cleveland Heights, Ohio especially Cleveland Heights, Ohio. Those cities have big tractor trailer operations where they go from the transfer station to the landfill.

 

Does Yard Jockey count for this thread for local driving?

I tried that last year and it was great for home time, except for the conditions of the yards were extremely bad with potholes and barely plowed in the Winter. Beatup Intermodal trailers sucked to.

I just bring this up as aside from that issue, it was an interesting job as far as working locally and being home everyday. Every so often I even had slow days where I just bullshitted with the security guard while still getting my hourly pay at $18.50.

Also, I did work 2 sites so I took the yard truck across town, so maybe this could be looked at as an extremely limited local driving job. I would also sometimes shuttle broken trailers back to our terminal in the same town.

 

If you want a little easier route I would look into small local company near you with mostly straight truck and a couple pugs or you can find a company doing school routes so you know your going to been done del around 3 and they get mostly light stuff short hours a week but good experience

 

I ran a lane from NJ to Chicago delivering frozen seafood to a lot of restaurants, mostly Asian, Grand Buffet, Beni Hanna, places like that, it was pretty good and I definitely ate well, mostly for free.Welfare cheese to Hunts Point as a backhaul, Madison Wisc, now that's a place you could get a good steak, cheap. I guess that doesn't qualify as local, but all those posts about food service made me hungry, lol.

 

There’s all kinds of other jobs out there, particularly truckload jobs like someone already mentioned. There are logistics companies like Ryder and CPC Logistics that do a lot of local drop and hook work for distribution centers that don’t want to hire their own fleet. There are also companies like SNL Distributing that shuttle bread from the bakery to smaller terminals for the little bread vans. The problem that I’ve seen is most of these other kinds of jobs don’t usually hire new drivers. You could always apply anyway and get lucky, though.