Those Of You That Have Left the Industry, Where Did You Go?

Yeah...You Dont have to give up driving.LTL or even Regional one overnight a week is EASY compared to "mileage pay". Make good money too.I work 55hours a week and bring home $1300 a week. Weekends off. Stay out overnight at a hotel Tuesday or Thursday night.Weekends off. Just saying

 

Nothing but pain and misery here , please don't make my mistakes.

 

That one dock door is bleeding chilled air, it needs to be shut....

 

I ended up leaving the field to become a science teacher, worked through my undergrad 1-2 online classes at a time OTR.
Still planning to drive a bit over the summers. If I was still driving I’d find a county job, great bennies and home daily!

 

I left to be a caretaker for a aged parent, was thinking it would only be a few months when I first started, changed the diet of what she is eating along with what I was eating to address some problems I was having with the kidneys, they working great now, all the inflammations are gone, lost almost 80 pounds and can do what I did in younger years. It has been six years now, I hear the changes and would not fit in well anymore so may look at helping the elderly in the final years since that is lacking here. I do want to come back but do not like the new technology that is controlling everything plus I still have a ton of crayons left.

 

I was headed out when life happened and I am now more or less officially out.. and I don't miss much about it. I reached the point where my broken, worn out skeleton just couldn't do the driving thing anymore. Three years ago, I have moved my disabled father in and am now basically a full time care taker for him. It's probably one of the most challenging things that I've ever done. I got him when he was circling the drain and ended up in the hospital.. his then (now estranged and runaway) wife was probably trying to kill him... can't prove that in court.. but three "new" life insurance plans, over medicating to the point of near death and throwing books and punches at a 84 year old blind man? Yeah.. he's home for as long as I can do it.. or until his medical needs outstrip what I can do for him. He's a Korea Marine and Air Force Retiree.. I'm proud to have him as a dad.

 

What I did prior to driving school was a fine job with a stable company but as a late 20's single guy at the time I wanted to see what else was out there before I was too old to care. I used to think I could always keep my CDL as a backup work option for later on in life when I grew out of being a driver, but now I find myself pretty happy with it and see doing other stuff besides driving as the fallback option if I were to blow it somehow. (I always thought being a bartender at a cool place and working in the night life would be a fun way to make a living also.) Once upon a time back in my college days I harbored some misguided ambitions of going to law school which I am glad I thought better of. That type of stuff has no appeal to me now. Nor would being some corporate clown.

 

Running the road in your own truck is a blast. The mega-carriers have kind of ruined that on the company driving side with all of their crap, but if you can find a small outfit that still does things the old-timey way with paper logs, hoods, no qualcomms or transmissions that shift themselves or cameras watching you get dressed in the morning, then maybe. Those are harder to come by these days though.

 

Those types of force-outs could take years to recover from. If they weren't already doing something before driving, I'm guessing whatever service job they could find, begging, or sadly, the klink.

I myself would probably go back into security or get on with one of these dairy processing plants.

 

Well I was teaching and coaching. Now all the schools are shut down. They want us to do "distance learning" which is basically a PR term. Like these kids are going to engage with lessons when their PS4 is literally in the same room. Not to mention that I have absolutely no idea how to design lessons remotely.