Help me survive another year OTR

Doctors and physicians can't relate to trucker burnout lol...the irony is that trucking is majorly psychological, but they would not have the answer for it.

 

Is there any way to bring a family member out for a few days every now and then? Or a dog?
I can sorta relate to job burn out just not on this job. I love the OTR lifestyle for now. But I could see where it would be hard for some people. Is your kid old enough to ride along for a part of summer break?

 

You know dude, I deal with burned out drivers a bunch of times, but from everything I read from you, yoy need to leave the trucking behind and get a couple jobs to make it through until you find something else. It took me years to learn how to direct drivers to take a proper break. I have drivers that work and work so I actually have to force them to take a couple weeks off somewhere away from them truck but I have had a few just like you and had to get them out of this business altogether.

if you are worried about your daughter growing up and all of that, I can tell you that the time you spend with them counts but the time you are not around don’t matter because unless you are a helicopter parent, they have their own lives you have to let them live.

All of my kids turned out good, they didn’t have an issue with me being gone at times and pretty much made it better for them when I did arrive back, we did something memorable all together than if we did something all the time which got boring.

No matter what you think that you have control, you can easily lose it if some trivial thing like a rejected load bothers you.

so quit, I mean it for your own good,

 

You'd be a better fit for local LTL work if you lived anywhere near those outfits. I've done both and it has a very different feel from truckload work. No sleeping in the truck...it's parked back at the yard at night and you go home. Compared to OTR work it's an easy lifestyle. Punch the timeclock, go run around in a day cab delivering pallets for 9 or 10 hours Monday-Friday for an hourly wage. You're kind of like the UPS guy running around on a route. Almost everybody you deal with at the shippers and receivers are friendly, unlike truckload where you get treated like pond scum and have a lot of your time wasted at some Big Company Inc's distribution center. It's faster paced and you're in and out of the truck a lot so it's a more active young man type job. You don't see that many fat guys hucking pallets around in the back of a trailer with a jack.

Almost anything will get old after doing it a few years though. Sometimes you have to shake things up a little to make it interesting again.

 

Was in a similar position as you, with regards to kids. Had a newborn while I was OTR. And a 2 year old.

With the 2 year old it wasn't bad. She kinda understood why I would leave and return a week or so later.

The newborn was different. Once she got to be around 6 months old, I'd come home and try and hold her, she'd scream. It would take her two days to warm up to me. By then it was time to leave again. And yes, it sucks watching them grow in pictures. But as Ridgeline said, kids are resilient. And they'll adjust to almost anything.

Going local saved my marriage, and my relationship with my kids.

 

Life is way too short to hate your job. I spent 30 years as an insurance broker before becoming a driver. I started out hating insurance but grew to love it, and it paid a lot so money was never an issue and still isn't to this day. But after sitting in an office for so long I wanted to spend my retirement years out on the road so here I am. Now I've had my fill of driving and I'm ready to just retire and take care of my elderly parents and watch my grand kids grow.

Life has a way of throwing you a curve ball when you least expect it. Make yourself an exit plan Hang on as long as you can until your wife gets certified and then make your move. You won't regret it in the long run. This life also tends to shorten your life span. Sitting for so many hours every day is hard on a body. My back has been out of wack for over a month and makes it difficult to walk. When I get to a truck stop every night I watch men much younger than me hobble into the store in worse pain than I. It isn't a healthy way to live.

 

Lots of good advice but one thing I don't think anyone mentioned is exercise

Sitting on your butt all day long isn't healthy, physically or mentally.

 

Being local means in city traffic all day everyday with all ofvthe other rats on the wheel.