Interested in Becoming a Trucker

Your personality sounds ideal for OTR trucking. The criminal record will have an impact on companies that will hire you, but you will find work unless it's some crazy violent felony etc.

The mental illness could be anything and if you are on any medication for it you will want to research if there are any DOT prohibitions on them before embarking on a career in trucking. If you don't take any medications, I would keep quiet about it.

 

Are you allowed to leave the state while on probation?
If not, when is your probation complete?
Which state and nearest city/town are you in? If we know, maybe give you some leads to local jobs.
Many truck drivers prefer to be alone and avoid social interaction unless necessary.
Some, such as myself, prefer to drive at night and sleep in the daytime.
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Being an introvert is very helpful for trucking. What is hard for me is the amount of stress created by the traffic. EVERYONE in a 4-wheeler is not paying attention, selfish, and staring at their phone. They all have one strategy when they need to exit or change lanes. That strategy is find a large semi-truck, get 1 to 1.5 inches in front of his front bumper, change lanes and make a very hard brake. This will happen about 300 times per day. I think there are more drivers with PTSD from "near-misses" in trucking than will admit it.

The other stressful thing I particularly hate is how everyone, I mean every single person you deal with in trucking seems to do somewhere between 50-90% of their job and then expect the truck driver to do the remaining part of that job for them. Shippers/Receiver may not give you an appointment time or their correct address (they frequently give the billing address instead of delivery address because they want the money but are indifferent if the product moves). When they "forget" to give you some piece of important information, you should have read their mind and overcome. Some Shipper/Receivers are fanatical about requiring the driver to be on-time or early, but then have no concern if they load/unload you once you get there. If anyone builds extra time, say 2 hours, into a schedule or trip then everyone involved in planning, dispatching, shipping, maintenance, truck stops, etc will each use all of that extra time and still expect a driver to make up for the accumulated 7 hours of wasted time that they all generated. If you are lucky each one of those people spending that extra time will tell to you sleep or eat or drink coffee, which makes them feel really generous, because a driver probably isn't smart enough to do those things unless they are told by someone with a "real job." If you complain you will be told "that's trucking." You will be asked almost every day "how much longer before you are loaded/unloaded/repaired/get past the stopped traffic/etc as if anyone you ask will ever, even once, tell you. If you ask the responsible party how much longer they will either ignore you or tell you a lie and then tell you to go get a nap or drink coffee. I stayed 10 hours at a customer and was told " we'll start on you next" or "another 15 minutes" for the duration of that delay. When those other people create the delay each and every one of them will claim you caused that delay, including the dispatcher that gave you a load a day and a half after it was supposed to depart and is telling the receiver she doesn't know why you are late. If you go into delivering refrigerated freight, called "reefer" the delays are multiplied by about 5 times compared to dry van freight and you will get to pay hundreds of dollars of company money so the forklift drivers can unload you.

Driving is the easy part of this job, it's the other 75 things you are expected to do, and punished if you don't do, that get under my skin.

 

Mental illness... criminal record.... You sound like a born Flat Bedder.

 

The trick is finding a job that minimizes that customer nonsense. I can't recall the last time I had to contact a customer for anything. Broker contact and lumpers are non-existent in food grade tankers.

Other road traffic stress can be avoided by driving at night if the load allows it.

 

Also be sure NOT TO MENTION any sort of mental illness to ANY employer unless you take meds or something for it..

 

From reading your description of yourself having a little mental problem, being a loner, highly independent, not wanting to overmanaged, and highly intelligent: your really making a good choice on becoming a OTR driver. Just one question when you were young and in grade school, were you ever mean to small animals or burn ants with a magnifying glass? If not -hay your making a great choice! If so, that's OK your still making very good choice driving OTR -just be sure to base yourself out of Northern California or Oregon and always carry a high quality root cutting serrated shovel or spade in the truck.

 

Many drivers love the job and find ample ways to mitigate the effects of the distracted motoring public. IE: slow down, leave space in front of your truck etc…

If you can learn to anticipate drivers darting for exits and the like, you can lower your stress and relax.

Many more drivers will jump at the chance to compile a list of everything they hate about driving.

I think you should repeat to your probation officer what you posted and see if he can’t give you a break.

 

I was with a company. Driver on parole in Denver. Working out of Texas. Had to go to parole meeting with his parole officer. Boss was more interested in him working. So he had to go. He headed to Denver. Boss reports the truck stolen. Was a big stinking mess. In the end. Driver came out of the fiasco just fine. Boss? .... Idiot...