6 years OTR but struggling to get back in it

Have you been trucking for a while?

 

still 6 years is a while. These days people don’t stay at with their employer for much more than a handful of years. What kind of truck are you leasing? Freighliner Cascadia’s?

 

What are
You trying to accomplish ?

do you want to get a job where you work all year to earn about the same money you have been earning working three or for months ?
But with less stress and staying in the same place ?

obviously you like to travel but do you eventually want to own a place of your own ?
Maybe some land in the mountains with a cabin ?

or maybe you’re like half of the world , not just truckers, who really have no idea what they wanna do , they just know it’s not what they are doing now .

A lot of state and national parks have “campground hosts “
These folks stay in the campground for free and in exchange , clean the restrooms and keep an eye on the place .

or at your age , if your physically fit ,
Almost Every fire department is looking for younger folks , the game and fish in my state is a actively recruiting game wardens .

I kinda did the same thing as you when I was about your age .
I barely made it out of high school , it was so boring I really wanted to drop out .

i attended a community college for drafting and design , got a job and learned that I didn’t like sitting in an office All day.
So I got a entry level job at a state park , which I really enjoyed , but I didn’t pay much , they had higher level positions that paid more and came with a house to live in , I interviewed for several of those positions but just couldn’t get hired for it .
But working from 3 to 11 as the ranger that just rode around the park and chatted with campers and guests and assisted them with any problems they were having , and keeping the restrooms clean , was an enjoyable job for me , I got assigned to do that temporarily but just couldn’t get a permanent position doing that .

so I quit that and bought a truck , on a lease purchase deal.
Turns out I could earn as much in three months trucking , as I earned all year working at any other job.

after a year or so trucking I had saved enough to buy 7 acres with a little cabin on it .
When I got stressed out and tired of trucking I’d just cut back and take a week off here and there , and go work on my cabin. i was doing regional work with trucking, and my cabin was about two hours away from the city where I did most of the trucking work .


Working for three or four months and then vacationing in Japan or CostaRica or Belize for the rest of the year sounds
pretty good to a lot of folks .


You might want to try doing the ice road trucking , might could make even more money during the short season .

depending on where you want to live , a place to live doesn’t have to cost a lot of money .

i recently saw an off grid cabin on 7 acres in Tennessee near the Virginia border for $40k

you could get a van or small
Motorhome and travel around.

with no house payment , No wife payment and no kids , you can do whatever you want .

problem is : you gotta figure out what you want .
And some folks are born knowing what they want , and some folks have to try different things and figure out what they want , and some folks like me , try different things because they get bored easily doing the same thing all the time .

And , people change over time as we get older , and what we want to do changes.
There’s nothing wrong with wanting to do something different .

if you’re wanting to settle down and get a regular normal job, I’d reccomend looking into something in the medical industry,
Getting trained to operate the MRI machine or something like that .

If you’re wanting to do more challenging trucking jobs , then heavy haul and oversize loads might be worth looking at.

I might have mentioned it before , I know of a small heavy haul company in Atlanta that will train drivers that don’t have any experience with it. But they’re going to be wanting someone to work year round.

but pulling a 14 or 16 wide load with two pilot cars is a challenge .
And pulling a 12 wide that’s grossing 130k is a challenge . You won’t get bored .
Pulling a 13 axle super load grossing 220k with 2 or 3 pilot cars and police escorts won’t be boring .

but there’s a lot of us out there that had/have no idea what we wanted to do , and the only way to figure it out is just go do it .

I did kinda the same as you , but instead of traveling , I just bought a remote cabin that required a four wheel drive pickup to even get to , because I love the peace and quiet.

 

Although your approach to trucking is unconventional, I applaud you for making it work. I myself was self employed for most of my career and struggled to work for anybody else but myself. Turned out that the best motivation I had to wake up everyday to go to work was only through self employment. That is why I’m looking into trucking.
If I can provide you with some advice that I wish I had done early in the life I would recommend that you purchase some real estate abroad. Since you are out of the country often it will make sense if you’re only using the place half of the year. There are places in Europe which are well developed where you can purchase a nice smaller apartment for less than $150k. If the visa is a problem all you need to do is stay out 3 months and come back after a reset. However there are non lucrative visas in Spain for example that grant visas without working in the country. One added benefit of Spain is that you can obtain a mortgage as a foreigner. I lived in Japan while in the service and I had a fantastic experience. The downside is that real estate is pricy and obtaining a visa or mortgage will likely be an issue if you’re a US passport holder exclusively