The jungle boy

I've been browsing the forum since about a month ago and here's my first post:

I live in Peru, South America where I love to spend time in the mountains and the jungle. My fiancee and I have been thinking about different options for working in the US as a way to save money before coming back and spending more time in the jungle.


We considered commercial fishing in Alaska but weren't able to find any openings. We considered crop-dusting, but that would require at least a couple of years of training. We also have been considering trucking.

I would not want to get married and then dump her off somewhere in the US while I was on the road so team driving is a must. However, she has a pretty big learning curve. I am currently teaching her how to drive in 4-wheelers and it is slow going. I'm also trying to get her to improve her English which is not very good. A friend who is a trucker has repeatedly advised me to go the route of a community college and not a CDL mill. Personally, I have driven big and little things near and far since before I hit puberty, so I'm not too worried about picking up on things with a little studying and practicing. As a matter of fact, I've already been studying about air-brakes, CDL general knowledge, different companies, etc. With this in mind, I might be able to eek by with a short training program, but for my fiancee's sake I think that a community college program, lasting for a full semester, would be a lot better. It would give her more time to struggle through things like mechanical terminology and difficult maneuvers. I also don't want to put a lot of pressure on her to learn everything really fast because she will be under enough stress with language and culture shock as it is.

Maybe there are some old hands out there that can give me some good advice. To make a long story short, we would love to drive as a team for a couple of years and save as much $ as possible. A few grand goes a long way in the third world, especially the jungle. From what I have read it is not unreasonable to hope for $70-80K driving as a team, although we could make do with much, much less.

So I am continuing to consider the idea of teaching my fiancee English, spending a couple years in the US as team truck drivers and trying to use the $ for missions projects here in Peru. Am I out of my mind? Do I have an advantage if we apply as a team? Can teams get extra bonuses? Will my bride-to-be crack under the stress of being in a foreign country (where outsiders are sometimes mistreated) and working a challenging job?

Additional information: my family is from MN so we would like to spend home time there. Next year when we would hypothetically be finishing trucking school my wife would be 24 years old and I 25.

 

Hey, thanks for the comments. Just to clarify, I was talking about making that much money as a team, so it would be about $35k each...I'm not sure if that is the way you read it. If as a team we made $30k that would be about $5 an hour. I hope it's not that bad, even though that is better than the jobs here in the third world pay.

Yes, the English is one of the biggest challenges, and I'm trying to be realistic which is why I'm asking for good advice. I hope we can make a lot of progress with English and driving skills before even travelling to the US, becaues I know it just won't work w/o enough preparation.

Thanks for the post!

 

By the way, even though it is a big challenge for my future wife, it is a big opportunity. Her current job, which is a good one that she wouldn't have if I hadn't hooked her up through a friend, pays $3.4k per year. So she might be able to make some sacrifices for a good opportunity.