If you could do it all over, would you still drive?

HEY GANG:

I'm a man that would love getting into trucking at age 56. I was a welder for 33 yrs and if I had not had surgery on my neck I would still be doing just that as I really loved the trade. At age 50 I went back to school and became of all things a nurse LPN. I am such a people person that it was a perfect fit. But most of the nursing bosses are women and we think all different than the gals. If it makes any sense at all they won't do it unless they think of it first which they seldom do. Don't judge me yet I have been married to a wonderful woman for 36 yrs. But it's a fact that guys and gals do things different. I am hearing of the shortage in drivers and it's hard as hell to even get a listen from a recruiter unless they are wanting the big money from some Training school. I know the benefit of school as it took me a solid year, 8 hrs. a day 5 days a week just to get my LPN. I have applied to several firms to get help with my CDL training and maybe it will happen soon. I am more than willing to pay my dues to be a better than average driver. I have not had a moving violation in 30 yrs. and no wrecks in over 10 yrs and that one was not my fault. No DUI or DWI's and no felonies or misdemeanors. My health is better than average, and I can go and go like the energizer bunny.My work record sucks as nursing was a real change and challenge and my longest employment is 1 1/2 yrs. and 1 yr before that, but my 2 last welding jobs were 7 and 9 yrs in length. If any of ya'll can help or forward to your recruiter or company it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

catfisher56

 

LPN ?????? your name wouldn't be Gaylord Focker would it ?.................lol

 

Prime Inc out of Springfield, MO also has a CDL school. That's where I got my training, been out here 4 years lovin it. At that time they loaned you $120 for basic expenses while you got your CDL, then they took that out at $20 a week. Training was one on one with an experienced instructor. You only paid for the school if you quit before a year. They also have a company side and lease side available now. I'm on the lease side and made $100,000+ take home last year running team with my son.
I truely believe that trucking companies are like shoes - there are many sizes and styles you must decide which fits you.
Good Luck

 

Good topic, good thread.

Would I or wouldn't I?

I think it depends on how far back I can go. I often wonder if I could have wound up in a better place if I had made better choices along the way, but then I also look around, and wonder what I have now that I would lack if I had made those other choices.

Life is a complicated game.

I'm going through the whole love/hate thing very much first-hand right at the moment. I got into trucking as an emergency measure, to try to provide a "real" income for my family, so we could buy a house, have cable TV, and all that jazz. It worked. I got in with a good gig for a family guy, where I was only spending 2-3 nights on the road, almost never four, and kept my days full to where I only had one chunk of wasted layover time out on the road every other week. The pay was on the low side, but it had the right balance to keep me there for 10 years, even though I constantly thought about going somewhere else.

I can't say I was exactly happy doing it, but I didn't exactly hate it. Mostly, I could just come home, throw my briefcase in the trunk, and forget all about it until about an hour before time to leave again. There were few surprises, and I did a lot of living in between working. I was very content at home, and largely successful at compartmentalizing my life so that the two versions of me didn't think about each other very much.

There in the last year, however, I made a serious bid to get out of the truck and into the office side of the business. I'm not sure how much of that was me, and how much my family wanting to get me home every day, and off the road. Even though I wasn't on the road nearly as much as most, I still missed most birthdays, concerts, PTA meetings, etc., and it always seemed I was gone when something came up. I published a book in the interim, and I thought that book might be my ticket out of trucking, and that was the lever I used to try to get into the office with that comany. I thought I had the job, but "two weeks from now" never came, and I eventually wound up out on the street like everybody else. We all got laid off, and my decision was made for me. Time to move on.

So I sat out here for six weeks, putting in applications for everything and anything I felt I could remotely A) live on, and B) talk my way into. Out of dozens of hours spent tweaking up résumés for IT jobs, writing jobs, dispatching/safety jobs, etc., I only got one job interview. I felt like it went well. At the same time that was going on, I got a phone call about a dedicated run. I had to play to win both games simultaneously. I had to go through all the company BS to get set up to go back to driving, and I had to wear the tie and talk like a highly educated professional to try to get that job. I fit right in, and I felt like I belonged there, and came away from the interview feeling like I had nailed it.

At the time, I felt more than a little bit of the lure of the road, and I felt like since I was having to cave in and wade through all this BS to get the driving job, I might as well just do what I can do and make the best of it. It was novel, because I had never driven for a "real company" before, but just a weird little niche outfit that fell through a lot of cracks.

So I was more than half hoping that job I interviewed for wouldn't call me back, and that I could just forget my tie and my 9-5 lifestyle daydreams, whoop whoop truck it up and live happily ever after as a freight jockey. That was four weeks ago and change. I'm in the middle of week five of my return to trucking right now, and my thoughts have gradually been shifting the other way, and I'm starting to regret that the other job never called me back, and wishing I had been able to make a clean break after all.

I think maybe what I want to do is be a weekend truck driver. I like driving a truck, but I hate working 70 hours a week. I'm getting home every night on this current gig, but my future is perpetually uncertain. The bottom could fall out any minute, and may have just fallen out already. I'm sitting on a load right now I can't deliver because the two people on the ends of my run are fighting about something. Every day this week has been messed up, and the air just doesn't smell right. My fight or flight instinct is telling me to run before I get stuck running the system, and staying out who knows how long, which is not what I came over here to do. I never have done that in my entire career, and I have no desire to start now.

If this falls through, where can I go from here? 10 years and a clean driving record isn't enough to get you a phone call from one of the LTL companies around here. I see young guys working there, and I don't know what the trick is, but I'm not going to get in the front door certain enough. I'm at a point in my career where I feel like I should at least have a "real job" as a driver, but I don't see a way to get one. It's all the same old schlock I never wanted anything to do with, which kept me at that first company so long. Long days on the road, long hours of sitting around waiting on people to do something so you can get cut loose, pay that works out to $8 an hour for all the hours you actually have to spend tied up with the job to earn it.

After a year or three of experience, it's all the same. Most of the stuff on this and other forums talks about how great the pay is for people with low experience. Well what about the people with lots of experience? The problem with this business is you hit the ceiling fast, and there you are at the ceiling forever. There's no such thing as a regular 3% good performance raise in this business. You go up fast in the first three years or so, and then that's that. Now you're on a slow descent, watching your earning power decrease in inverse proportion to inflation and the rising cost of living. Everything goes up but your paycheck, and there are only so many ways to make your paycheck fatter. Work longer, do more dangerous work, etc., and even there you will still eventually find a ceiling sooner than later.

I can say I've definitely gotten all the mystery and adventure back out of my system, and I'm just doing what I have to do.

Would I do it all over again?

I'd like to go back and slap myself for ever having this hare brained idea. It did work, but this business is slow quicksand, and if you're a deep and contemplative sort like me, it erodes your very soul the longer you do it.

But what else could I be doing to earn this much money?

Sigh.

That's why all my plans for the future involve getting things to a point where I can survive on a third of what I make now, and only work 40 hours like a normal human being.

Then maybe I get sick of it and go back driving. Who knows. This stuff is a lot like cigarettes. They hook you, make you crave them, and they slowly kill you from the inside.

There's a bright and happy thought on this morose Wednesday if there ever was one. I have trouble believing the more up-beat me and this me I am at the moment are the same person too, but today I'm definitely a glum chum.

 

Thanks. Me too. I really do think part time trucking would be my holy grail. I like trucking, but I don't really want to have to work this many hours. That's what drags me down (that and all the gray hair I have trying to resist Mother Nature's attempt to kill me.) I had a couple unexpected unpaid vacation days, and today felt great getting back out there. Problem is when I run straight through every day next week to make this up, I'm going to be a glum chum again come Friday.

Good luck to you and the wife making your own deal work out for you!

 

Ive been running long haul for 30 some years and even seeing the changes in the industry I would still do it all over again