Insight desired

My father has been in the trucking business all of my life. I've always wanted to be a firefighter since a young child. I started as an explorer and realized my dream as a firefighter/paramedic at a very young age.

I saw my father work himself to the bone to provide a comfortable life for my family and despite him wanting me to "take over the family business" I flatly told him at the age of 21 that I wasn't interested. He wound up teaching the business to someone else and semi-retiring. A few short years later, I realized what a mistake I had made. I could have been taking home $250,000 a year and instead I was working my ### off on 24 and 48 hour shifts with little sleep and a lot of stress for less than $40,000 a year.

I'm now 26 and in business with my father and brother in the trucking industry and doing very well for myself. I'm about to go back to school to obtain a logistics degree, though I truthfully don't need it with the 16 years of OJT I've had with my dad. Trucking and transportation is about relationships. Be respectful, be professional, and always maintain your integrity and you will go far. If you try to be sneaky, and cut throat, people will see right through your ######## and you will fail.

Trucking is not a 9-5 job. It's long hours, it's weekends, and you're never technically "off work." Your cell phone is always with you, and you can have to step away from your family vacation at any minute to handle a work issue. But truthfully, that's with any self-employed business. IF you want bankers hours, go find a corporate job and pray you don't stare at a cubicle wall every day with four people asking "didja get that memo on the new cover sheets for the TPS reports?" (5 bonus points if you name the reference.) After doing it myself, I'll never go back so long as I can help it. I enjoy being my own boss and answering to myself way more than some paper pushing brown noser.

My two cents. Work with your dad, learn the industry, and create a strategic plan for improvements. Take the business he's built to the next level with your enthusiasm and hard work. Become a good leader, and truly learn what it means to be one. Be good to your people, treat them fairly, reward them for hard work, and encourage them to realize their goals and dreams and they will bend over backwards for you.

Now is a good time to expand a growing trucking company. With repos and liquidation, you can find some very good work trucks at some good prices. Do your homework, research what's going on and make smart, well calculated decisions and you will go far.

Good luck to you and feel free to get in touch with me. It sounds like we have quite a bit in common and could probably help each other out.

 

office space - love that movie

 

Haha! 5 points to you sir. Funniest. Movie. Ever. Have you seen my stapler?

 

No, but please don't burn the place down. Lol

 

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The short term rewards and life experience is why I say: Go home and give it an honest go. You have a rare opportunity that many don't have and should take advantage of it.

Don't take shortcuts. Start by getting your hands dirty in the shop doing PMs and busting tires while you work on your CDL if you don't have one yet. After a few months of that, get out on the road. After you've lived life as a driver a while, bring that outdoor perspective to the office that you've been complaining about for months. And you will complain - it's in the handbook, dontyaknow. After a taste of satisfying customers and drivers at once, you ought to have enough perspective to wave your college degree at the scene and maybe contribute a little strategic improvement.

"Comfy corporate job" is an oxymoron. As a recent grad you'll be lucky to find work as a receptionist or a call center worker. The only thing comfortable will be the climate controlled office and ergonomic chair you sit in. Those jobs, even if you are well connected or lucky and walk in as a manager, are just as stressful even though the trappings are more sanitary at first glance.

In my experienced (yes I can say that in this context LOL!) opinion, the family business will be far more rewarding. Even if it doesn't work out, your college degree has no expiration date on it. Plus, including that you worked every angle of your family business on your resumé will advance you to the top of the stack when you start applying for an office job somewhere. As a former corporate senior manager that reviewed resumés from time to time, I admit to giving far more weight to someone that did something as robust and hands-on as working their way up in a family business, versus another that just pushed e-mail and spreadsheets around a few years more. It speaks to your work ethic and willingness to try new or unfamiliar things.

Good luck with whatever path you choose.

 

Worked with a guy just like him. After that movie not a day went by that something wasn't missing from his desk.

 

I told them, if they didn't return my stapler that...that...that I was going to set this place on fire. I was told that I could listen to my radio...at a...reasonable volume between the hours of 8 and 9 in the morning.