Instant O/O and Load boards

It's been done before and I did it with the guy who bought the truck...until I couldn't stand him anymore, then I went to Schnieder, until next March when I get my OWN truck and do it all over again! LOL

 

Well I guess there is an ending to what was started here. Sorry to hear things were so bad for him. It was a good story with a not so happy ending.

 

Holy crap!

It was just over a year ago I was chatting him up on faceslap. He had his current occupation listed as a teacher (can't remember the subject) at a school of some sort. HUNDREDS of posts back and forth between his daughters and him. He never let on about any of that stuff going on. His faceslap page was clean as a whistle. Really sux, cause he had a beautiful family and a hot (ex) wife.

How things change.... wonder why he went that direction?

 

Very useful thread PharmPhail; as a matter of fact, I am here for the same reasons.

Brief, Totally Irrelevant To Trucking Screed About My Background

Currently I am in a dead end, going nowhere fast job, teaching math and physics at a community college. I used to be an engineer and actually trained my replacements ... in India while working for places like Motorola, United Airlines, and Lucent.

I got a wooden wall plaque (I used for a door stop for a while) telling me what a great job I did training people, a pat on the back, a pink slip, and a good swift kick in the rear end out the door, with directions to the nearest unemployment office. My "benefits" (pardon me while I puke) have long since been exhausted.

One thing lead to another and I ended up with another Masters degree in Mathematics education and was "highly qualified" under no child left behind.

What everyone forgot to tell me was that if you are male (that's me), white (me again), an American citizen (strike three I guess), and over 30 (sorry) -- then don't even bother filling out an online application for a teaching position.

Why Not?

Well because the applications are really nothing more than "psychology exams" and if you know how to fool them (not that hard really) you actually get interviews. Here comes the "why not" part.

That's where they actually get to see you and tell you to your face like I was that "you don't look like the majority of our students -- therefore we don't feel you are a good role model and can't possibly meet the needs of our diverse student population;" and that is the end of that discussion/interview.

I know, I know, you don't believe it and besides I am sure that there is at least one person of my demographic profile somewhere who has been hired and yeah that would be a valid "counter example" -- but my experience, is my experience, and it "ain't payin da bills honey."

Well, rather than whine and complain about the sad state of affairs in education, I decided that I really need to dump it like a used up white board marker, before it dumps me. I could include a whole new screed section to regale you with the insanity that is going on in education, but I won't.

So, what to do?

Re-enter Trucking Rant With Dumb Newbee -esque Ponderings

I thought trucking might be a solution.

However, before I plop down a few thousand dollars for more "education" to buy a job as you so aptly put it, I decided not to take the rosy picture painted by the school as "the gospel truth of my economic salvation," completely at face value without poking around a little first.

Here we are then.

Thank God for this forum, you all, and to a certain bull drivers wife for steering me (bad pun -- sorry) here to look over this thread.

Gosh, I am having my doubts now -- BIG TIME -- about "investing in myself" at the truck school of hard knocks and parsimonious returns.

Alas, a new ugly wrinkle that I didn't consider before now! It looks like insurance will put you out of business before you ever start and I don't even know what you are talking about by the phrase "your own authority" but I presume it means something like buying a tractor, a trailer, hanging out your shingle, and getting contracts to deliver OTR?

Bottom line, "they just ain't a gonna do it" unless you have been a company driver someplace for a year? But what is involved with that? I hear about "putting up with lumpers," "looking for empties in terminals where there aren't any and not getting paid for it," "getting routed along toll roads but having to pay the cost of the toll yourself if you choose not to stop on every corner," "sitting in a terminal for days and not having a load to pick up/deliver and not getting paid for the down time," and lots of other non-sense.

Now I have been thinking "hey, what can go wrong?" but I have a bad feeling now for some reason.

I have been lied to so often by schools, companies and the like; that when they tell me about "the wonderful bright futures they have to offer," I pretend to act all giddy and giggle along with them as if I am really buying into everything they are selling me, shake their hands like the clown they take me for,
and say to myself "B U L L S H I R T S !"

My livelihood as an engineer is trashed for good (I don't hail from India, China, or Russia and I am over 20 years old); my secondary fall back position as a math/science teacher is a sinking ship going down in a bow first path to the bottom; and my lifejacket that I am considering trucking to be, is looking more like an iron anvil that will take me to the bottom of a sea of red ink faster than my doomed sinking ship.

Pinching myself, to awaken me from my self-induced stupor of hope, I am wondering if trucking is even viable?

If it is, how do I make it work? What are some of the things I need to avoid?

Just what kind of insurance rates are you looking at and who are the insurance companies?

Concluding Paranoid Ponderings Pandering To The Cynical And Jaded Side of My Nature

Finally, in the spirit of the approaching halloween season, I am haunted by one scary ghoul in the shadows of my abysmal thought process -- if everyone and their first, second, and third cousins are going into trucking --- why are there so many openings?

Do all these people actually stay in trucking?

If they do, I would imagine that this job market would be saturated with help just like everywhere else seems to be. "And if'n it ain't?" as someone in the business so eloquently posited to me recently -- then "where have all the truckers gone, long time passin?"

Are there reasons these people are leaving trucking?

Reasons like, "something goes wrong, they get a ticket, end up unemployable for the next five years as a result but with a mound of debt to repay for a rig they can no longer afford?"

Seriously wondering. If not trucking, what??

Please, what are your thoughts and experiences?

 

Trucking is what you are going to make of it. Some people won't last in trucking because it wasn't what they expected. They had one idea of what trucking was and it was something totally different. You have to accept trucking for what it is. A extremely hard and stressful job full of stuff totally out of your control. You won't get paid much in the beginning as a company driver that's just the way the industry works.

I have gotten to talk to many people in the industry who have been very successful at it because they knew what they were doing when they started. People can most certainly make a living being a trucker. You just need to have a high tolerance for when stuff doesn't go your way. Say a company says they can get you home on friday but something happens and you get home on saturday night. There are some drivers who will flip out about this and quit a company over it. Those types of things come with being a company driver for a mega carrier. There are just going to be lots of things that are out of your control that you will just need to accept no matter how aggravating it gets.

If you go through a driving school you will most certainly get a job at the end of it. I went through a CC program and it was a fantastic experience.

Once you have your CDL you have your first choice. You can do what 96% of people do when they go into trucking and be a company driver for a mega carrier and make next to nothing but they get trained and they get experience which the value of is very important and I realize this. Or you can do what almost nobody does and try and be a O/O out of the gate.

Right now I am deciding if its actually viable to be a O/O right away. Yes it costs and extreme amount of money to start and the costs are enormous however it can be pulled off and you can make a lot more as a O/O right out of the gate than a company driver.

I will also add there are so many openings at the big mega carriers because most people DO NOT stay at the first place they are hired from. They put in there time and move to a smaller usually higher paying better run carrier after a year or so. Once you get that year or two of experience you basically can haul whatever wherever you want.

 

NO WAY WILL ANYONE GIVE HIM A LOAN WITH LITTLE TO NO EXP,TO FALL BACK ON,THERE AFRAID OF HIM WRECKING THE TRUCK,ARE U KIDDING ME,NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

 

Whats funny is he did get a loan....................
Perhaps you should of read the whole thread before commenting

 

LOL Do you really expect anyone to read 478 pages!?!?

 

well it was kinda of an entertainment type deal.. most were around when the thread started and we kept up with it.. so yes, we did read all of those pages, from beginning to end.

 

I stubble across the thread a couple of years after it started and I read through it all.

It was an entertaining read and interesting to see someone go straight to O/O.