Would You...?

...Become a trucker if you were me?

I'm 24 years old and am headed no where in life. I've had very very bad luck with jobs in my life as well. From places closing down on me, to massive layoffs, having to move, to being fired for actually making too many sales, to insane owners and managers. I live on my own now and the company I work for is about to have a massive layoff at the end of the month. I have no family within thousands of miles of me and am trying very hard to provide a living. Unfortunately I don't have a degree, just a HS diploma and my parents had extremely bad credit and were never able to get me into college. I was working on a book for a very long time and it's very close to being finished (I figured the cab of a truck before going to sleep would be a good place to get a few pages in per night) but I can't count on it bringing me fruition in life.

Here's where things get tricky...

I've known my girlfriend for a few years, we were very close for the past year and have been a couple for the past 6 months. We plan on getting married within the next year and look forward to our future like nothing else. We have an incredibly good relationship and always are very understanding of one another and supportive of one another. It's not one of those "Why didn't YOU do THAT" relationships but rather, we both pitch in and do our best to make things easier on each other. We are best friends and have the same hobbies, interests and just love spending our time together. We couldn't be better off as far as a relationship goes.

As I know it will be very tough for me to be on the road and away from here for however long, my question is, do you folks think she will be able to handle it? Would you risk it? She fully supports it and thinks it would be a great career for me, one I would be good at.

From what I've seen, read and heard after about 6 months you "CAN" start looking around and land a local route driving things like oil trucks or driving around town and be home nightly. We planned on moving to Phoenix, Arizona in 6 months from now, so I figured when we moved I would have the minimum experience by that time to land one of these jobs. If I decide to do this, the company I'm going with is MCT and they've told me they have many options all across the country. Should I break my contract with them I'd have to pay back the tuition fees for the school. It would be nice to avoid it but if I found a local route/oil route that had me home nightly in Phoenix, I'd be happy to do such with proper notice.

We've been looking at it as something that may be hard for the next 6 months, but it'll actually take me some where in life and after the initial experience I will have the option of not having to be a OTR driver.

We've talked about while I was on the road, each night we could skype (on my laptop) and when I took stops during the day I could send her texts and give her a quick phone call.

She is young (21) but extremely mature for her age. She's going to school full time and working two jobs, so she'll definitely have things to keep her busy.

We want to have a good life, a future, I would like to be able to buy a house here in a year or two down the road and I don't see many other options as good as this one around.

Are my presumptions about the industry correct? Are the things I've mentioned doing on the road possible? Can we still keep in touch plenty in a day and will I have enough home time to keep us satisfied?

Sorry for the gigantic wall of text, but wanted to know what you folks thought about this and what your opinions on this are...

Thank you for any help.

 

Thanks for the replies you two! As far as moving to Phoenix, she wants to transfer to ASU before the fall semester of 2013 to finish her degree out there. My dad just moved there too and has no family or friends there (long story) so I feel bad just leaving him alone as well. I've been planning to move there for awhile so this summer is definitely my goal. Also, even with two jobs and full time school my girlfriend makes time for me and never acts like it's a bother and the time we spend together is always fantastic and full of laughs. MCT said in my first year with the company they'd put me with I should be making 37-40k. Also, I heard the oil truck and a lot of the local jobs will actually pay 50-65k per year if you have a year's experience under your belt?

 

Thanks for the replies. As far as oil work goes, I've seen a lot of advertisements in different places for jobs driving oil trucks locally. They ask anywhere from 6 months to 2 years experience from what I've seen and usually advertise 55-65k a year and promise you home nightly. I think maybe it's different from oilfield work? I'm not sure. As I said, I just want to make sure that when I go to Phoenix I'm home at LEAST every 2-3 days although nightly would be ideal. Is such a thing -possible- with that 6 months experience?