Benefits?

US Xpress charges me $87 a week for health insurance. $348 total a month. When I worked at JP Morgan it was $37 a week. Old Dominion charges $7.50 a week.

 

This is one of the best responses on this thread. OP may be greatly underestimating the potential benefits available in his situation thanks to Obamacare (I'm not an Obama fan, just that in the OPs situation the ACA may help). Referring here or Bubba response #13.

 

Ok so given your numbers let's do the math. The median income for an HVAC tech in the US is a little over 40,000 a year. That's with being home every night and not having to be away from the family. Now say he ran 104,000 miles his first year. Which is an average of 2000 a week. 104,000 x .38 = $39,520. Now why would anyone want to take a pay cut to live in a #### truck and have no life?


Trucking is a good option for someone who has no other skills and wants to make a decent living. But if you have the potential to make just as much if not more doing something else then stay out of a truck. Just my humble opinion anyway.

 

I made over $50K with flatbed & refrigerated and $65K with tanker. Much depends on being with the right company and assessorial pays along with milage pay. Just as an example; if you work for Melton and do one tarp load a week that's $2080.00 additional money a year for tarp loads. With some companies detention pay, stop pay, etc adds up to quite a bit in a year.

Something that hasn't been mentioned is maybe the OP is burned out on HVAC. If he can still get decent pay plus healthcare insurance plus job satisfaction, he's ahead & sometimes that makes for a better father and husband. How many drivers posting on here are willing to quit driving and go to HVAC school for a career change; probably none or they would have already done so.

 

Go to or call healthcare.gov, or go to KFF.org and look at the rates available to you, most likely you would qualify for the lowest rate if you are a single income family within range guideline. If you're paying 1k a month right now, the higher deductible might not be an issue for you if you get better in network coverage. How far do you live from an LTL terminal? Most of those companies offer okay insurance if you don't want to go OTR. Actually, if you live near a soda bottler and don't mind route delivery, you might find decent insurance there as well. Good luck on your search, I hope it works out for you.