Does trucking really ruin your life at home?

Did OTR for a year and quickly realized it wasn't my kind of lifestyle. I prefer to be active and being away from hockey leagues really hurt. I also enjoy being social with family and friends and having irregular days off every 3-4 weeks was not cutting it. Stayed my year, found something 10x better and been enjoying life since then.

 

Haha yes. Though when I am at home I barely want to drive since I know I will see plenty if road when I get back to work.

 

thats why they say it's a lifestyle rather than a job. Job you get up, go to work and come home...LTL and other types of daycab work are just jobs that happen to involve driving a class-A vehicle. The lifestyle you were used to is incompatible with OTR and mostly incompatible with regional jobs that keep you away from home 5-6 days at a time. Life goes on without you and your life mostly involves sleeping in truck stops, sitting at shippers, and going down the road. It turns into an all-consuming thing and that's really the real reason turnover is so high in OTR...people just get sick of the lifestyle and want to go back to having a "normal" life at some point. They realize the paycheck is decent but it's not decent enough to trade away everything else...being there for your kids/wife, hanging out with your buddies on Sunday watching football, going to the gym regularly and staying active, having a dating/social life. When times are bad and you're desperate for a paycheck all that stuff can sit on back burner for awhile but when times get a little less desperate you'll know if OTR is a long term thing or if it was just something that bailed you out for awhile or helped you work out some youthful wanderlust.

 

How long have you been driving otr? It was fine for me the first five months. Started sucking really hard after that..

 

Why not???

 

Trucking ruined my marriage. Wife said I was home too much with the employer I was with at the time and it cut into her fun time with her boyfriend.

 

That #### boyfriend, I tell her as long as he helps with the bills its all good.

 

I did not read all six pages of replies, but this post brings back memories of 70's truckers songs by (as I recall) Dick Curless, Del Reeves, John Cash, Dave Dudley to name a few about how the trucking life messes with your non-trucking life. But they were good songs


I do wish ya good luck, and THANKS for keeping our stores filled. Remember there are many jobs that mess with your personal/social life. I have been at my (non-trucking) job 20 years and I can't plan to spend a evening with my wife, or Holidays with my family, or go to a family funeral or wedding as they happen. It's the price I pay to put over $100K in our bank account. Ask your self "is what I'm paid worth what I get?". It's 100% your call, because you have to live the life you pick.