100% No-touch freight

I spent one of the most miserable weeks of my life in one of those darn things. Your right it will beat you up, but the work is not in my opinion physically intense and I bet the OP could do it as he worked up to driving.

 

Almost all dry van and reefer OTR carriers generally are no touch.

 

Abilene has a no chain policy. Its not strictly enforced so if someone wanted to chain up they could...if they could cope with everyone laughing at them.

 

I will be very leery about the pie in sky air release tandems...

Sliding tandems as taught to me is risking death itself or worse. You are literally pulling a crank pin that might "Jump" when the tension comes off the pins attached to it. If you are anywhere in line with that crank it's going to hurt you.

Im not trying to scare you. If the tandem handle does not get you, a failed pin flying out will. You will be standing in front of St Peter before you ever feel the 4 pound peice of steel split your head as it locks where you released the handle during a slide.

Ive been thinking over your situation very carefully. I have small joint arthritis that is progressing. Just one of the old problems that I ignored most of my life until it finally stopped me. You by your own words is a disabled worker, go speak with Social security and evaluate for SSdI and depending on your high wages in the last x number of quarters of your working pay you will bring home any amount of dollars not exceeding 1300 a month. However, you will find medicare takes two years to go into effect and only pays 80%, you pay the rest in addition to any and all associated premiums. You will be rejected twice, persistance will gain you acceptance and or a administrated Judge hearing and he will decide then and there almost a year after your first application date if you are able to drive a truck or not. If not? Then you are entered into the system and not expected to work again the rest of your life. The problem with the program is that it's borrowing about 25% of every dollar paid out and eventually will fail at some point in the next couple of years. At that point there will be a mandatory cut of 24% of all benefits and possibly a loss of benefits all together.

There is one company McKesson of Memphis that is no touch, however you are dealing with million plus dollars of narcotics in that unmarked satellite tracked trailer and you are prey as far as the parasites in Memphis proper is concerned. You might not be able to withstand the need to keep moving several hundred miles or clear to your customer 600 miles up the road. Reload with cardboard waste straight back to Memphis. That traffic will cause you to build up pain levels until you need someting stronger than aleve (After about 10 days on Aleve your stomach burns a hole or tries to.)

You cannot win once something like RA kicks in. It's not a total life ending situation, when I was a child we had a book on RA because in those days it's expected that when you get it late in life after working so long you are expected to stay home tend to a garden and live quietly.

Trucking is not living quietly.

 

In the 12 years I have been doing this, I have only "touched" freight once that I remember. It was a three stop load of plumbing supplies. One stop did not have a dock so they had a forktruck lift a pallet jack into the truck. I pulled a pallet back to the tail of the trailer and the fork lift driver took it from there.

I prefer, live loads and unloads. As "live load" is just another name for a nap.

 

Tanker trucks? My training with them lies in Milk raw and cement bulk. Cement bulk hoses are about 20 feet long by around 6 inches at most. With male and female attachments. You will have a 5 gallon bucket with excess cement that you accumulate via your first leak and then pour water onto it to halt the leaking connection. The hoses will be "alive" under 15 psi pressure or greater as it forces the powder up at least 40 foot to 100 plus feet to the top of the silo you are feeding. If you do have a failure in any of your valve systems pump or turbo and have to repack the full hoses, that might be your last day on the job a while. Especially if it is raining when it fails. (Ive had several, not my fault...) but humping hose that are full is not a favorite task.

Food grade for milk raw is not that big of a deal but you have a lot of detail work around them mostly, disassembling, sanitizing and cleaning the pump assembly and valves etc at the dairy. Hose is only a little two incher. Some paperwork and rest while the dairy applies the final steam santitzing for next day's milk run. You lug ice in the morning for samples. Sometimes throw large chain in mud and snow to farm tractor or even a team of shire horses to get you unstuck. You do your part.

I just remembered, I had either a mack U/R model with no power steering. It's a job horsing that trailer in terrain on the farms off road. Same with the good old Diamond T which you are going to probably never want to drive. Farm trucks are tough for the job of farm work even walking beams and such are there to help you. But it's very very physical with no power steering or airride. It will try to beat you up.

Dump trailers? Eh... the worst would be dousing them with sprayed desiel. Wait a while for the bed to soak and then hopping in with a shovel to pound out the blacktop sticking to it. And if no one is around with tools to move that pile you made, guess what? YOURE it. Ten ton or more to spread by hand. In about 15 minutes.

25 is too young for ssdi, you generally need 10 years in the workforce to build up overall credits before you can go get it. There are people on it that young or younger but generally mental defectives or other issues not by choice.

That's all I can think of for now.

 

Honestly, you'd probably be fine in reefer if you just follow the recommendations people have made on here. Get you a small step ladder so you don't have to pull yourself up into the trailer. Reefers use aluminum floors, so no need for nail pulling. You will have to put up the occasional load lock, but just take your time with it. Use a battery powered blower to clean the trailer out between washouts. Use a fifth wheel puller to give yourself extra leverage if you can't find a company that uses air actuated fifth wheel releases. And take your time with the landing gear crank.

 

Tankers, you must climb on top to open dome lids and sometimes walk along a narrow catwalk on top of the trailer. I wouldn't do it with RA.

 

Tankers are always no touch freight. You're never asked to unload the freight by hand