Best advice for adventure?

I suggest you FIRST decide which 1 or 2 companies you want to work for. Most people suggest get your CDL and then shop for a company. I disagree. Get your CDL whatever way makes most sense working for your #1 or #2 company. Your world in trucking can be gawd awful or pretty cool, especially if you don't have family and hometime hanging over your head. You mission should be to research the companies that fit you, not anyone else, and your life can be an adventure. If you pick wrong it's like being stuck in a 1-2 year DMV line.

Maverick Transportation has very good flatbed training, but it seems they concentrate in the midwest, south, & southeast. Those areas quickly become boring and monotonous, IMO. IMO your adventure is better if you are running back and forth to the west. I don't know much more about flatbed than what I just wrote but there is a flatbed forum on this web site. Check it out.

 

I was in IT too, if I could go back and forget all of this crap, I would in a second.

I don't get people, they want to come here because of the "freedom" and the "sightseeing" but what happens when they get here and they discover the horrors of the road.

Waking up in the morning to a pee smell or seeing a fellow professional driver taking a leak at the fuel pump because he is so lazy and fat that he would be pissing his pants when he made it to the door or dealing with truck stop food or going to the bathroom and seeing the only stall that they have is one with crap smeared all over the walls.

The lack of freedom is amazing too, people complain that they can't leave a shipper for 9 hours because they are in line and have to stay there but then want to go to see a movie or go to a place to eat. Forget the freedom of just driving, it is a profession, you have to log, do pre-trips to make sure the equipment is not going to break, and then deal with all kinds of rules and regulations in order to just drive.

I could go on and on with this, but most know exactly what I'm getting at.

 

Want adventure, marry a red headed woman.

 

Win the lottery...become filthy rich...and go seek "adventure". Trucking is a JOB once your honeymoon is over...it's not an "adventure".

I'll never understand wannabie's and how they 'fantasize' about what trucking is.
I was a wannabie/newbie once....and I don't EVER remember being giddy about trucking. I was happy to be out of the factory I was slowly dying in...but I wasn't clapping my hands and peeing my pants at the thought of a new JOB.

 

Go for it. Keep looking around for something better.

Transportation is not easy for a lot of people, it changes quickly and at the last second. Think about whether you can deal with things "on your feet".

We shouldn't be giving anyone downright dangerous advice on this forum. :^) :^)

 

Adventure cost money. If you are taking time to see stuff you are not moving. We get paid for moving. That being said, as was pointed out parking is the problem. But once you figure out that there are lots of places to park, you just have to figure out where. Adventures are easy. Casino are in every state. Stop by a poker room if you feel lucky. Disney World has truck parking. Scuba gear fits in nicely. There is a dive spot in New Mexico for beginners. I do genealogy as a hobby and it is fun to keep track of all the places my family came from. If you like that you can take a break and find gravesites. I park at airports and rent planes every once in awhile. Keep you flight bag with you. Gyms? If you are dumb enough to pay someone to let you pick up heavy things, just do flatbedding. Different foods from different parts of the country. Try Louisiana, and I don't mean Popeyes chicken. Finally the women........just tell them Wooly sent you.

We all have 8 hours a day to enjoy. Enjoy it.

 

Adventure not pain and misery

 

Well, I like to use toilet humor to illustrate life on the road, so... there's that...

If you're lucky, when you're taking a ten-hour break at a customer dock, waiting to deliver, there might be a port-o-potty. The bathroom is probably inside the building, and until someone arrives to unload you, you're going to have to make do. If all you have to do is pee, well, you can do that on a tire, but if you need to do that other thing, well... that's a walk of shame with plastic bags and paper towels - unless they have a port-o-potty.

Even if they do, it's not precisely ideal; you still have no running water or soap. If you're very, very lucky, there may be hand sanitizer, but I have to wonder... after sanitizing your hands, are they really sanitary? I mean, how much sanitary poo on your hands, is too much?

If you're the guy on the dock whose hand I'm going to shake, in the morning (or the guy whose pen I'm going to use), I'm guessing that the threshold is very, very low...

I have a million of those, but in practice, the actuality of life as a trucker is hard to convey, until you have actually lived it. It's not the romanticized picture that some folks seem to have in their heads...