Pros and Cons of truck driving.

Pros: no boss looking over your shoulder (if you can avoid working for a company with driver-facing cams), working out of doors (no more cubicles), don't have to see the same people every day, can earn decent money if you get with a good company, driving big trucks!

Cons: erratic schedule, long waits at shippers and receivers, searching for empty trailers, traffic delays ( - and not getting paid for these time wasting activities if you're with a crappy company)

Get with a good company and it's a great job.

 

Pro: money


Con: your life is at risk every time the truck is rolling.

According to some insurance actuaries, there is more of a risk of being hurt or killed than cops face.

 

Also, never forget:

It's "Nooerk", NJ, but....

"New-ARK", DE.

If you get mixed up, the citizens of Newark, DE, will politely but FIRMLY correct you.

We could make a whole new thread outta names like that.

But to the OP, only you can decide if trucking is for you. And what kind of trucking you want to do.

As more corporate bs infects every workplace, trucking is one of the last jobs with room to breathe. The last two jobs I had, had cameras watching us from every angle, for our "safety".

I know some companies have driver facing cams. I don't agree with it, but depending on how it's used, I think I'd be all right with just ONE camera. Maybe not.

 

@Irishfan55,

I looked at my load plan yesterday. In theory, it was a 350 mile day with two stops. Easy peasy, leave out at 3am, get back by 10 and go home. Not quite how it happened.

Get there to get my load, and it’s not ready. Air up a flat on the trailer which takes 20 mins. I wait 1 hour 15 mins on the load. I get to Monticello, Arkansas, and lo and behold a truck gets there five seconds before me. I tell the receiver that he was there first, so he got loaded first. Lost 30 mins. As I am doing an inter-trip inspection, I find a nice framing nail in my drive tire in the sidewall. Get my next stop off and head to Ryder.

Took another hour at Ryder to swap the tire. So, I got back to the yard at 1:20 pm, three hours later than expected. Somewhat normal day for me, really.

 

I keep an air hose for the tires. The nail in the sidewall is unusual. The load being late is a crapshoot, and the receiver unloading one at a time doesn’t happen often. It just happened altogether today.

 

Yes, there is a lot of both PROs and CONs in trucking.