New O/O

If I could go back I would find a flatbed O/O and ask to be his apprentice for a few months and I would never ever ever drive for a company. Never ever ever ever. I would learn at 21 what I needed to know and beg borrow and steal to get a truck and get at it.

Of course it is pointless to even think of it!

 

I can't answer that since I have never drove for anybody but myself. I like to say to other people "the last real job I had I was 24 years old. No way in hell I could drive for someone else.

 

Well I guess there are two schools of thought on the subject.

You really don't have to work for anyone before you work for yourself. You're in America. You can buy a truck get your Authority get insurance and go.

For me, the places that I worked gave me a lot of different types of experience. I didn't just work in trucking in my life I worked in other businesses also.

And for me when I look back on that, I see that I learned by the decisions the owners made, I learned by the way their shops were run, I learned by the way the employees were treated, whether good or bad, I saw the way they planned their work and executed their growth, and probably a bazillion other things that don't immediately come to mind.

It may not apply to everyone, but I know a few guys that never ever worked for anyone except for themselves. I found those guys to be limited in their knowledge and often treated their employees terribly because they didn't know what it was like to work for someone. Again, that doesn't apply to everyone but I've seen that more than a few times.

And the most important thing about working for someone before you work for yourself is that you are learning on someone else's dime.

Especially especially in this business. Every mistake that you make will cost you money, guaranteed. If you work for other people you tend to see their mistakes or learn things in a way such that you don't make as many or as large of a mistake.

Even in SBA schooling, they teach you that the people with the highest success rates worked in their industry first and learned the business. The idea was that you are always going to make mistakes and you're always going to encounter something, but your experience and knowledge is what pulls you through it.

A few bad mistakes due to lack of experience can put you under easily in this business.

 

My Uncle told me once, "you either pay for an education or pay to be educated". You will never learn as fast or be so soon to forget if YOU are paying for the mistake instead of someone else.

 

Would I have liked to start out O/O? Of course. Would it have been realistic for me at the point of life and my situation when I started driving? No.

I would have never met the guy who got me into what I'm doing now and is a good friend if I had never been a company driver. That'd be a shame.

There are parts of my life I wish had gone differently, but they all led me to where I am now.