A new chapter begins and a new home for the Morehouse/fcc orphans

I was out in north western Iowa a few years back. I was hauling a pan. The county routed me down gravel road. It had been raining, but I didn’t think nothing about it. I took a left on the road and about the time I straightened out I sunk to the axles. What a #### mess that was. Ended up leaving it there for 24 hours and catching a ride back to the red roof inn. Took a back hoe and a dozer to get me unloaded and out.

 

Am I the only idiot that walks into the hardware store store a 12 dollar furnace filter and walks out 245 dollars later.... with no filter.

 

Probably a good thing they don’t have a D&B Supply Store back there—I have been banned from going to ours unsupervised due to the $850 Stihl chainsaw incident

 

. I resemble that remark.

 

If you like nasty conditions, and dirt roads, head up to Alaska... 200-240k is fairly easy to do, as a company driver. 500 miles from Fairbanks to Deadhorse up loaded and empty coming back about half to 3/4 of the time, unless you pull a tank, then empty Southbound pretty much all the time. It's possible to go hours between encountering other traffic up there. The biggest problem new drivers have up there is the ISOLATION, and the fact that sometimes, 5mph is too fast due to road conditions. (And that is in the Summer)

 

Your post made me curious. So I looked at available jobs. Most seem to pay 35-38 an hour up there. How does one get on with the 200-240 jobs? One place did say expect 80-98 hours a week. Who wants to do that for 48 weeks? And even at 38 an hour that still is only about 175k.

 

"Furthermore, the company also increased driver compensation by 11% this year, making it one of the most financially rewarding jobs in the field. According to Schutte, drivers can earn an average of $150,000 to $170,000 annually, not including benefits. Each round trip between Fairbanks and Prudhoe Bay on the haul road pays approximately $1,500, and a driver can expect to make 100 to 115 trips to Prudhoe yearly. These attractive incentives are aimed at attracting skilled drivers who will provide top-notch service across the Alaskan terrain."

$150K Salaries Offered to Truck Drivers as Alaska Sees Historic Drilling Boom

I'd believe it wouldn't be hard to get such a job. Hard to do the job? You betcha you're going to be earning that money.

The other thing to keep in mind is a case of Miller light will run you north of $30 up there.

 

I was watching one of those Ice Road Trucking shows back when that was a big deal, and they were bouncing around like Jim Carrey in Ace Ventura. I looked at their speedometer and they were going like 11 mph.

 

The hourly jobs aren't it. The really well paying jobs are running the haul road. The official name is Dalton Highway. It's roughly a 500 mile one way trip, and can take as little as 10 hours to do, or as much as 15 or so, depending on road conditions. The pay for each trip is around 1500. Some pay more, some pay less, and in a good week, you can do three trips. I have done three trips three weeks in a row before. One week had 4 trips, because I turned in my last trip a day late, so it fell onto the next week's settlement. In the last two months I was up there, I made a bit over 34,000, and that wasn't my best two months. I just can't see any further back than that in my credit union app. Bear in mind, that news story posted after your comment is AVERAGE. A lot of folks do less than than. And a lot do more. There are quite a few semi-retired guys that will do one per week, and that's enough for them. They are mostly guys that ran the road when it was being built, and don't have any bills other than utilities or debt. Those guys numbers tend to depress the average.